GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH PLAIN AND
BAKTRIA
Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the first military
expedition from Europe was organized and led into the wilds of an Asia
which was probably as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand two
hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches of the Indian
frontier, where a mound here and there testifies to the former
existence of some forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the
evening sun faint indications may be traced on the level Punjab flats
of the foundation of a city long since dead, the name of the great
Macedonian is uttered with reverence and awe as might be the name of a
god who can still influence the lives of men, yet qualified by an
affix which indicates a curious survival of the mythological
conception of gods as human beings. You may wander through some of the
valleys cleft through the western frontier hills, where an
intermittent rivulet of water spreads a network of streamlets on the
boulder-covered bed of the nullah, and where the stony hills rise in
barren slopes on either side, and find, perchance half hidden by
weather-worn debris and tufts of stringy verdure, the remains of what
was once an artificial water-channel, stone built and admirably
graded, and you may ask who was responsible for this construction. Not
a man can say. There is no history, no tradition even, connected with
it. It passes their understanding. Doubtless it was the work of
"Sekunder" (Alexander)--that prehistoric, mythological,
incomprehensible, and yet beneficent being who lives in the minds of
the frontier people as the apotheosis of the Deputy Commissioner. Yet
the impression left on India by the Greeks is marvellously small. It
is chiefly to be found in the architecture and the sculpture of the
Punjab. The Greek language disappeared from the Indus valley about the
end of the tenth century A.D., and there is hardly a Greek place-name
now to be recognized anywhere on the Indus banks. But any unusual
relic of the past, the story of which has passed beyond the memory of
the present tribes-people (even though it may be obviously of mediæval
Arabic origin), is invariably attributed to Alexander. It is, however,
chiefly in the sculpture and decorations of Buddhist buildings (which
never existed in Alexander's day) that clear evidence exists of Greek
art conception. The classical features and folded raiment of the
sculptured saints and buddhas, which are found so freely in certain
parts of the Punjab, are obviously derived from original Greek ideals
which may very possibly have been transmitted through Rome.
With Alexander in India we have nothing to do in these pages. It is as
the first explorer in the regions beyond India, the Afghan and
Baluchistan hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it may
fairly be stated that no later expedition combining scientific
research with military conquest ever added more to the sum of the
world's knowledge of those regions than that led by Alexander. For
centuries after it no light arises on the geographical horizon of the
Indian border. Indeed, not until political exigencies caused by
Russia's steady advance towards India compelled a revision of
political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and India,
was any very accurate idea obtained of the geographical conditions of
Northern and Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of Southern
Persia. The mapping of these countries has been recent, and the
progress of it, as year by year the network of Indian triangulation
and topography spread westward and northward, has reopened many
sources of light which, if not altogether new, have lain hidden ever
since the Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long before the Greek
army mustered on the banks of the Hellespont we have seen that the
highways to the East were well trodden and well known. It was not
likely that Alexander's intelligence department was lacking in
information. For many centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise
of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world trade
communications and set the restless tides of human emigration into new
channels. But in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia to
interrupt the interchange of courtesies between East and West.
The great Aryan tide had already flowed from the Central Asian
highlands into India, but Jutes and Skyths had yet to make that great
drift westward which peopled half of Europe with nomadic tribes
speaking kindred tongues--a drift which never rested in its westward
advance till, as Anglians and Saxons, it had enveloped England and
faced its final destiny in an American continent. Assyria had passed
by with arts and commerce rather than with arms, and Persia had
followed in Assyrian tracks. Both had established colonies half-way to
India in the Afghan highlands, Persia with the aid of captive Greeks,
and Assyria with people taken from the Syrian land. The list of
Assyrian and Persian satrapies included all those lands which we now
call the hinterland of India, and which in Alexander's time must have
been absolutely Persianized. But beyond the historical evidence which
can be collected to prove the early, the constant, traffic which
ensued between Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor, and India, after the
consolidation of those two great empires, there is the tradition which
certain Greek writers (notably Arrian) treat rather scornfully, of the
conquest of Upper India by the mythical hero Bacchus. It is never wise
to treat any tradition scornfully, and Arrian is himself obliged to
admit the difficulty of explaining certain records connected with
Alexander's history, without assuming that the tradition was not
groundless.
Writing of the city of Nysa, Arrian says that "it was built by
Dionysos or Bacchus, when he conquered the Indians; but who this
Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the Indians
is hard to determine, whether he was that Theban who from Thebes, or
he who from Timolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous
expedition into India is very uncertain." There is a Greek epic poem
in hexameter verse, called the "Dionysiaka," or "Bassarika," which
tells of the conquest of India by Bacchus, the greatest of all his
achievements. The author is Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt, who wrote
about the beginning of the fifth century of our era. Bacchus is said
to have received a command from Zeus to turn back the Indians, who had
extended their conquests to the Mediterranean, and in the execution of
this command he marched through Syria and Assyria. In Assyria he was
entertained with magnificent hospitality. Nothing further is said of
the route he took to reach India. The first battle which took place
in India was on the banks of the Hydaspes, where the Indians were
routed. Then followed as an incident in the war the destruction of the
Indian fleet in a naval battle, which is instructive. It took the
assistance of the goddess of war, Pallas Athene, to bring the campaign
to a conclusion, which terminated with the death of the Indian leader
Deriades. Here, then, is crystallized in verse the tradition to which
Arrian refers, and remembering that we are indebted to two great epics
of India, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," for such glimmering of
the ancient history of the Aryan occupation of India as we possess, we
may very well conceive that the germs of real historical fact lie
half-concealed in this poem of Nonnus. However that may be, it is
tolerably certain that Alexander found a people in Northern India who
claimed a Greek origin when he arrived there, quite apart from the
colonists of Baktria who had been transported there by Darius
Hydaspes, and that he recognized their claim to distant relationship.
When Alexander, then, mustered his army in the sunny fields of Macedon
he was preparing for an expedition over no uncertain ways between
Greece and Baktria or Arachosia (Northern and Western Afghanistan). He
knew what lay before him if he could once break through the Persian
barrier; and the strength of that barrier he must have been well aware
lay as much in the stern fighting qualities of the mercenary Greek
legions in the pay of Persia as in the hosts of Persian and Indian
troops which the Persian monarch could array against him. We have
lists of the component forces on both sides. The Macedonian legions
were homogeneous and patriotic. The Persian army was partly European,
but chiefly Asiatic, with a mixed company of Asiatic troops such as
has probably never taken the field since. The opposing forces, indeed,
partook of the nature of the two armies which fought out the issue of
the Russo-Japanese campaign, and the result was much the same. There
was no tie of national sentiment to bind together the unwieldy cohorts
of Persia. They fought for their pay, and they fought well; but when
big battalions are divided in religious sentiment and unswayed by
patriotism, they are no match for Macedonian cohesion, Mahomedan
Jehad, or Japanese Bushido.
It is quite interesting to examine the details of Alexander's army.
The main body consisted of six brigades of 3000 men, each united to
form an irresistible phalanx. Heavily armoured, with a long shield, a
long sword, and a four-and-twenty foot spear (sarina), the infantryman
of the phalanx must have possessed a powerful physique to enable him
to carry himself and his weapons in the field. The depth of the
phalanx was sixteen ranks, and the first six ranks were so placed that
they could all bring their spears into action at once. The bulk of
the phalanx consisted of Macedonians only. The light infantry, bowmen,
and dartsmen numbered about 6000. A third corps of 6000 men more
lightly armed, but with longer swords than the phalangists (called
Hypaspists), were intermediate. The cavalry consisted of three
classes, light, heavy, and medium, 3000 Macedonian and Thessalian
horsemen, heavily armoured, forming its main strength. The light
cavalry were Thracian lancers. The Royal Horse Guard included eight
Macedonian squadrons of horsemen picked from the best families in
Greece. It is useful to note that there were mounted infantry and
artillery (_i.e._ balistai and katapeltai) with the force. More useful
still to note that none of Alexander's victories were won by the solid
strength of his phalanx; it was the sweeping and resistless force of
his cavalry charges (often led by himself) that gained them.
Perhaps the most notable feature about this Greek expedition to India
was the fact that it was the first military expedition of which there
is any record which included scientific inquiry as one of its objects.
Alexander had on his personal staff men of literary if not of
scientific acquirements, and it is to them doubtless that we owe a
comparatively clear account of the expedition, although unfortunately
their records have only been transmitted to us by later authors. If we
could but recover originals what a host of doubtful points might be
cleared up! It is true that previous to the date of Alexander one man
of genius, Xenophon, had kept a record of a magnificent military
achievement, and had proved himself to be master of literature as he
was of the science of leading; but Xenophon stands alone, and it may
be doubted whether, during the many centuries which have passed away
since the era of Greek supremacy, any practical leader of men has ever
attained such a splendid position in the ranks of writers of military
history. Alexander appears, at any rate, to have been no historian,
but his staff of cultivated literary assistants and men of letters
included many notable Greek names.
Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of the year 334 B.C.,
and first encountered the Persians near the Granikos River. The battle
was decisive although the losses on either side do not appear to have
been heavy. It was but the augury of what was to follow. The
subsequent advance of the Macedonian troops southward through the
lovely land of Iona, and the reduction of Miletus and Helikarnassos,
brought the first year's campaign to a close. The second year opened
with the conquest of Pamphyllia and Phrygia, the passage of the Tauros
ranges being made in winter. On the return of spring he recrossed the
Tauros and reduced the western hill-tribes of Kilikia. Part of his
force, meanwhile, had occupied the passes into Syria known as the
Syrian gates. Within two days march of the Syrian gates the Persian
hosts again were massed in an open plain under Darius, who had
advanced from the east, waiting to fall upon the Macedonian troops and
crush them as they debouched from the defile. Tired of waiting,
however, Darius moved forward into Kilikia by the Amanian passes to
look for Alexander, and thus it happened that when Alexander finally
emerged from the Syrian gates into the plains of Syria he found his
enemy behind him. He partially retraced his steps and regained the
pass by midnight, and there from one of the adjoining summits he
"beheld the Persian watch-fires gleaming far and wide over the plain
of Issos." The rapidity of Alexander's movements was only equalled by
the fierce energy of his onslaught when he led his cavalry against the
unwieldy formations of his Persian enemy. It was his own hand that
gained the victory both then and afterwards.
There is no more stirring story in all history than this progress of
the Macedonian force. Step by step it has been traced out from
Granikos to Issos and from Issos to Arbela; but this is not the place
to recapitulate that part of the story which applies only to Western
Asia. It is not until after the final decisive battle at Arbela, when
Darius fled in hot haste along the south-eastern road to Ecbatana, the
former capital of Media, and thence in the spring of 330 B.C.
retreated with a disorganized force and an intriguing court towards
Baktria, where he hoped to find a refuge with his kinsman Bessos the
satrap of that province, that we really touch on the subject with
which we wish to deal in this book, viz. the high-roads to Afghanistan
in those long past days. Alexander, meanwhile, had received the
submission of Babylon and restored the temple of Belus, and made
himself master of a more spacious empire than the world had yet seen.
It was then that the amazing results of his military success began to
turn his head. From this point the severe simplicity of the Macedonian
soldier is exchanged for the luxury, arrogance, and intolerance of the
despot and conqueror. As Alexander advanced in material strength so
did he slide down the easy descent of moral retrogression, and whilst
we can still admire his magnificence as a military leader we find
little else left to admire about him. From Babylon to the lovely
valley wherein lies Susa, and from Susa to Persepolis, was more or
less of a triumphal march in spite of the fierce opposition of the
satrap Artobaizanes. Of Persepolis we are taught to believe that
Alexander left nothing behind him but blackened ruins--the result of a
drunken orgy. During the winter, amidst snow and ice, he subdued the
Mardians in their mountain fastnesses (for he never left an active foe
on the flank or rear), and with the return of the sweet Persian spring
he renewed his hunt after Darius, turning his face to the north and
east.
There are two high-roads through Persia to the East--one leading to
Northern Afghanistan and the Oxus regions over Mashad, the other to
Kirman, Seistan, and Kandahar. Along both of them there now runs a
telegraph line connecting with the Russian system _via_ Mashad, and
the Indian system _via_ Kirman. They must always have been
high-roads--the great trade routes to Central Asia and India. Where
the orderly line of telegraph poles now stretches in unending
regularity to mark the dusty highway, there, through more ages than we
can count, the padded foot of the camel must have worn the road into
ridges and ruts as he plodded his weary way with loads of merchandise
and fodder. No geological evolution can have disturbed those tracks
since the Assyrian kings first drew riches from the East and started
colonies on the Baktrian highlands; they are now as they were 1000
years before Christ, and it is only natural that in the ordinary
course of the same unresting spirit of enterprise the telegraph posts
will sooner or later cast long shadows over a passing railway. The
desert regions of Persia separate these two roads: the wide flat
spaces of sand or "Kavir"; an unending procession of sand-hills on the
glittering fields of salt-bound swamp. The desert is crossable--it has
been fairly well exploited--but nothing so far has been found in it to
justify the expectation of great discoveries of dead and buried
cities, or traces of a former civilization such as once occupied the
deserts of Chinese Turkistan.
We may well believe that the central deserts of Persia were the same
in Alexander's time as they are in ours. Consequently any large
company of people would have been more or less forced into one or
other of the well-known routes which the geographical configuration of
the country presented to them. In his pursuit of Darius Alexander
followed the northern route to Baktria which strikes a little north of
east from Ecbatana (Hamadan), and in these days leads direct to Tehran
the modern capital of Persia. The tragical fate of Darius, and
Alexander's crocodile grief thereat, belongs to another story. It is
only when he touches the regions beyond Mashad that he figures as one
of the earliest explorers of Afghanistan, and certainly the earliest
of whom we have any certain record. Unfortunately these records say
very little of the nature of those cities and centres of human life
which he found on the Afghan border; nor is there any definite
allusion to be found in the writings of Alexander's historians to the
colonial occupation of Afghanistan which must have preceded the
Persian conquests. We have seen that Assyrian influence was strongly
and continuously felt in India for many centuries after the
consolidation of the Second Assyrian Empire, and the probability that
between the Tigris and the Oxus there must have been intercommunication
from the earliest days of the rise of Assyrian power.
There is one ragged and time-worn city in Afghan Turkistan which
certainly belongs to the centuries preceding the era of Alexander--it
was the capital of Baktria, the city of Bessos, and it has been a
great centre of commerce, a city of pilgrimage, Buddhist and
Mahomedan, for many a century since. This is Balkh, traditionally
known as the "Mother of cities," whose foundation is variously
ascribed to Nimrud, or to "Karomurs the Persian Romulus," Assyrian or
Persian as the fancy strikes the narrator. Of its extreme antiquity
there can be no doubt. It is certain that at a very early date it was
the rival of Ecbatana, of Nineveh, and of Babylon. Bricks with
inscriptions are said to have been found there some seventy years ago,
and similar bricks should certainly be there still. Officers of the
Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission passed through modern Balkh in 1884,
but no such bricks were found during the very cursory and entirely
superficial examination which was all that could be made of the place;
square bricks, without inscription, of the size and quality of those
which may any day be dug out of the Birs Nimrud at Babylon were
certainly found, and point to a similarity of construction in a part
of the ancient walls, which is surely not accidental. Modern Balkh
consists of about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews, and
a small bazaar set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of
debris. The walls of the city are 6½ or 7 miles in perimeter; in some
places they are supported by a rampart like the walls of Herat. These,
of course, are modern, as is the fort and citadel, or Bala Hissar,
which stands on a mound to the north-east. The green cupola of the
Masjid Sabz and the arched entrance to the ruined Madrasa testify to
modern Mahomedan occupation, as do the Top-i-Rustam and the
Takht-i-Rustam (two ancient topes) to the fervour of religious zeal
with which its Buddhist inhabitants invested it in the early centuries
of our era. Balkh awaits its Layard, and not only Balkh, for there are
mounds and ruins innumerable scattered through the breadth of the
Balkh plain.
As one approaches Balkh by the Akcha road from the west, one looks
anxiously around for some outward signs of its extreme antiquity. They
are not altogether wanting, but time and the mellowing hand of Nature
have rounded off the edges of the mounds of debris which lie scattered
over miles of the surrounding country, brushing them over with the
fresh green of vegetation, and leaving no sign by which to judge of
the age of them. It is difficult in this part of Asia to get back
farther than the age of the great destroyer Chenghiz Khan. His time
has passed by long enough to leave but little evidence that the hand
of the destroyer was his hand; but probably nothing visible on the
surface dates back further than the six centuries which have come and
gone since his Mongol hordes were set loose. Beyond these surface
ruins and below them there must be cities arranged, as it were, in
underground flats, one piled on another, strata below strata, till we
reach the debris of the pre-Semitic days of Western and Central Asia,
when the Turanian races who supplied Arcadian civilization to
Mesopotamia peopled the land. Just as we cannot tell exactly when
Babylon first became a city, so are we confounded by the age of Balkh.
Babylon belongs to the time when myths were grouped around the
adventures of a solar hero. Ultimately, however, the Ca-dimissa of the
Accad became the Bab-ili (the "gate of God") of the Semite. It was
always the "gate of God," but whether the presiding deity was always
the Accadian Merodach seems doubtful. Fourteen or fifteen centuries
before Christ there was probably a Balkh as there was a Babylon; and
from time immemorial and a date unreckoned Balkh and Babylon must have
been the two great commercial centres of Asia. What a history to dig
out when its time shall come!
As the Akcha road leads into the city it passes the outer wall, which
is about 30 feet high, by a gateway which is frankly nothing more than
a gap in the partially destroyed wall. It then skirts along, past a
ziarat gay with red flags, to a gateway in the second wall under the
citadel leading to an avenue of poplars ending with a garden. Here is
a pretentious and fairly comfortable caravanserai, facing a court
which is shaded by magnificent plane trees. At first sight Balkh
appears to consist of nothing but ruins, but ascending the mound,
which is surrounded by the dilapidated fort walls, one can see from
this vantage of about 70 feet how many new buildings are grouped round
the remnants of the old Mahomedan mosque, of which the dome and one
great gateway are all that is left.
The plain of the ancient Baktria, of which Balkh represents the
capital, lies south of the Oxus River, extending east and west for
some 200 miles parallel to the river after its debouchment from the
mountains of Badakshan. It is flat, with a scattering of prominences
and mounds at intervals denoting the site of some village or fortress
of sufficient antiquity to account for its gradual rise on the
accumulations of its own debris, probably assisted in the first
instance by some topographical feature. Looking south it appears to be
flanked by a flat blue wall of hills, presenting no opportunity for
escalade or passage through them, a blue level line of counterscarp,
which is locally known as the Elburz. This great flanking wall is in
reality very nearly what it appears to be--an unassailable rampart;
but there are narrow ways intersecting it not easily discernible, and
through these ways the rivers of the highlands make a rough passage to
the plains. Wherever they tumble through the mountain gateways and
make placid tracks in the flats below, they are utilized for
irrigation purposes, and so there exists a narrow fringe of
cultivation under the hills, which extends here and there along the
banks of the rivers out into the open Balkh plain. But these rivers
never reach the Oxus. This is not merely because the waters of them
are absorbed in irrigation, but because there is a well-ascertained
tectonic action at work which is slowly raising the level of the
plain. Thus it happens that whilst big affluents from the north bring
rushing streams of much silt-stained water to the great river, no such
affluents exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz streams are all
lost in the Oxus plain ere they reach the river. Nevertheless there
are abundant evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation
system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines of level mounds which break
the horizon of the plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they
denote the same thing. They are the containing walls of canals which
carried the Oxus waters through hundreds of square miles of flat
plain, where they never can be carried again because of the alteration
in the respective levels of plain and river. Ten centuries before
Christ, at least, were the plains of Babylon thus irrigated, and just
as the arts of Greece and India rose on the ashes of the arts of
Nineveh, so doubtless was the science of irrigation carried into the
colonial field of Baktria from Assyria, and thus was the city of
"Nimrud" surrounded with a wealth of cultivation which rendered it
famous through Asia for more centuries than we can tell. Whether or no
the science of irrigation drifted eastwards from the west it seems
more than probable that the ruined and decayed water-ways which
intersect the Balkh plain were primarily due to the introduction of
Syrian labour, and account for the presence in that historic region of
a people amongst others who claim descent from captive Israelites.
There are no practical irrigation engineers in the world (excepting
perhaps the Chinese) who can rival the Afghans in their knowledge of
how to make water flow where water never flowed before. It is of
course impossible, on such evidence as we possess as yet, to claim
more than the appearance of a probability based on such an undeniable
possibility as this.
After the death of Darius his kinsman Bessos escaped into his own
satrapy (probably to Balkh), and there assumed the upright tiara, the
emblem of Persian royalty, taking at the same time the name of
Artaxerxes.
True to his invariable principle of leaving no unbeaten enemy on the
flank of his advance, Alexander proceeded to subjugate Hyrkania, from
which country he was separated by the Elburz (Persian) mountains. He
crossed those mountains in three divisions by separate passes, and
effected his purpose with his usual thoroughness and without much
difficulty. Having crushed the Mardians he shaped a straight course
eastward to Herat on his way to Baktria, marching by the great highway
which connects Tehran with Mashad. The country around Mashad (part of
Khorasan) was a satrapy of Persia under Satibarzanes, who submitted
without apparent opposition and was confirmed in his government. The
capital of this province was Artakoana, described as a city situated
in a plain of exceptional fertility where the main roads from north to
south and from west to east crossed each other. To no place does such
a description apply so closely as Herat, and it has consequently been
assumed that Herat indicates more or less closely the site of the
ancient city Artakoana, which, indeed, is most probable. But Alexander
had not long passed that city in his march towards Baktria when the
news of the revolt of Satibarzanes reached him with the story of the
loss of the Macedonian escort which had been left with that satrap and
had been massacred to a man. He immediately turned on his tracks,
captured Artakoana, routed the satrap, and by way of leaving a
permanent monument of his victory founded a new city in the
neighbourhood which he called Alexandreia. This is probably the actual
origin of the modern Herat, and it is a tribute to the sagacity of the
Macedonian King that from that time to this it has abundantly proved
its importance as a strategical and commercial centre.
The forward march to Baktria would have taken the Greek army via
Kushk, Maruchak, and Maimana along the route which is practically the
easiest and safest for a large body of troops. It is the route
followed by the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1885. Alexander,
however, instead of resuming his march on Baktria, elected to crush
another of the Persian satraps who was concerned in the murder of
Darius and who ruled a province to the south of Herat. Crossing the
Hari Rud he therefore marched straight on Farah (Prophthasia), then
the capital of Seistan (Drangiana). Farah is considerably to the north
of any part of the Afghan province of Seistan at present, but it was
undoubtedly Alexander's objective, and the Drangiana of those times
was considerably more extensive than the Seistan of to-day--a fact
which will go some way to account for the exaggerated reports of the
ancient wealth and fertility of that province. Farah is a great
agricultural centre still, and would add enormously to the restricted
cultivable area of Seistan, even if one allows for the effects of sand
encroachment in that unpleasant region. Then occurred the plot against
Alexander's life which was detected at Prophthasia, and the consequent
torture and death of Philotas, who probably had no part in it. It is
one of the many actions of Alexander's life which reveals the ferocity
of the barbarian beneath the genius of the soldier. It was but the
barbarity of his age--a barbarity for the matter of that which lasted
in England till the time of the Georges, and which still survives in
Afghanistan. After a halt in Seistan, probably whilst waiting for
reinforcements, he struck north-eastwards again for Baktria. As it is
generally assumed that the Macedonian force now followed the Helmund
valley route to the Paropamisos, _i.e._ the Hindu Kush and its
extension westwards, it is as well to consider what sort of a country
it is that forms the basin of Helmund.
It is worth remarking in the first place that the Ariaspian
inhabitants of the Helmund valley had received from Cyrus the name of
Euergetai, or benefactors, because they had assisted him at a time
when he had been in great difficulties. This is enough to satisfy us
that the district was known and had been traversed by a military force
long before Alexander entered it, and that he was making no
venturesome advance in ignorance of what lay before him. The valley of
the Helmund (or Etymander) could not have differed greatly in its
geographical features 300 years before Christ from its present
characteristics. The Helmund of the Seistan basin then occupied a
different channel to its present outlets into the Seistan swamps. How
different it is difficult to tell, for it has frequently changed its
course within historic times, silting up its bed and striking out a
new channel for itself, splitting into a number of streams and
wandering uncontrolled in loops or curves over the face of the flat
alluvial plains to which it brought fertility and wealth. It has been
a perpetual source of political discussion as a boundary between
Afghanistan and Persia, and it has altered the face of the land so
extensively and so often that there is nothing in ancient history
referring to the vast extent of agricultural wealth and the immensity
of its population which can be proved to be impossible, although it
seems likely enough that false inferences have been drawn from the
widespread area of ruined and deserted towns and villages which are
still to be seen and may almost be counted. It is not only that the
water-supply and facilities for irrigation, by shifting their
geographical position, have carried with them the potentialities for
cultivation. Other forces of Nature which seem to be set loose on
Seistan with peculiar virulence and activity have also been at work.
The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which rage through this
part of Asia with a strength and persistence unknown in regions more
protected by topographical features, carrying with them vast volumes
of sand and surface detritus, piling up smooth slopes to the windward
side of every obstruction, smoothing off the rough angles of the gaunt
bones of departed buildings, and sometimes positively wearing them
away by the force of attrition, play an important part in the
kaleidoscopic changes of Seistan landscape. Villages that are
flourishing one year may be sand-buried the next. Channels that now
run free with crop-raising water may be choked in a month, and all
the while the great Helmund, curving northward in its course, pours
down its steady volume of silt from the highlands, carrying tons of
detritus into open plains where it is spread out, sun-baked, dried,
wind-blown, and swirled back again to the southward in everlasting
movement. Thus it is that the evidence of hundreds of square miles of
ruins is no direct evidence of an immense population at any one
period. Nor can we say of this great alluvial basin, which is by turns
a smiling oasis, a pestilential swamp, a huge spread of populous
villages, or a howling desert smitten with a wind which becomes a
curse and afflicted with many of the pests and plagues of ancient
Egypt, that at any one period of its history more than another it
deserved the appellation of the "granary of Asia." The Helmund of
Seistan, however, is quite a different Helmund from the same river
nearer its source. Its character changes from the point where it makes
its great bend northward towards its final exit into the lagoons and
swamps of the Hamún. At Chaharburjak, where the high-road to Seistan
from the south crosses the river into Afghan territory, the Helmund is
a wide rippling stream (when not in flood), distinguished, if
anything, for the clearness of its waters. From this point eastwards
it parts two deserts. To the north the great, flat, windswept
Dasht-i-Margo, about as desolate and arid a region as fancy could
depict. To the south the desert of Baluchistan, by no means so
absolutely devoid of interest, with its marshalled sand-dunes
answering to the processes of the winds, its isolated but picturesque
peaks like islands in a sand sea, a few green spots here and there
showing where water oozes out from the buried feet of the rocky hills,
decorated with bunches of flowering tamarisk and perchance a palm or
two--a modified desert, but still a desert. Between the two deserts is
the Helmund, running in a cliff-sided trough which is never more than
a mile or two wide, intensely green and bright in the grass and crop
season, with flourishing villages at reasonable intervals and a
high-road connecting them from which can be counted that strange
multitude of departed cities of the old Kaiani Kingdom, which are
marked by a ragged crop of ruins still upstanding in a weird sort of
procession. Sometimes the high-road sweeps right into the midst of a
roofless palace, through the very walls of the ancient building, and
outside may be found spaces brushed clean by the wind leaving masses
of pottery, glass, and other common debris exposed.
One constant surprise to modern explorers is the extraordinary
quantity of domestic crockery the remains of which surround old
eastern cities; and almost yet more of a surprise it is how far and
how widespread are certain easily recognized specialities, such, for
instance, as the so-called "celadon." Chips and fragments of celadon
are to be found from Babylon to Seistan, from Seistan to India, in
Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Siam. In Siam are all that remains of
what were probably the original furnaces. Every shower of rain that
falls in this extended cemetery of crumbling monuments reveals small
treasures in the way of rings, coins, seals, etc. Much of the
cultivation and of the extent of population indicated by the ruins in
this narrow valley must have existed in the times of Alexander of
Macedon and the Ariaspians, and we find no difficulty in accepting the
Helmund (or Etymander) as the line of route which he followed for a
certain distance. Indeed, there is much more than a passing
probability that he followed the line which gave him water and
supplies as far as the junction of the Argandab and Helmund, for the
problem of crossing the desert from the Helmund valley to Nushki and
the cultivated districts of Kalat is a serious one--one, indeed, which
gave the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commissioners much anxious thought. But
beyond the Argandab junction it is extremely improbable that Alexander
followed the Helmund. The Helmund and its surroundings have been
carefully surveyed from this point through the turbulent districts of
Zamindawar for 100 miles or more, and again from its source near Kabul
for some fifty miles of its downward flow. The Zamindawar section of
the river affords an open road, although the river, as we follow it
upward, gradually becomes enclosed in comparatively narrow (yet still
fertile) valleys, and rapidly assumes the character of a mountain
stream. North of Zamindawar and south of its exit from the Koh-i-Baba
mountain system to the west of Kabul, no modern explorer has ever seen
the Helmund. It there passes through the Hazara highlands, and
although we have not penetrated that rugged plateau we know very well
its character by repute, and we have seen similar country to the west
where dwell cognate tribes--the Taimani and the Firozkohi. This upland
basin of the Helmund to the west of Kabul and Ghazni, this cradle of a
hundred affluents pouring down ice-cold water to the river, is but a
huge extension southwards of the Hindu Kush, and from it emerge many
of the great rivers of Afghanistan. To the north the rivers of Balkh
and Khulm take a hurried start for the Oxus plains. Westward the Hari
Rud streams off to Herat. South-westward extends the long curving line
of the Helmund, and eastward flow the young branches of the Kabul. A
rugged mountain mass called the Koh-i-Baba, the lineal continuation of
the Hindu Kush, dominates the rolling plateau from the north and
continues westward in an almost unbroken wall to the Band-i-Baian
looking down into the narrow Hari Rud valley. It is a part of the
continental divide of Asia, high, rugged, desolate, and almost
pathless.
No matter from which side the toiler of the mountains approaches this
elevated and desolate region, whether emerging from the Herat
drainage he essays to reach Kabul, or from the small affluents of the
Helmund he strikes for the one gap which exists between the Hindu Kush
and the Koh-i-Baba which will lead him to Balkh and Afghan Turkistan,
he will have enormous difficulties to encounter. It can be done,
truly, but only with the pains and penalties of high mountaineering
attached. Taken as a whole, the highest uplands above the sources of
the minor rivers which water the bright and fertile valleys of Ghur,
Zamindawar, and Farah may be described much as one would describe
Tibet--a rolling, heaving, desolate tableland, wrinkled and
intersected by narrow mountain ranges, whose peaks run to 13,000 and
14,000 feet in altitude, enclosing between them restricted spaces of
pasture land. The Mongol population, who claim to have been introduced
as military settlers by Chenghiz Khan, live a life of hard privation.
They leave their barren wastes which the wind wipes clear of any tree
growth, for the lower valleys in the winter months, merely resorting
to them in the time of summer pasturage. The winter is long and
severe. It is not the altitude alone which is accountable for its
severity; it is the geographical position of this Central Afghan
upheaval which exposes it to the full blast of the ice-borne northern
winds which, sweeping across Turkistan with destructive energy, reduce
the atmosphere of Seistan to a sand-laden fog, and penetrate even to
the valley of the Indus where for days together they wrap the whole
landscape in a dusty haze. For many months the Hazara highlands are
buried under successive sheets of snowdrift. In summer, like the
Pamirs, they emerge from their winter's sleep and become a succession
of grass-covered downs. There are then open ways across them, and
travellers may pass by many recognizable tracks. But in winter they
are impassable to man and beast. Yet we are asked to believe that
Alexander, who had the best of guides in his pay, and who knew the
highways and byways of Asia as well, if not better, than they are
known now to any military authorities, took his army _in winter_ up
the Helmund valley till it struck its sources somewhere under the
Koh-i-Baba!
There was no madness in Alexander's methods. His withdrawal from India
through the defiles and deserts of Makran was most venturesome and
most disastrous, but he had a distinct object to gain by the attempt
to pass into Persia that way. Here there was no object. The Helmund
route does not, and did not, lead directly to his objective, Baktria,
and there was another high-road always open, which must have been as
well known then as, indeed, it is well known to-day. There can be very
little doubt that he followed the Argandab to the neighbourhood of the
modern Kandahar (in Arachosia), and from Kandahar to Kabul he took the
same historic straight high-road which was followed by a later
General (Lord Roberts) when he marched from Kabul to Kandahar. This
would give him quite difficulties enough in winter to account for
Arrian's story of cold and privations. It would lead him direct to the
plains of the Kohistan north of Kabul, where there must have ever been
the opportunity of collecting supplies for his force, and where,
separated from him by the ridges of the Hindu Kush, were planted those
Greek colonies of Darius Hystaspes whose assistance might prove
invaluable to his onward movement. It was here, at any rate, not far
from the picturesque village of Charikar, that he founded that city of
Alexandreia, the remains of which appear to have been recently
disturbed by the Amir, and to which we shall make further reference.
Military text-books still speak of the Unai, or Bamian, as a pass
which was traversed by the Greeks. It is most improbable that they
ever crossed the Hindu Kush that way, and the question obviously
arises in connection with this theory of his march--How was it
possible for Alexander to spend the rest of the winter near the
sources of the Helmund? It was not possible. His next step was to
cross the Hindu Kush. This he attempted with difficulty in the spring,
and reached a fertile country in fifteen days. He might have crossed
by the Kaoshan Pass (which local tradition assigns as the pass which
he really selected), or by the Panjshir, which is longer, but in some
respects easier. The Panjshir is the pass usually adopted for the
passage of large bodies of troops by the Afghans themselves, and there
is reported to be, in these days, a well-engineered Khafila road,
which is kept open by forced labour in snow-time, connecting Kabul
with Andarab by this route. The pass of the Panjshir is about 11,600
feet high, whereas the Kaoshan, though straighter, is 14,300.
Considering the slow rate of movement (fifteen days) it is more
probable that he took the easier route _via_ Panjshir. In either case
he would reach the beautiful and fertile valley of Andarab, and from
that base he could move freely into Baktria. The country had been
ravaged and wasted by Bessos, but that did not delay Alexander. The
chief cities of Baktria surrendered without opposition, and he pushed
forward to the Oxus in his pursuit of Bessos.
All this would be more interesting if we could trace the route more
closely which was followed to the Oxus. We know, however, that for
previous centuries Balkh had been the capital city, the great trade
emporium of all that region. There is therefore no difficulty in
accepting Balkh as the Greek Baktria. Between Balkh and the Oxus the
plains are strewn with ruins, some of them of vast extent, whilst
other evidences of former townships are to be found about Khulm and
Tashkurghan farther to the east, and on the direct route from Andarab
to the Oxus. Bessos had retreated to Sogdiana of which Marakanda was
capital, and the straight road to Marakanda (Samarkand) crosses the
Oxus at Kilif. The description of the river Oxus at that point tallies
fairly well with Arrian's account of it. It is deep and rapid, and the
hill fortress of Kilif on the right bank, and of Dev Kala and other
isolated rocky hills on the left, hedges in the river to a channel
which cannot have changed through long ages. Elsewhere the Oxus is
peculiarly liable to shift its channel, and has done so from time to
time, forming new islands, taking fresh curves, and actually changing
its destination from the Caspian to the Aral Sea; but at Kilif it must
have ever been deep and rapid, covering a breadth of about
three-quarters of a mile. Across the breadth nowadays is about as
peculiar a ferry as was ever devised. Long, shallow, flat-bottomed
boats, square as to bow and stern, are towed from side to side of the
river by swimming horses. This would not be a matter of so much
surprise if the horses employed for the purpose were powerful animals
from fourteen to fifteen hands in height, but the remarkable feature
about the Kilif stud is the diminutive and ragged crew of underfed
ponies which it produces. And yet two, or even one, of these
inefficient-looking little animals will tow across a barge of twenty
feet or so in length, crowded with weighty bales of Bokhara
merchandise, and filled as to interstices with its owners and their
servants. The ponies are attached to outriggers with a strap from a
surcingle or belly-band buckled to their backs, thus supporting their
weight in the water at the same time that it takes the haulage. With
their heads just above stream, snorting and blowing, they swim with
measured strokes and tow the boat (advancing diagonally in crab-like
fashion to meet the current) straight across the river. The inadequacy
of the means to the end is the first thing which strikes the beholder,
but he is, however, rapidly convinced of the extraordinary hauling
capacity of a swimming horse when properly trained. Alexander crossed
on rafts supported on skins stuffed with straw, and it took him five
days to cross his force in this primitive fashion.
On the right bank of the river, Bessos was given up by traitors in his
camp and was sent south to "Zariaspa" to await his doom. Zariaspa is
identified with Balkh by some authorities, but the name is probably a
variant on Adraspa which almost certainly was Andarab. Andarab was the
fertile and promising district into which Alexander descended from the
slopes of the Hindu Kush, by whichever route (Kaoshan or Panjshir) he
crossed those mountains. Directly on the route between Andarab and
Balkh is a minor province called Baglan, and a little less than
half-way (after crossing a local pass of no great significance called
Kotal Murgh) is a village or township, nowadays called Zardaspan,
which is sufficiently like Zariaspa to suggest an identity which is at
least plausible though it may be deceptive. But it is the fact that
the town of Baraki which lies farther on the same route is on the
outskirts of Baglan; and in this connection a reference to the theory
put forward by Dr. Bellew in his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_
(_Asiatic Quarterly_, October 1891) is at least interesting. He points
out that the captive Greeks who were transported in the sixth century
B.C. by Darius Hystaspes from the Lybian Barké to Baktrian territory
were still occupying a village called Barké in the time of Herodotus.
A century later again during the Macedonian campaign, Kyrenes, or
Kyreneans, existed in that region according to Arrian, and it is
difficult to account for them in that part of Asia unless they were
the descendants of those same exiles from Barké, a colony of Kyrene
whom Darius originally transported to Baktria. They were in possession
of the Kaoshan Pass too, and might have rendered very effective aid to
Alexander during his passage across the mountains. Another body of
Greek colonists are recorded to have been settled in this same part of
Baktria by Xerxes after his flight from Greece, namely, the
Brankhidai, whose original settlement appears to have been in Andarab.
As we shall see later, people from Greece or from Grecian colonies
undoubtedly drifted across Asia to Northern Afghanistan in even
earlier times than those of the Persian Empire. There can, indeed, be
very little doubt that Ariaspa, or Andarab, was an important position
for the Greeks to occupy from its strategic value as commanding the
most practicable of the Hindu Kush passes.
When Bessos, therefore, was deported across the Oxus to Zariaspa it is
probable that he was sent to Andarab; and here too Alexander returned
to winter towards the close of the year 329 B.C. after his
extraordinary success in Sogdia (Bokhara). With his trans-Oxus
campaign we have nothing to do; it is another history, and deeply
interesting as it would be to follow it in detail we must return to
Afghanistan. Nothing in all his Eastern campaign is more remarkable
than the facility with which Alexander recruited his army from Greece
during its progress. Gaps in the ranks were constantly filled up, and
the fighting strength of his force maintained at a high level. His
army was reorganized during the winter, and with the returning spring
he again started expeditions across the Oxus, in the course of which
he captured Roxana, the most beautiful woman in Asia (after the wife
of Darius) and married her. The particular fortress which held this
charming lady was perched on the top of an isolated craggy hill, and
the story of its capture is as thrilling as that of Aornos
subsequently. But, like Aornos, it is difficult to locate it. It might
have been Dev Kala, or Kilif, or any of a dozen such rock-crowned
hills which border the Oxus River. It is about this period that we
read first of his encounters with the Skythic races of Central Asia,
who gave him great trouble at the time and who subsequently subverted
the Greek power in Baktria altogether. In the spring of 327 B.C. he
moved out to invade a mountain district to the "East of Baktria"
(probably modern Badakshan), and subdued the hill-tribes under
Khorienes whom he confirmed in the government of his own country. It
was summer ere he set out finally from Baktria on his Indian
expedition. He recrossed the Paropamisos in ten days and halted at
Alexandreia near Charikar. Then commences the first recorded
expedition of the Kabul River basin.