Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
"crank" on page 147 is a possible typo
"Bamain" on page 213 is a possible typo
"Semetic" on page 225 is a possible typo
"Zoroastian" on page 270 is a possible typo
"Aegospotami" (in index) not found in text
"Kardos" (in index) not found in text
Spelling differences between the index and the text were resolved
in favor of the text.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE
GATES OF INDIA
BEING
AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
BY
COLONEL SIR THOMAS HOLDICH
K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B., D.Sc.
AUTHOR OF
'THE INDIAN BORDERLAND,' 'INDIA,' 'THE COUNTRIES OF
THE KING'S AWARD'
_WITH MAPS_
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1910
PREFACE
As the world grows older and its composition both physical and human
becomes subject to ever-increasing scientific investigation, the close
interdependence of its history and its geography becomes more and more
definite. It is hardly too much to say that geography has so far
shaped history that in unravelling some of the more obscure
entanglements of historical record, we may safely appeal to our modern
knowledge of the physical environment of the scene of action to decide
on the actual course of events. Oriental scholars for many years past
have been deeply interested in reshaping the map of Asia to suit their
theories of the sequence of historical action in India and on its
frontiers. They have identified the position of ancient cities in
India, sometimes with marvellous precision, and have been able to
assign definite niches in history to historical personages with whose
story it would have been most difficult to deal were it not
intertwined with marked features of geographical environment. But on
the far frontiers of India, beyond the Indus, these geographical
conditions have only been imperfectly known until recently. It is
only within the last thirty years that the geography of the hinterland
of India--Tibet, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan--have been in any sense
brought under scientific examination, and at the best such examination
has been partial and incomplete. It is unfortunate that recent years
have added nothing to our knowledge of Afghanistan, and it seems
hopeless to wait for detailed information as to some of the more
remote (and most interesting) districts of that historic country. As,
therefore, in the course of twenty years of official wanderings I have
amassed certain notes which may help to throw some light on the
ancient highways and cities of those trans-frontier regions which
contain the landward gates of India, I have thought it better to make
some use of these notes now, and to put together the various theories
that I may have formed from time to time bearing on the past history
of that country, whilst the opportunity lasts. I have endeavoured to
present my own impressions at first hand as far as possible, unbiased
by the views already expressed by far more eminent writers than
myself, believing that there is a certain value in originality. I have
also endeavoured to keep the descriptive geography of such districts
as form the theatre of historical incidents on a level with the story
itself, so that the one may illustrate the other.
Whilst investigating the methods of early explorers into the
hinterland of India it has, of course, been necessary to appeal to
the original narratives of the explorers themselves so far as
possible. Consequently I am indebted to the assistance afforded by
quite a host of authors for the basis of this compilation. And I may
briefly recount the names of those to whom I am under special
obligation. First and foremost are Mr. M'Crindle's admirable series of
handy little volumes dealing with the Greek period of Indian history,
the perusal of which first prompted an attempt to reconcile some of
the apparent discrepancies between classical story and practical
geography, with which may be included Sir A. Cunningham's _Coins of
Alexander's Successors in Kabul_. For the Arab phase of commercial
exploration I am indebted to Sir William Ouseley's translation,
_Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukel_, and the _Géographie d'Edrisi;
traduite par P. Aimedée Joubert_. For more modern records the official
reports of Burnes, Lord, and Leech on Afghanistan; Burnes' _Travels
into Bokhara, etc.; Cabul_, by the same author; _Ferrier's Caravan
Journeys_; Wood's _Journey to the Sources of the Oxus_; Moorcroft's
_Travels in the Himalayan Provinces_; Vigne's _Ghazni, Kabul, and
Afghanistan_; Henry Pottinger's _Travels in Baloochistan and Sinde_;
and last, but by no means least, Masson's _Travels in Afghanistan,
Beluchistan, the Panjab, and Kalat_, all of which have been largely
indented on. To this must be added Mr. Forrest's valuable compilation
of Bombay records. It has been indeed one of the objects of this book
to revive the records of past generations of explorers whose stories
have a deep significance even in this day, but which are apt to be
overlooked and forgotten as belonging to an ancient and superseded era
of research. Because these investigators belong to a past generation
it by no means follows that their work, their opinions, or their
deductions from original observations are as dead as they are
themselves. It is far too readily assumed that the work of the latest
explorer must necessarily supersede that of his predecessors. In the
difficult art of map compilation perhaps the most difficult problem
with which the compiler has to deal is the relative value of evidence
dating from different periods. Here, then, we have introduced a
variety of opinions and views expressed by men of many minds (but all
of one type as explorer), which may be balanced one against another
with a fair prospect of eliminating what mathematicians call the
"personal equation" and arriving at a sound "mean" value from combined
evidence. I have said they are all of one type, regarded as explorers.
There is only one word which fitly describes that type--magnificent.
We may well ask have we any explorers like them in these days? We know
well enough that we have the raw material in plenty for fashioning
them, but alas! opportunity is wanting. Exploration in these days is
becoming so professional and so scientific that modern methods hardly
admit of the dare-devil, face-to-face intermixing with savage breeds
and races that was such a distinctive feature in the work of these
heroes of an older age. We get geographical results with a rapidity
and a precision that were undreamt of in the early years (or even in
the middle) of the last century. Our instruments are incomparably
better, and our equipment is such that we can deal with the hostility
of nature in her more savage moods with comparative facility. But we
no longer live with the people about whom we set out to write
books--we don't wear their clothes, eat their food, fraternize with
them in their homes and in the field, learn their language and discuss
with them their religion and politics. And the result is that we don't
_know_ them half as well, and the ratio of our knowledge (in India at
least) is inverse to the official position towards them that we may
happen to occupy. The missionary and the police officer may know
something of the people; the high-placed political administrator knows
less (he cannot help himself), and the parliamentary demagogue knows
nothing at all. My excuse for giving so large a place to the American
explorer Masson, for instance, is that he was first in the field at a
critical period of Indian history. Apart from his extraordinary gifts
and power of absorbing and collating information, history has proved
that on the whole his judgment both as regards Afghan character and
Indian political ineptitude was essentially sound. Of course he was
not popular. He is as bitter and sarcastic in his unsparing
criticisms of local political methods in Afghanistan as he is of the
methods of the Indian Government behind them; and doubtless his
bitterness and undisguised hostility to some extent discounts the
value of his opinion. But he knew the Afghan, which we did not: and it
is most instructive to note the extraordinary divergence of opinion
that existed between him and Sir Alexander Burnes as regards some of
the most marked idiosyncrasies of Afghan character. Burnes was as
great an explorer as Masson, but whilst in Afghanistan he was the
emissary of the Indian Government, and thus it immediately became
worth while for the Afghan Sirdar to study his temper and his
weaknesses and to make the best use of both. Thus arose Burnes'
whole-hearted belief in the simplicity of Afghan methods, whilst
Masson, who was more or less behind the scenes, was in no position to
act as prompter to him. It was just preceding and during the momentous
period of the first Afghan war (1839-41) that European explorers in
Afghanistan and Baluchistan were most active. Long before then both
countries had been an open book to the Ancients, and both may be said
geographically to be an open book to us now. There are, however,
certain pages which have not yet been properly read, and something
will be said later on as to where these pages occur.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I
EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST--GREECE AND
PERSIA AND EARLY TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN
FRONTIER 11
CHAPTER II
ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN--ANCIENT LAND ROUTES--POSSIBLE
SEA ROUTES 39
CHAPTER III
GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH
PLAIN AND BAKTRIA 58
CHAPTER IV
GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--THE KABUL VALLEY GATES 94
CHAPTER V
GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES 135
CHAPTER VI
CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE NORTH 169
CHAPTER VII
MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY--SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN 190
CHAPTER VIII
ARAB EXPLORATION--THE GATES OF MAKRAN 284
CHAPTER IX
EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER 325
CHAPTER X
AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON--THE NEARER GATES,
BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN 344
CHAPTER XI
AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON (_CONTINUED_)--THE NEARER
GATES, BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN 390
CHAPTER XII
LORD AND WOOD--THE FARTHER GATES, BADAKSHAN AND THE
OXUS 411
CHAPTER XIII
ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT 442
CHAPTER XIV
ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--BURNES 451
CHAPTER XV
THE GATES OF GHAZNI--VIGNE 462
CHAPTER XVI
THE GATES OF GHAZNI--BROADFOOT 470
CHAPTER XVII
FRENCH EXPLORATION--FERRIER 476
CHAPTER XVIII
SUMMARY 500
INDEX 531
LIST OF MAPS
FACE PAGE
1. General Orographic Map of Afghanistan and Baluchistan,
showing Arab trade routes (see page 190 _et seq._)
_With Introduction_
2. Sketch of Alexander's Route through the Kabul Valley to
India 94
3. Greek Retreat from India (_Journal of the Society of Arts_,
April 1901) 135
4. The Gates of Makran (_Journal of the Royal Geographical
Society_, April 1906) 284
5. Sketch of the Hindu Kush Passes 500
[Illustration: OROGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFGHANISTAN & BALUCHISTAN
COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS H. HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B.]
INTRODUCTION
Since the gates of India have become water gates and the way to India
has been the way of the sea, very little has been known of those other
landward gates which lie to the north and west of the peninsula,
through which have poured immigrants from Asia and conquerors from the
West from time immemorial. It has taken England a long time to
rediscover them, and she is even now doubtful about their strategic
value and the possibility of keeping them closed and barred. It is
only by an examination of the historical records which concern them,
and the geographical conditions which surround them, that any clear
appreciation of their value can be attained; and it is only within the
last century that such examinations have been rendered possible by the
enterprise and activity of a race of explorers (official and
otherwise) who have risked their lives in the dangerous field of the
Indian trans-frontier. In ancient days the very first (and sometimes
the last) thing that was learned about India was the way thither from
the North. In our times the process has been reversed, and we seek
for information with our backs to the South. We have worked our way
northward, having entered India by the southern water gates, and as we
have from time to time struggled rather to remain content within
narrow borders than to push outward and forward, the drift to the
north has been very slow, and there has never been, right from the
very beginning, any strenuous haste in the expansion of commercial
interests, or any spirit of crusade in the advance of Conquest.
So late as the early years of the sixteenth century England was but a
poor country, with less inhabitants than are now crowded within the
London area. There was not much to spare, either of money or men, for
ventures which could only be regarded in those days as sheer gambling
speculations. The splendid records of a successful voyage must have
been greatly discounted by the many dismal tales of failure, and
nothing but an indomitable impulse, bred of international rivalry,
could have led the royal personages and the few wealthy citizens who
backed our earliest enterprises to open their purse-strings
sufficiently wide to find the necessary means for the equipment of a
modest little fleet of square-sailed merchant ships. National tenacity
prevailed, however, in the end. The hard-headed Islander finally
succeeded where the more impetuous Southerner failed, and England came
out finally with most of the honours of a long commercial contest. It
was in this way that we reached India, and by degrees we painted
India our own conventional colour in patches large enough to give us
the preponderating voice in her general administration. But as we
progressed northward and north-westward we realized the important fact
that India--the peninsula India--was insulated and protected by
geographical conformations which formed a natural barrier against
outside influences, almost as impassable as the sea barriers of
England. On the north-east a vast wilderness of forest-covered
mountain ranges and deep lateral valleys barred the way most
effectually against irruption from the yellow races of Asia. On the
north where the curving serrated ramparts of the north-east gave place
to the Himalayan barrier, the huge uplifted highlands of Tibet were
equally impassable to the busy pushing hordes of the Mongol; and it
was only on the extreme north-west about the hinterland of Kashmir,
and beyond the Himalayan system, that any weakness could be found in
the chain of defensive works which Nature had sent to the north of
India. Here, indeed, in the trans-Indus regions of Kashmir, sterile,
rugged, cold, and crowned with gigantic ice-clad peaks, there is a
slippery track reaching northward into the depression of Chinese
Turkestan, which for all time has been a recognised route connecting
India with High Asia. It is called the Karakoram route. Mile upon mile
a white thread of a road stretches across the stone-strewn plains,
bordered by the bones of the innumerable victims to the long fatigue
of a burdensome and ill-fed existence--the ghastly debris of former
caravans. It is perhaps the ugliest track to call a trade route in the
whole wide world. Not a tree, not a shrub, exists, not even the cold
dead beauty which a snow-sheet imparts to highland scenery, for there
is no great snowfall in the elevated spaces which back the Himalayas
and their offshoots. It is marked, too, by many a sordid tragedy of
murder and robbery, but it is nevertheless one of the northern gates
of India which we have spent much to preserve, and it does actually
serve a very important purpose in the commercial economy of India. At
least one army has traversed this route from the north with the
prospect before it of conquering Tibet; but it was a Mongol army, and
it was worsted in a most unequal contest with Nature.
India (if we include Kashmir) runs to a northern apex about the point
where, from the western extension of the giant Muztagh, the Hindu Kush
system takes off in continuation of the great Asiatic divide. Here the
Pamirs border Kashmir, and here there are also mountain ways which
have aforetime let in the irrepressible Chinaman, probably as far as
Hunza, but still a very long way from the Indian peninsula. Then the
Hindu Kush slopes off to the south-westward and becomes the divide
between Afghanistan and Kashmir for a space, till, from north of
Chitral, it continues with a sweep right into Central Afghanistan and
merges into the mountain chain which reaches to Herat. From this
point, north of Chitral, commences the true north-west barrier of
India, a barrier which includes nearly the whole width of Afghanistan
beyond the formidable wall of the trans-Indus mountains. It is here
that the gates of India are to be found, and it is with this outermost
region of India, and what lies beyond it, that this book is chiefly
concerned.
As the history of India under British occupation grew and expanded and
the painting red process gradually developed, whilst men were ever
reaching north-westward with their eyes set on these frontier hills,
the countries which lay beyond came to be regarded as the "ultima
thule" of Indian exploration, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan were
reckoned in English as the hinterland of India, only to be reached by
the efforts of English adventurers from the plains of the peninsula.
And that is the way in which those countries are still regarded. It is
Afghanistan in its relations to India, political, commercial, or
strategic, as the case may be, that fills the minds of our soldiers
and statesmen of to-day; and the way to Afghanistan is still by the
way of ships--across the ocean first, and then by climbing upward from
the plains of India to the continental plateau land of Asia. It was
not so twenty-five centuries ago. One can imagine the laughter that
would echo through the courts and palaces of Nineveh at the idea of
reaching Afghanistan by a sea route! Think of Tiglath Pilesur, the
founder of the Second Assyrian Empire, seated, curled, and anointed,
surrounded by his Court and flanked by the sculptured art of his
period (already losing some of the freshness and vigour of First
Empire design) in the pillared halls of Nineveh, and counting the
value of his Eastern satrapies in Sagartia, Ariana, and Arachosia,
with outlying provinces in Northern India, whilst meditating yet
further conquests to add to his almost illimitable Empire! No shadow
of Babylon had stretched northward then. No premonition of a yet
larger and later Empire overshadowed him or his successors,
Shalmaneser and Sargon. Northern Afghanistan was to these Assyrian
kings the dumping ground of unconsidered companies of conquered
slaves, a bourne from whence no captive was ever likely to return. No
record is left of the passing of those bands of colonists from West to
East. We can only gather from the writings of subsequent historians in
classical times that for centuries they must have drifted eastward
from Syria, Armenia, and Greece, carrying with them the rudiments of
the arts and industries of the land they had left for ever, and
providing India with the germs of an art system entirely imitative in
design, colour, and relief. The Aryan was before them in India.
Already the foundations were laid for historic dynasties, and Rajput
families were dating their origin from the sun and moon, whilst
somewhere from beneath the shadow of the Himalayas in the foothills of
Nipal was soon to arise the daystar of a new faith, a "light of Asia"
for all centuries to come.
It is impossible to set a limit to the number and variety of the
people who, in these early centuries, either migrated, or were
deported, from West to East through Persia to Northern Afghanistan, or
who drifted southwards into Baluchistan. Not until the ethnography of
these frontier lands of India is exhaustively studied shall we be able
to unravel the influence of Assyrian, Median, Persian, Arab, or Greek
migrations in the strange conglomeration of humanity which peoples
those countries. Baktra (Balkh), in Northern Afghanistan, must have
been a city of consequence in days when Nineveh was young. Farah, a
city of Arachosia in Western Afghanistan on the borders of Seistan,
must have been a centre from whence Assyrian arts and industries were
passed on to India for ages; for Farah lies directly on the route
which connects Seistan with the southern passes into the Indus valley.
The Indus itself seems to have been the boundary which limited the
efforts of migration and exploration. Beyond the Indus were deserts in
the south and wide unproductive plains of the Punjab in the north, and
it is the deserts of the world's geography which, far more than any
other feature, have always determined the extent of the human tidal
waves and influenced their direction. They are as the promontories and
capes of the world's land perimeter to the tides of the ocean. Beyond
these parched and waterless tracts, where now the maximum temperatures
of sun-heat in India are registered, were vague uncertainties and
mythical wonders, the tales of which in ancient literature are in
strange contrast to the exact information which was obtained of
geographical conditions and tribal distributions in the basins of the
Kabul or Swat rivers, or within the narrow valleys of Makran.
A recent writer (Mr. Ellsworth Huntington) has expressed in
picturesque and convincing language the nature of the relationship
which has ever existed between man and his physical environments in
Asia, and has illustrated the effect of certain pulsations of climate
in the movement of Asiatic history. The changing conditions of the
climate of High Asia, periods of desiccation and deprivation of
natural water-supply alternating with periods of cold and rainfall,
acting in slow progression through centuries and never ceasing in
their operation, have set "men in nations" moving over the face of
that continent since the beginning of time, and left a legacy of
buried history, to be unearthed by explorers of the type of Stein,
such as will eventually give us the key to many important problems in
race distribution. But more important even than climatic influence is
the direct influence of physical geography, the actual shaping of
mountain and valley, as a factor in directing the footsteps of early
migration. Nowadays men cross the seas in thousands from continent to
continent, but in the days of Egyptian and Assyrian empire it was that
straight high-road which crossed the fewest passes and tapped the best
natural resources of wood and water which was absolutely the
determining factor in the direction of the great human processions;
and although change of climate may have set the nomadic peoples of
High Asia moving with a purpose more extensive than an annual search
for pasturage, and have led to the peopling of India with successive
nations of Central Asiatic origin, it was the knowledge that by
certain routes between Mesopotamia and Northern Afghanistan lay no
inhospitable desert, and no impassable mountain barrier, that
determined the intermittent flow from the west, which received fresh
impulse with every conquest achieved, with every band of captives
available for colonizing distant satrapies. To put it shortly, there
was an easy high-road from Mesopotamia through Persia to Northern
Afghanistan, or even to Seistan, and not a very difficult one to
Makran; and so it came about that migratory movements, either
compulsory or voluntary, continued through centuries, ever extending
their scope till checked by the deserts of the Indian frontier or the
highlands of the Pamirs and Tibet, or the cold wild wastes of
Siberia.
Thus Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the countries with which we are more
immediately concerned, were probably far better known to Assyrian and
Persian kings than they were to the British Intelligence Office (or
its equivalent) of a century ago. The first landward explorations of
these countries are lost in pre-historic mists, but we find that the
first scientific mission of which we have any record (that which was
led by Alexander the Great) was well supplied with fairly accurate
geographical information regarding the main route to be followed and
the main objectives to be gained.
In tracing out, therefore, or rather in sketching, the gradual
progress of exploration in Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and the
gradual evolution of those countries into a proper appanage of British
India, we will begin (as history began) from the north and west rather
than from the south and the plains of Hindustan.
CHAPTER I
EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. GREECE AND PERSIA AND EARLY
TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER.
It is unfortunately most difficult to trace the conditions under which
Europe was first introduced to Asia, or the gradual ripening of early
acquaintance into inter-commercial relationship. Although the eastern
world was possessed of a sound literature in the time of Moses, and
although long before the days of Solomon there was "no end" to the
"making of books," it is remarkable how little has been left of these
archaic records, and it is only by inference gathered from tags and
ends of oriental script that we gradually realize how unimportant to
old-world thinkers was the daily course of their own national history.
India is full of ancient literature, but there is no ancient history.
To the Brahmans there was no need for it. To them the world and all
that it contains was "illusion," and it was worse than idle--it was
impious--to perpetuate the record of its varied phases as they
appeared to pass in unreal pageantry before their eyes. We know that
from under the veil of extravagant epic a certain amount of historical
truth has been dragged into daylight. The "Mahabharata" and the
"Ramayana" contain in allegorical outline the story of early conflicts
which ended in the foundation of mighty Rajput houses, or which
established the distribution of various races of the Indian peninsula.
Without an intimate knowledge of the language in which these great
epics are written it is impossible to estimate fully the nature of the
allegory which overlies an interesting historical record, but it has
always appeared to be sufficiently vague to warrant some uncertainty
as to the accuracy of the deductions which have hitherto been evolved
therefrom. Nevertheless it is from these early poems of the East that
we derive all that there is to be known about ancient India, and when
we turn from the East to the West strangely enough we find much the
same early literary conditions confronting us.
About 950 years before Christ, two of the most perfect epic poems were
written that ever delighted the world, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of
Homer. The first begins with Achilles and ends with the funeral of
Hector. The second recounts the voyages and adventures of Ulysses
after the destruction of Troy. With our modern intimate knowledge of
the coasts of the Mediterranean it is not difficult to detect, amidst
the fabulous accounts of heroic adventures, many references to
geographical facts which must have been known generally to the Greeks
of the Homeric period, dealing chiefly with the coasts and islands of
the Western sea. There is but little reference to the East, although
many centuries before Homer's day there was a sea-going trade between
India and the West which brought ivory, apes, and peacocks to the
ports of Syria. The obvious inference to be derived from the general
absence of reference to the mysteries of Eastern geography is that
there was no through traffic. Ships from the East traded only along
the coast-lines that they knew, and ventured no farther than the point
where an interchange of commodities could be established with the slow
crawling craft of the West, the navigation of the period being
confined to hugging the coast-line and making for the nearest
shelter when times were bad. The interchange of commodities between
the rough sailor people of those days did not tend to an interchange
of geographical information. Probably the language difficulty stood in
the way. If there was no end to the making of books it was not the
illiterate and rough sailor men who made them. Nor do sailors, as a
rule, make them now. It is left to the intelligent traveller
uninterested in trade, and the journalistic seeker after sensation, to
make modern geographical records; and there were no such travellers in
the days of Homer, even if the art of writing had been a general
accomplishment. In days much later than Homer we can detect sailors'
yarns embodied in what purport to be authentic geographical records,
but none so early. We have a reference to certain Skythic nomads who
lived on mare's milk, and who had wandered from the Asiatic highlands
into the regions north of the Euxine, which is in itself deeply
interesting as it indicates that as early as the ninth century B.C.
Milesian Greek colonies had started settlements on the shores of the
Black Sea. As the centuries rolled on these settlements expanded into
powerful colonies, and with enterprising people such as the early
Greeks there can be little doubt that there was an intermittent
interchange of commerce with the tribes beyond the Euxine, and that
gradually a considerable, if inaccurate, knowledge of Asia, even
beyond the Taurus, was acquired. The world, for them, was still a flat
circular disc with a broad tidal ocean flowing around its edge,
encompassing the habitable portions about the centre.
Africa extended southward to the land of Ethiop and no farther, but
Asia was a recognised geographical entity, less vague and nebulous
even than the western isles from whence the Ph[oe]nicians brought
their tin. There were certain fables current among the Greeks touching
the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and the
Hyperboreans, which in the middle of the sixth century were still
credited, and almost indicate an indefinite geographical conception of
northern Asiatic regions. But it is probable that much more was known
of Asiatic geography in these early years than can be gathered from
the poems and fables of Greek writers before the days of Herodotus and
of professional geography. There were no means of recording knowledge
ready to the hand of the colonist and commercial traveller then; even
the few literary men who later travelled for the sake of gaining
knowledge were dependent largely on information obtained scantily and
with difficulty from others, and the expression of their knowledge is
crude and imperfect. But what should we expect even in present times
if we proceeded to compile a geographical treatise from the works of
Milton and Shakespere? What indeed would be the result of a careful
analysis of parliamentary utterances on geographical subjects within,
say, the last half century? Would they present to future generations
anything approaching to an accurate epitome of the knowledge really
possessed (though possibly not expressed) by those who have within
that period almost exhausted the world's store of geographical record?
The analogy is a perfectly fair one. Geographers and explorers are not
always writers even in these days, and as we work backwards into the
archives of history nothing is more astonishing than the indications
which may be found of vast stores of accurate information of the
earth's physiography lost to the world for want of expression.
It was between the sixth century B.C. and the days of Herodotus that
Miletus was destroyed, and captive Greeks were transported by Darius
Hystaspes from the Lybian Barké to Baktria, where we find traces of
them again under their original Greek name in the northern regions of
Afghanistan. It was long ere the days of Darius that the hosts of
Assyria beat down the walls of Samaria and scattered the remnants of
Israel through the highlands of Western Asia. Where did they drift to,
these ten despairing tribes? Possibly we may find something to remind
us of them also in the northern Afghan hills.
It was probably about the same era that some pre-Hellenic race, led
(so it is written) by the mythical hero Dionysos, trod the weary route
from the Euxine to the Caspian, and from the southern shores of the
Caspian to the borderland of modern Indian frontier, where their
descendants welcomed Alexander on his arrival as men of his own faith
and kin, and were recognised as such by the great conqueror. Now all
this points to an acquaintance with the geographical links between
East and West which appears nowhere in any written record. Nowhere can
we find any clear statement of the actual routes by which these
pilgrims were supposed to have made their long and toilsome journeys.
Just the bare facts are recorded, and we are left to guess the means
by which they were accomplished. But it is clear that the old-world
overland connection between India and the Black Sea is a very old
connection indeed, and further, it is clear that what the Greeks may
not have known the Persians certainly did know. When Herodotus first
set solidly to work on a geographical treatise which was to embrace
the existing knowledge of the whole world, he undoubtedly derived a
great deal of that knowledge from official Persian sources; and it may
be added that the early Persian department for geographical
intelligence has been proved by this last century's scientific
investigations to have collected information of which the accuracy is
certainly astonishing. It is only quite recently, during the process
of surveys carried on by the Government of India through the highlands
and coast regions of Baluchistan and Eastern Persia, that anything
like a modern gazetteer of the tribes occupying those districts has
been rendered possible. Twenty-five years ago our military information
concerning ethnographic distributions in districts lying immediately
beyond the north-western frontier was no better than that which is
contained in the lists of the Persian satrapies, given to the world by
Herodotus nearly 500 years before the Christian era. Twenty-five years
ago we did not know of the existence of some of the tribes and peoples
mentioned by him, and we were unable to identify others. Now, however,
we are at last aware that through twenty-four centuries most of them
have clung to their old habitat in a part of the Eastern world where
material wealth and climatic attractions have never been sufficient to
lead to annihilation by conquest. Oppressed and harried by successive
Persian dynasties, overrun by the floatsam and jetsam of hosts of
migratory Asiatic peoples from the North, those tribes have mostly
survived to bear a much more valuable testimony to the knowledge of
the East entertained by the West in the days of Herodotus than any
which can be gathered from written documents.
The Milesian colonies founded on the southern and western shores of
the Euxine in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., whilst retaining
their trade connection with the parent city of Miletus (where sprang
that carpet-making industry for which this corner of Asia has been
famous ever since), found no open road to the further eastern trade
through the mountain regions that lie south of the Black Sea. Half a
century after Herodotus we find Xenophon struggling in almost helpless
entanglement amongst these wild mountains comparatively close to the
Greek colonies; and it was there that he encountered the fiercest
opposition from the native tribes-people that he met with during his
famous retreat from Persia. It is always so. Our most active opponents
on the Indian frontier are the mountaineers of the immediate
borderland--the people who _know_ us best, and therefore fear us most.
It was chiefly through Miletus and the Cilician gates that Greek
trade with Persia and Babylon was maintained. There were no Greek
colonies on the rugged eastern coasts of the Black Sea--sufficient
indication that no open trade route existed direct to the Caspian by
any line analogous to that of the modern railway that connects Batum
with Baku. On the north of the Euxine, however, there were great and
flourishing colonies (of which Olbia at the mouth of the Borysthenes,
or Dnieper, was the most famous) which undoubtedly traded with the
Skythic peoples north and west of the Caspian. From these sources came
the legends of Hyperboreans and Griffins and other similar tales, all
flavoured with the glamour of northern mystery, but none of them
pointing to an eastern origin. Recent investigations into the
ethnography of certain tribes in Afghanistan, however, seem to prove
conclusively that even if there was no recognised trade between Greece
and India before Miletus was destroyed by Darius Hystaspes, and Greek
settlers were transported by the Persian conqueror to the borders of
the modern Badakshan, yet there must have been Greek pioneers in
colonial enterprise who had made their way to the Far East and stayed
there. For instance, we have that strange record of settlements under
Dionysos amongst the spurs and foothills of the Hindu Kush, which were
clearly of Greek origin, although Arrian in his history of Alexander's
progress through Asia is unable to explain the meaning of them.
There is more to be said about these settlements later. The first
actual record of settlement of Greeks in Baktria is that of Herodotus,
to which we have referred as being affected by Darius Hystaspes in the
sixth century before Christ, and the descendants of these settlers are
undoubtedly the people referred to by Arrian as "Kyreneans", who could
be no other than the Greek captives from the Lybian Barke. Their
existence two centuries later than Herodotus is attested by Arrian,
and they were apparently in possession of the Kaoshan pass over the
Hindu Kush at the time of Alexander's expedition. Another body of
Greeks is recorded by Arrian to have been settled in the Baktrian
country by Xerxes after his flight from Greece. These were the
Brankhidai of Milesia, whose posterity are said to have been
exterminated by Alexander in punishment for the crimes of their
grandfather Didymus. The name Barang, or Farang, is frequently
repeated in the mountain districts of Northern Afghanistan and
Badakshan, and careful inquiry would no doubt reveal the fact that
surviving Greek affinities are still far more widely spread through
that part of Asia than is generally known. All these settlements were
antecedent to Alexander, but beyond these recorded instances of Greek
occupation there can be little doubt that (as pointed out by Bellew in
his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ and supported by later observations)
the Greek element had been diffused through the wide extent of the
Persian sovereignty for centuries before the birth of Alexander the
Great. It is probable that each of the four great divisions of the
ancient Greeks had contributed for a thousand years before to the
establishment of colonies in Asia Minor, and from these colonies bands
of emigrants had penetrated to the far east of the Persian dominions,
either as free men or captives. Amongst the clans and tribal sections
of Afghans and Pathans are to be found to this day names that are
clearly indicative of this pre-historic Greek connection.
Persia at her greatest maintained a considerable overland trade with
India, and Indian tribute formed a large part of her revenues. All
Afghanistan was Persian; all Baluchistan, and the Indian frontier to
the Indus. The underlying Persian element is strong in all these
regions still, the dominant language of the country, the speech of the
people, whether Baluch or Pathan, is of Persian stock, whilst the
polite tongue of Court officials, if not the Persian of Tehran or
Shiraz, is at least an imitation of it. It is hardly strange that the
Greek language should have absolutely disappeared. We have the
statement of Seneca (referred to by Bellew in his _Inquiry_) that the
Greek language was spoken in the Indus valley as late as the middle of
the first century after Christ; "if indeed it did not continue to be
the colloquial in some parts of the valley to a considerably later
period." As this is nearly two centuries after the overthrow of Greek
dominion in Afghanistan, it at least indicates that the Greek
settlements established four centuries earlier must have continued to
exist, and to be reinforced by Greek women (for children speak their
mother's tongue) to a comparatively late period; and that the triumph
of the Jat over the Greek did not by any means efface the influence of
the Greek in India for centuries after it occurred. It is probable
that when the importation of Greek women (who were often employed in
the households of Indian chiefs and nobles at a time when Greek ladies
married Indian Princes) ceased, then the Greek language ceased to
exist also. The retinue and followers of Alexander's expedition took
the women of the country to wife, and it is not, as is so often
supposed, to the results of that expedition so much as to the long
existence of Greek colonies and settlements that we must attribute the
undoubted influence of Greek art on the early art of India.
Thus we have a wide field before us for inquiry into the early history
of ethnographical movement in Asia, as it affected the relation
between Europe and Afghanistan. Afghanistan (which is a modern
political development) has ever held the landward gates of India. We
cannot understand India without a study of that wide hinterland
(Afghan, Persian, and Baluch) through which the great restless human
tide has ever been on the move: now a weeping nation of captives led
by tear-sodden routes to a land of exile; now a band of merchants
reaching forward to the land of golden promise; or perchance an army
of pilgrims marching with their feet treading deep into narrow
footways to the shrines of forgotten saints; or perchance an armed
host seeking an uncertain fate; a ceaseless, waveless tide, as
persistent, as enterprising, and infinitely more complicated in its
developments than the process of modern emigration, albeit modern
emigration may spread more widely.
Living as we do in fixed habitations and hedged in not merely by
narrow seas but by the conventionalities of civilized existence, we
fail to realize the conditions of nomadic life which were so familiar
to our Asiatic ancestors. Something of its nature may be gathered
to-day from the Kalmuk and Kirghiz nomads of Central Asia. A day's
march is not a day's march to them--it is a day's normal occupation.
The yearly shift in search of fresh pasture is not a flitting on a
holiday tour; it is as much a part of the year's life as the change of
raiment between summer to winter. Everything moves; the home is not
left behind; every man, woman, and child of the family has a
recognised share in the general shift. Perhaps that of the Kirghiz man
is the easiest. He smokes a lazy pipe in the bright sunshine and
watches his boys strip off the felt covering of his wicker-built
"kibitka," whilst his wife with floating bands of her white headdress
fluttering in the breeze, and her quilted coat turned up to give more
freedom to her booted legs, gets together the household traps in
compact bundles for the great hairy camel to carry. Her efforts are
not inartistic; long experience has taught her exactly where every
household god can be stowed to the best advantage. Meanwhile the
happy, good-looking Kirghiz girls are racing over the grass country
after sheep, and ere long the little party is making its slow but sure
way over the breezy steppes to the passes of the blue mountains, which
look down from afar on to the warmer plains. And who has the best of
it? The free-roving, untrammelled child of the plain, quite godless,
and taking no thought for the morrow, or the carefully cultured and
tight-fitted product of civilization to whom the motor and the railway
represent the only thinkable method of progression? That, however, is
not the point. What we wish to emphasize is the apparent inability on
the part of many writers on the subject of ancient history and
geography to realize the essential difference between then and now as
regards human migratory movement.
There is often an apparent misconception that there is more movement
in these days of railways and steamers and motors than existed ten
centuries before Christ. The difference lies not in the comparative
amount of movement but in the method of it. In one sense only is there
more movement--there are more people to travel; but in a broader sense
there is much less movement. Whole nations are no longer shifted at
the will of the conqueror across a continent, trade seekers no longer
devote their lives to the personal conduct of caravans; armies swelled
to prodigious size by a tagrag following no longer (except in China)
move slowly over the face of the land, devouring, like a swarm of
locusts, all that comes in their way. Colonial emigration perhaps
alone works on a larger scale now than in those early times; but
taking it "bye and large," the circulation of the human race,
unrestricted by political boundaries, was certainly more constant in
the unsettled days of nomadic existence than in these later days of
overgrown cities and electric traffic. If little or nothing is
recorded of many of the most important migrations which have changed
the ethnographic conditions of Asia, whilst at the same time we have
volumes of ancient philosophy and mythology, it is because such
changes were regarded as normal, and the current of contemporary
history as an ephemeral phenomenon not worth the labour of close
inquiry or a manuscript record.
Such a gazetteer as that presented to us by Herodotus would not have
been possible had there not been free and frequent access to the
countries and the people with whom it deals. It is impossible to
conceive that so much accuracy of detail could have been acquired
without the assistance of personal inquiry on the spot. If this is so,
then the Persians at any rate knew their way well about Asia as far
east as Tibet and India, and the Greeks undoubtedly derived their
knowledge from Persia. When Alexander of Macedon first planned his
expedition to Central Asia he had probably more certain knowledge of
the way thither than Lord Napier of Magdala possessed when he set out
to find the capital of Theodore's kingdom in Abyssinia, and it is most
interesting to note the information which was possessed by the Greek
authorities a century and a half before Alexander's time.
One notable occurrence pointing to a fairly comprehensive knowledge of
geography of the Indian border by the Persians, was the voyage of the
Greek Scylax of Caryanda down the Indus, and from its mouth to the
Arabian Gulf, which was regarded by Herodotus as establishing the fact
of a continuous sea. This voyage, or mission, which was undertaken by
order of Darius who wished to know where the Indus had its outlet and
"sent some ships" on a voyage of discovery, is most instructive. It is
true that the accounts of it are most meagre, but such details as are
given establish beyond a doubt that the expedition was practical and
real. The Persian dominions then extended to the Indus, but there is
no evidence that they ever extended beyond that river into the
peninsula of India. The Indus of the Persian age was not the Indus of
to-day, and its outlet to the sea presumably did not differ materially
from that of the subsequent days of Alexander and Nearkos. Thanks to
the careful investigations of the Bombay Survey Department, and the
close attention which has been given to ancient landmarks by General
Haig during the progress of his surveys, we know pretty certainly
where the course of the Lower Indus must have been, and where both
Scylax and Nearkos emerged into the Arabian Sea. The Indus delta of
to-day covers an area of 10,000 square miles with 125 miles of
coast-line, and it presents to us a huge alluvial tract which is
everywhere furrowed by ancient river channels. Some of these are
continuous through the delta, and can be traced far above it; others
are traceable for only short distances. Without entering into details
of the rate of progression in the formation of Delta (which can be
gathered not only from the abandoned sites of towns once known as
coast ports, but from actual observation from year to year), it may be
safely assumed that the Indus of Alexander and Scylax emptied itself
into the Ran of Kach, far to the south of its present debouchment. The
volume of its waters was then augmented by at least one important
river (the Saraswati), which, flowing from the Himalayas through what
is now known as the Rajputana desert, was the source of widespread
wealth and fertility to thousands of square miles where now there is
nothing to be met with but sandy waste. As far as the Indus the
Persian Empire is known to have extended, but no farther; and it was
important to the military advisers of Darius that something should be
known of the character of this boundary river.
Wherever the ships sent by Darius may have gone it is quite clear that
they did not sail _up_ the Indus, or there would have been no
objective for an expedition which was organised to determine where the
Indus met the sea by the process of sailing down that river. Moreover,
the voyage up the Indus would have been tedious and slow, and could
only have been undertaken in the cold weather with the assistance of
native pilots acquainted with the ever-shifting bed of the river,
which, so far as its liability to change of channel is concerned, must
have been much the same in the days of Darius as it is at present. The
possibility, therefore, is that Scylax made his way to the Upper Indus
overland, for we are told that the expedition _started_ from the city
of Carpatyra in the Pactyan country. This in itself is exceedingly
instructive, indicating that the Pactyans, or Pathans, or Pukhtu
speaking peoples have occupied the districts of the Upper Indus for
four-and-twenty centuries at least; and coincident with them we learn
that the Aprytæ or Afridi shared the honour of being resident
landowners. Nor need we suppose that the beginning of this history was
the beginning of their existence. The Afridi may have rejoiced in his
native hills ten or twenty centuries before he was written about by
Herodotus. We need not stay to identify the site of Carpatyra. The
Upper Indus valley is full of ancient sites. A century and a half
later Taxilla was the recognized capital of the Upper Punjab, and
Carpatyra meanwhile may have disappeared. Anyhow we hear of Carpatyra
no more, nor has the ingenuity of modern research thrown any certain
light on its position. It is, however, probably near Attok that we
must look for it. Scylax made his way down the Indus in native craft
that from long before his day to the present have retained their
primitive form, a form which was not unlike that of the coast crawling
"ships" of Darius. He proved the existence of an open water-way from
the Upper Punjab to the Persian Gulf, and incidentally his expedition
shows us that the chief lines of communication through the width of
the Persian Empire were well known, and that the road from Susa to the
Upper Indus was open. The outlying satrapies of the Persian Empire
could never have been added one by one to that mighty power without
definite knowledge of the way to reach them. It was not merely a
spasmodic expedition, such as that of Scylax, which pointed the way to
the conquests of the Far East; it was the gathered information of
years of experience, and it was on the basis of this experience
(unwritten and unrecorded so far as we know) that Alexander founded
his plans of campaign.
The detailed list of peoples included in the satrapies of the Persian
Empire, whilst it is more ethnographical than geographical in its
character, is sufficient proof in itself of the existence of constant
movement between Persia and the borderland of Afghanistan, which
assuredly included commercial traffic. This enumeration has been
compared with a catalogue of tribal contingents which swelled the
great army of Xerxes, an independent statement, and therefore a
valuable test to the general accuracy of Herodotus; and it is still
further confirmed by the list of nations subject to the Persian king
found in the inscriptions of Darius at Behistan and Persepolis. We are
not immediately concerned with the satrapies included in Western Asia
and Egypt, but when Herodotus makes a sudden departure from his rule
of geographical sequence and introduces a satrapy on the remotest east
of the Persian Empire, we immediately recognize that he touches the
Indian frontier.
The second satrapy most probably corresponds with that part of Central
Afghanistan south of the Kabul River, which lies west of the Suliman
Hills and north of the Kwaja Amran or Khojak. Every name mentioned by
Herodotus certainly has its counterpart in one or other of the tribes
to be found there to this day, excepting the Lydoi (whose history as
Ludi is fairly well known) and the Lasonoi, who have emigrated, the
former into India and the latter to Baluchistan.
The seventh satrapy, again, comprised the Sattagydai, the Gandarioi,
the Dadikai, and the Aparytai ("joined together"), an association of
names too remarkable to be mistaken. The Sattag or Khattak, the
Gandhari, the Dadi, and the Afridi are all trans-Indus people, and
without insisting too strongly on the exact habitat of each,
originally there can be little doubt that the seventh satrapy included
a great part of the Indus valley.
The eleventh satrapy is also probably a district of the Indian
trans-frontier, although Bunbury associates the name Kaspioi with the
Caspian Sea. It is far more likely that the Kaspioi of Herodotus are
to be recognized as the people of the ancient Kaspira or Kasmira, and
the Daritæ as the Daraddesa (Dards) of the contiguous mountains. All
Kashmir, even to the borders of Tibet (whence came the story of the
gold-digging ants), was well enough known to the Persians and through
them to Herodotus.
The twelfth satrapy comprised Balkh and Badakshan--what is now known
as Afghan Turkistan. It was here that, generations before Alexander's
campaign, those Greek settlements were founded by Darius and Xerxes
which have left to this day living traces of their existence in the
places originally allotted to them. In Afghan Turkistan also was
founded the centre of Greek dominion in this part of Asia after the
conquest of Persia, and it is impossible to avoid the conviction that
there was a connection between these two events. The Greeks took the
country from the Bakhi; but there are no people of this name left in
these provinces now. They may (as Bellew suggests) be recognized
again in the Bakhtyari of Southern Persia, but it seems unlikely; and
it is far more probable that they were obliterated by Alexander as his
most active opponents after he passed Aria (Herat) and Drangia
(Seistan).
The sixteenth satrapy was north of the Oxus, and included Sogdia and
Aria (Herat). South of Aria was the fourteenth satrapy, represented by
Seistan and Western Makran, with "the islands of the sea in which the
King settles transported convicts"; and east of this again was the
seventeenth satrapy covering Southern Baluchistan and Eastern Makran.
It is only during the last twenty-five years that an accurate
geographical knowledge of these uninviting regions has been attained.
The gradual extension of the red line of the Indian border, with the
necessity for preserving peace and security, has gradually enveloped
Makran and Persian Baluchistan, the Gadrosia and Karmania of the
Greeks, and has brought to light many strange secrets which have been
dormant (for they were no secrets to the traveller of the Middle Ages)
for a few centuries prior to the arrival of the British flag in
Western India. It is an inhospitable country which is thus included.
"Mostly desert," as one ancient writer says; marvellously furrowed and
partitioned by bands of sun-scorched rocky hills, all narrow and sharp
where they follow each other in parallel waves facing the Arabian Sea,
or massed into enormous square-faced blocks of impassable mountain
barrier whenever the uniform regularity of structure is lost. And yet
it is a country full not only of interest historical and
ethnographical, such as might be expected of the environment of a
series of narrow passages leading to the western gates of India, but
of incident also. There are amongst these strange knife-backed
volcanic ridges and scarped clay hills valleys of great beauty, where
the date-palms mass their feathery heads into a forest of green, and
below them the fertile soil is moist and lush with cultured
vegetation. But we have described elsewhere this strangely mixed land,
and we have now only to deal with the aspect of it as known to the
Greeks before the days of Alexander. That knowledge was ethnographical
in its quality and exceedingly slight in quantity. Herodotus mentions
the Sagartoi, Zarangai, Thamanai, Uxoi, and Mykoi. These are Seistan
tribes. The Sagartoi were nomads of Seistan, mentioned both amongst
tribes paying tribute and those who were exempt. The Zarangai were the
inhabitants of Drangia (Seistan), where their ancient capital fills
one of the most remarkable of all historic sites. The Zarangai are
said to be recognizable in the Afghan Durani. No Afghan Durani would
admit this. He claims a very different origin (as will be explained),
and in the absence of authoritative history it is never wise to set
aside the traditions of a people about themselves, especially of a
people so advanced as the Duranis. More probable is it that the
ancient geographical appellation Zarangai covers the historic Kaiani
of Seistan supposed to be the same as the Kakaya of Sanscrit.
The Uxoi may be the modern Hots of Makran--a people who are
traditionally reckoned amongst the most ancient of the mixed
population which has drifted into the Makran ethnographic cul-de-sac,
and who were certainly there in Alexander's time. In eastern Makran,
Herodotus mentions only the Parikanoi and the Asiatic Ethiopian.
Parikan is the Persian plural form of the Sanscrit Parva-ka, which
means "mountaineer." This bears exactly the same meaning as the word
Kohistani, or Barohi, and is not a tribal appellation at all, although
the latter may possibly have developed into the Brahui, the well-known
name of a very important Dravidian people of Southern Baluchistan
(highlanders all of them) who are akin to the Dravidian races of
Southern India. The Asiatic Ethiopian presents a more difficult
problem. During the winter of 1905 careful inquiries were made in
Makran for any evidence to support the suggestion that a tribe of
Kushite origin still existed in that country. It is of interest in
connection with the question whether the earliest immigrants into
Mesopotamia (these people who, according to Accadian tradition,
brought with them from the South the science of civilization) were a
Semitic race or Kushites. It is impossible to ignore the existence of
Kushite races in the east as well as the south. We have not only the
authority of the earliest Greek writings, but Biblical records also
are in support of the fact, and modern interest only centres in the
question what has become of them. Bellew suggests that it was after
the various Kush or Kach, or Kaj tribes that certain districts in
Baluchistan are called Kach Gandava or Kach (Kaj) Makran, and that the
chief of these tribes were the Gadara, after whom the country was
called Gadrosia. This seems mere conjecture. At any rate the term
Kach, sometimes Kachchi, sometimes Katz, is invariably applied to a
flat open space, even if it is only the flat terrace above a river
intervening between the river and a hill, and is purely geographical
in its significance. But it was a matter of interest to discover
whether the Gadurs of Las Bela could be the Gadrosii, or whether they
exhibited any Ethiopian traits. The Gadurs, however, proved to be a
section of the Rajput clan of Lumris, a proud race holding themselves
aloof from other clans and never intermarrying with them. There could
be no mistake about the Rajput origin of the red-skinned Gadur. He was
a Kshatrya of the lunar race, but he might very possibly represent the
ancient Gadrosii, even though he is no descendant of Kush. The other
Rajput tribes with whom the Gadurs coalesce have apparently held their
own in Las from a period quite remote, and must have been there when
Alexander passed that way.
Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them fresh importations from
Africa, others bred in the slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as
they have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny, well-developed
race of people, and some of the best of them are to be found as
stokers in the P. & O. service; but they do not represent the Asiatic
Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could hardly compile a gazetteer for the
Greeks which should include all the ethnographical information known
to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence Department could
compile a complete gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the
maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance of the huge
Empire which overshadowed them must have created the same feeling of
anxious suspicion that the unwieldy size of Russia presents to us, and
it is not very likely that military intelligence of a really practical
nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the Persian geographers and
military leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did
not know all that existed on the far Persian frontier. There are
tribes and peoples about Southern Baluchistan who are as ancient as
Herodotus but who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling tribe in
Makran until quite recently (when they were ousted by certain Sikh or
Rajput interlopers called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country
was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi valley is one of the
loveliest in a country which is apt to enhance the loveliness of its
narrow bands of luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It is
a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea, and must always have
been an object of envy to dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller
water-supply, more widely spread, turned many a valley green which is
now deep drifted with sand. Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they
can well boast the traditional respectability of age-long ancestry.
The Boledis are said to have dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks,
who ruled Makran in the seventeenth century, when they headed what is
known as the Baluch Confederation. This may be veritable history, but
their pride of race and origin, on whatever record it is based, has
come to an end now; it has been left to the present generation to see
the last of them. A few years ago there was living but one
representative of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady named
Miriam, who was exceedingly cunning in the art of embroidery, and made
the most bewitching caps. She was, I believe, dependent on the bounty
of the Sultan of Muscat, who possesses a small tract of territory on
the Makran coast. Herodotus apparently knew nothing about the Boledis,
nor can it be doubted that the Greek knowledge of Makran was
exceedingly scanty. Thus, whilst Alexander marched to the Indian
frontier, well supplied with information as to the ways thither when
once he could make Persia his base, he was almost totally ignorant of
the one route out of India which he eventually followed, and which so
nearly enveloped his whole force in disaster.