Since this volume was written, three works have appeared which not only make important additions to our knowledge of Alexander’s campaigns in Turkestan, Lower Sindh, and Makran respectively, but which also serve to correct some current errors with regard to the identification of places which lay in the route of the great conqueror, as he passed through these obscure regions. As the works referred to have been written by scholarly men, who possess an intimate personal knowledge of the localities which they describe, the conclusions to which their investigations have conducted them may be accepted with confidence, and we propose to give here a brief summary of these conclusions so far as they concern our subject. The works are these: 1. Alexander des Grossen Feldzüge in Turkestan, von Franz Schwarz, München; 2. The Indus Delta: a Memoir chiefly on its Ancient History and Geography, by Major-General M. R. Haig, M.R.A.S., London; 3. A Lecture on “The Retreat of Alexander the Great from India,” by Colonel Holdich, R.E., as reported in the Calcutta Englishman.
We begin with Turkestan, by which is here meant the provinces called anciently Baktriana and Sogdiana. Their reduction, as will be seen from our Introduction ([pp. 39-44]), occupied the arms of Alexander for upwards of two years, from B.C. 329-327. The description of the campaigns by which this conquest was effected has hitherto proved a task of unusual difficulty, due partly to imperfect knowledge of the geography of the seat of war, and partly also to discrepancies in the accounts of these campaigns as given by Arrian and Curtius, who neither drew their facts from the same original sources nor relate them in quite the same order of sequence. It is fortunate therefore that Herr Schwarz, who for fifteen years resided in Turkestan, and had occasion or opportunity during that time to visit all its places of importance, sedulously applied himself to study the antiquities of the country, and was thus able ultimately to identify with certainty, almost all the places in which Alexander is reported, by his historians, to have shown himself. His work is accompanied by an excellent map, in which he has traced the line of the marches and the counter-marches of the Macedonian troops, while operating in the regions of the Oxus and the Jaxartes.
Alexander, in the early spring of 329 B.C., left Kabulistan, and having crossed the Indian Kaukasos, arrived at Drapsaka, and from thence continued his march to Aornos and Baktra. It has never been doubted that Baktra is now Balkh, but opinions have differed with regard to the other two places. Schwarz, on sufficient grounds, identifies Drapsaka with Kunduz, and Aornos with Tash-Kurgan, near which are situated the ruins of Khulm. Alexander, marching from Baktra through a frightful desert, gained the banks of the Oxus, which he crossed with his army in five days. The passage was effected, not from Kizil, as has been hitherto supposed, but from Kilif, higher up the stream—a place which Schwarz thinks was probably the city of the Branchidai, which, with its inhabitants, Alexander so remorselessly destroyed. From the Oxus the expedition advanced by way of Karshi and Jam to Marakanda, the famous city of Samarcand. Near Karshi, at the hill Kungur-tau, occurred the skirmish in which Alexander, on this march, received a wound. Marakanda was situated on the banks of the Polytimêtos, now the Zerafshan or Kohik, which flows westward till its waters are lost in the sands of the Khorasmian Desert. Alexander marched thence to the river Tanais—the Jaxartes or Syr-darya—which formed the eastern boundary of the Persian empire, and separated it from the Skythians. On the Persian side of this river Alexander founded a city, which he called by his own name, Alexandria. It is agreed on all hands that the site of this Alexandria was at or near where Khojent now stands. In this neighbourhood Alexander captured seven towns, which had shown signs of a purpose to revolt. The names of two of these have been recorded, Gaza and Kyropolis. The former Schwarz identifies with Nau, and the latter with Ura-tübe, a considerable city occupying a commanding position, strongly fortified, and distant from Khojent about 40 miles. It had been founded by Cyrus to serve as a bulwark against incursions of the Skythians. Alexander having quelled the attempted revolt of the Sogdians, crossed the Jaxartes, and inflicted a defeat on the Skythians, who had mustered in great force on their own side of the river. He pursued them as far as what Curtius calls the boundary-stones of Father Bacchus, which Schwarz has identified as a pass over Mogul-Tau, near Mursa-rabat, a post-station, 17 miles distant from Khojent.
On the heels of this victory tidings reached Alexander of the terrible defeat and slaughter of his Macedonian troops by Spitamenes in one of the islands of the Polytimêtos, and he immediately started for Marakanda, and reached it after a march of three days. As the distance from Khojent to Samarcand is 172 English miles, this march, made in broiling heat, and through a country without roads, must have tried to the very utmost the powers of endurance of the Macedonian soldiers, some of whom were hoplites, wearing their brazen helmets, carrying their shields, and clad in mail. Spitamenes made his escape into the desert, and Alexander could only sate his vengeance by ravaging with merciless severity the beautiful valley through which the river flowed. Schwarz tells us that he searched in vain to discover the island which was the scene of the disaster, and it probably no longer exists. It must, however, he thinks, have been situated in the neighbourhood of Ziadin and Kermineh. Alexander, pursuing his way down the river, passed Bokhara, the Sogdian capital, and advanced as far as Karakul, beyond which the river disappears in the sands. He then retired for the winter to Zariaspa. Zariaspa has been taken to be another name of Baktra, but Schwarz shows that such an opinion is altogether untenable, and identifies it, for reasons not to be gainsaid, with Charjui, a place some six or seven miles distant from where the Oxus is now spanned by the bridge of the Trans-Caspian Railway.
From Zariaspa Alexander returned to Marakanda, passing on his route by Karakul, Bokhara, Kermineh, and Kata-Kurgan. Koinos meanwhile had difficulty in holding his own against the indomitable Spitamenes, who had collected at Bagai a body of 3000 Skythian horsemen, with a view to invade Sogdiana. Bagai is now Ustuk, a Bokharan frontier fortress, 28 miles below Charjui, but on the opposite side of the Oxus. The hostile forces at length came to an engagement. Koinos was victorious, and Spitamenes, who fled into the desert with his Skythian horsemen, fell a victim to their treachery. They cut off his head, and sent it as a peace-offering to Alexander. After the reduction of Sogdiana, Alexander withdrew to Nautaka, where he spent the winter of 328-327 B.C. This place has been generally identified with Karshi, but Schwarz takes it to be Schaar, which lies 40 miles to the south of Samarcand.
Alexander left Nautaka early in spring, and his next great exploit was the capture of the famous Sogdian Rock, in the fortress of which Oxyartes had placed for safety the members of his family, including his daughter, the beautiful Roxana, whose charms so fascinated her captor, that he made her his queen, in spite of all the remonstrances of his friends. Curtius calls this stronghold the Rock of Arimazes. Some have identified it with the steep crags which line one side of the narrow gorge near Derbent, called the Iron Gate, which forms the only direct approach from West-Bokhara to Hissar. Schwarz, however, says that the Iron Gate, through which he has himself often passed, answers neither to the description of Arrian nor of Curtius, and his own identification of the Rock is with a mountain which ascends precipitously from a gorge similar to that of the Iron Gate, from which it is some five miles distant in a north-east direction. From the Rock the expedition marched eastward into the country of the Paraitakai, the mountainous district now known as Hissar. Here Alexander’s progress was arrested by another mountain fortress no less formidable than the Sogdian. It is called by Arrian the Rock of Chorienes, and by Curtius the Rock of Sysimithres. Its identification presents no difficulty, as in all Hissar there is but one place which answers the descriptions of it, namely, the narrow pass at the river Waksh, where the Suspension Bridge (Pul-i-Sangin) overspans it on the way from Hissar through Faizabad to Badshuan. This pass, Schwarz tells us, is the most remarkable place to which he came in the whole course of his travels. The fort having been surrendered through the persuasions of Oxyartes, the conqueror returned to Baktra, by way of Faizabad, Hissar, Karatag, and Yurchi, from which place he proceeded down the right bank of the Surkhan to Tormiz, and thence to the passage of the Oxus at Pata-gisar. On his return to Baktra, he there made his preparations for the invasion of India. We have here only further to notice that Alexander’s visit to Margiana, the city now so well known as Merv, could not have been made, as Curtius informs us, from Bokhara, which is 215 miles distant and separated from it by a terrible intervening desert, all but entirely destitute of wells, but was probably made from Sarakhs in the earlier part of the march from the Caspian Gates.
We turn now to Major-General Haig’s Memoir on the Indus-Delta country—a work of which about a fourth part directly concerns our subject. The sections which are of this nature discuss the following points:—1. The Geography and Hydrography of the Delta Country (chap. i.); 2. The Delta at the time of Alexander’s Expedition (chap. ii.); 3. The Delta according to later Greek Accounts (chap. iii.); 4. The Lonibare Mouth of the Indus (Append. Note A); 5. The general course of the Indus in Sindh in ancient times (Append. Note C); 6. Itineraries in the Las Bêlâ Country (Append. Note D); 7. The March to the Arabios (Append. Note E); 8. The voyage of Nearchos from Alexander’s Haven to the Mouth of the Arabios (Append. Note F).
Our author could scarcely have chosen for his subject one that is more beset with problems of aggravating perplexity. The Indus is notable even among Indian rivers for the frequency, and sometimes also for the suddenness, with which it changes its courses. As Colonel Holdich well observes, “The difficulty of restoring to the map of India an outline of the ancient geography of Sindh and the Indus Delta is one which has baffled many generations of scholars. The vagaries of the Indus, even within the limits of historic record, ... render this river, even before the Delta is reached, a hopeless feature for reference with regard to the position of places said once to have been near its bank. Within the limits of the Delta the confusion of hydrography becomes even more confounded.” In my note on Alexander in Sindh, which will be found at [page 352], I have noticed that the channel in which the Indus now flows lies much farther to the west than the channel in which the Macedonians found it flowing. This westing, as it is called, is due to the operation of the law, first discovered by K. E. von Baer, that the difference of the velocity of the earth’s rotation at the Equator and at the Poles causes eroding rivers in the Northern Hemisphere to attack their right bank more than the left, and to push their beds sideways—while in the Southern Hemisphere, this action is reversed. From the Memoir we learn how this law, and the other natural laws by which its action is modified, have affected the Indus. The river, we learn, pursues from the confluence of the Panjnad a very uniform S.W. direction for nearly 300 miles, till it reaches lat. 26° 56´, long. 67° 53´. At this point the river changes its general direction to one due south, and maintains this for about 60 miles, till it strikes, in lat. 26° 20´, long. 67° 55´, the eastern base of the Lakî Hills, just under the peak called Bhago Toro. Below this point the westing movement of centuries has now brought the stream to the extreme edge of the alluvial land, and into contact with the gravel slopes bordering the hill-country. As the gravel tracts project in a bow into the alluvial land of Lower Sindh, the river, unable to erode them, is forced to conform to their contour, and to run in a great curve for nearly 180 miles to Thata. This curve continues through the Delta to the sea, so that from Bhago Toro to the river-mouth the course of the Indus forms an arc of some 260 miles, of which the chord is about 160 miles, and the maximum depth nearly 50 miles. The general result is to give the course of the river in Sindh the form of the letter S. And, as its abandoned channels attest, such has been the form in which the river has run in past ages as it approached the sea. The lower curve of the S had a still bolder sweep eastward when the river ran far east of its present course, unchecked by rock or gravel bed, than it has now, when this part of the course has been shaped by a resistance which the current cannot overcome. This S-shaped course of the river in all ages should be remembered in considering questions of ancient local topography, such, for instance, as that of the site of Patala. It will then be seen to be impossible that the river can have run at the same period in its present course near Haidarâbâd, and, lower down through the Ghâro, or ancient Sindh Sâgara; also that if Patala was at Haidarâbâd, the western river-mouth of Alexander’s time must have lain, not at the western extremity of the sea-face of the Delta, but much to the east of that point. From these remarks (which I have abbreviated from the text), it will be seen that Haidarâbâd can no longer be taken to be the modern representative of Patala. Where then was the point at which, in Alexander’s time, the Indus bifurcated, and Patala was situated? Major-General Haig says that any precise identification of this site is hardly within the limits of possibility; but, for reasons for which his work itself must be consulted, he is of opinion that “the ancient capital of the Delta was most likely not far from a spot 35 miles south-east of Haidarâbâd”—a spot which happens to be 160 miles distant from each extremity of the Delta coast, as supposed to have existed in Alexander’s time. With regard to places which lie farther north than Patala, the views set forth in this volume do not differ from those of Major-General Haig. He is, however, of opinion that the kingdom of Mousikanos was of greater extent than is usually supposed, and must have embraced the district of Bahawulpur, which answers better to the description of that kingdom, as the most flourishing in all India, than the country around Alôr.
The Delta tract, as taken in the Memoir, extends from the sea northwards to the latitude of Haidarâbâd (25° 25´ N.), and is bounded on the east by the desert, the Purân or old course of the Indus, now dry, and by the Korî mouth, which is the Lonibare mouth of Ptolemy; on the west by the outer border of the plains, where the boundary runs S. by W. for 50 miles to near Thata, from which point it turns almost due west, and runs for 60 miles more to the sea, near Karâchî. This alluvial tract is everywhere furrowed by ancient channels, some continuous, both above and throughout the Delta, and others all but totally obliterated. Our author has a notice of each of the more important of these channels. Regarding the Ghâro, the western arm down which Alexander and his fleet sailed, he says that it runs nearly east and west along the southern border of the Kohistân (hill-country), that it is thus on the extreme edge of the Delta, and that it has a course of about 40 miles in length. Referring to the present channel of the Indus, he remarks:—
“This divides the lower Delta region into two unequal portions. Of these, the western, and much the smaller, portion is in the form of an equilateral triangle, having sides of about 64 miles in length, consisting of the river, the coast-line, and the southern edge of the Kohistân plains, and including an area of about 1700 square miles. This it will be convenient to call the ‘Western Delta,’ a name the more suitable that all the westward-flowing branches of the river have, or have once had, their mouths within the limits of the tract to which it will apply.”