GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES OF INDIA
South of the Khaibar route from Peshawur to Kabul and separated from
it by the remarkable straight-backed range of Sufed Koh, is an
alternative route _via_ the Kuram valley, at the head of which is the
historic Peiwar Pass. From the crest of the rigid line of the Sufed
Koh one may look down on either valley, the Kabul to the north or the
Kuram to the south; and but for the lack of any convenient lateral
communications between them, the two might be regarded as a twin
system, with Kabul as the common objective. But there is no
practicable pass across the Sufed Koh, so that no force moving along
either line could depend on direct support from the other side of the
mountains. It will be convenient here to regard the Kuram as an
alternative to the Kabul route, and to consider the two together as
forming a distinct group.
The next important link between Afghanistan and the Indian frontier
south of the Kuram, is the open ramp of the Tochi valley. The Tochi
does not figure largely in history, but it has been utilized in the
past for sudden raids from Ghazni in spite of the difficulties which
Nature has strewn about its head. The Tochi, and the Gomul River south
of it, must be regarded as highways to Ghazni, but there is no
comparison between the two as regards their facilities or the amount
of traffic which they carry. All the carrying trade of the Ghazni
province is condensed into the narrow ways of the Gomul. Trade in the
Tochi hardly extends farther than the villages at its head. About the
Gomul there hangs many a tale of adventure, albeit adventure of rather
ancient date, for it is exceedingly doubtful if any living European
has ever trod more than the lower steps of that ancient staircase.
Then, south of the Gomul, there follows a whole series of minor passes
and byways wriggling through the clefts of the mountains, scrambling
occasionally over the sharp ridges, but generally adhering closely to
the line of some fierce little stream, which has either split its way
through the successive walls of rock offered by the parallel uptilted
ridges, or else was there, flowing gently down from the highlands,
before these ridges were tilted into their present position. There are
many such streams, and the history of their exploration is to be found
in the modern Archives of the Survey of India. They may have been used
for centuries by roving bands of frontier raiders, but they have no
history to speak of. South of the Gomul, they all connect Baluchistan
with India, for Baluchistan begins, politically, from the Gomul; and
they are of minor importance because, by grace of the determined
policy of the great maker of the Baluch frontier, Sir Robert Sandeman,
their back doors and small beginnings in the Baluch highlands are all
linked up by a line of posts which runs from Quetta to the Gomul _via_
the Zhob valley. Whoever holds the two ends of the Zhob holds the key
of all these back doors. There is not much to be said about them. No
great halo of historical romance hangs around them; and yet the stern
grandeur of some of these waterways of the frontier hills is well
worth a better descriptive pen than mine. I know of one, in the depths
of a fathomless abyss, whose waters rage in wild fury over fantastic
piles of boulders, tossing up feathers of white spray to make glints
of light on the smooth apron of the limestone walls which enclose and
overshadow it, which is matchless in its weird beauty. From rounded
sun-kissed uplands, where olive groves shelve down long spurs, the
waters come, and with a gradually deepening and strengthening rush
they swirl into the embrace of the echoing hills, passing with swift
transition from a sunny stream to a boiling fury of turgid water under
the rugged cliffs of the pine-clad Takht-i-Suliman. Then the stream
sets out again, babbling sweetly as it goes, into the open, just a
dimpled stream, leaving lonely pools in silent places on its way, and
breaking up into a hundred streamlets to gladden the mountain people
with the gift of irrigation.
It is impossible to describe these frontier waterways. There is
nothing like them to be found amidst scenes less wild and less
fantastic than their frontier cradles. But full of local light and
colour (and local tragedy too) as they surely are, they are
unimportant in the military economy of the frontier, and their very
wildness and impassability have saved them from the steps of the great
horde of Indian immigrants. When, however, we reach still farther
southward to the straight passes leading to Quetta, we are once again
in a land of history. It is there we find by far the most open gates
and those most difficult to shut, although the value of them as
military approaches is very largely discounted by the geographical
conditions of Western India at the point where they open on to the
Indus frontier.
Quetta, Kalat, and Las Bela, standing nearly in line from north to
south, are the watch-towers of the western marches. Quetta and Kalat
stand high, surrounded by wild hill country. Magnificent cliff-crowned
mountains overlooking a wilderness of stone-strewed spurs embrace the
little flat plain on which Quetta lies crumpled. Here and there on the
plain an isolated smooth excrescence denotes an extinct volcano. Such
is the Miri, now converted into the protecting fort of Quetta. The
road from Quetta to the north-west, _i.e._ to Kandahar and Herat, has
to pass through a narrow hill-enclosed space some eight miles from
Quetta; and this physical gateway is strengthened and protected by all
the devices of which military engineering skill is capable, whilst
midway between Quetta and Kandahar is the formidable Khojak range
which must always have been a trouble to buccaneers from the
north-west. From Quetta to the south-east extends that road and that
railway which, intersecting the complicated rampart of frontier hills,
finally debouches into the desert plains round Jacobabad in Sind.
Kalat is somewhat similarly situated. High amongst the mountains,
Kalat also commands the approaches to an important pass to the plains,
_i.e._ the Mula, a pass which in times gone by was a commercial
high-road, but which has long been superseded by the Quetta passes of
Harnai and Bolan (or Mashkaf). Las Bela is an insignificant Baluch
town in the valley of the Purali, and at present commands nothing of
value. But it was not always insignificant, as we shall see, and if
its military value is not great at present, Las Bela must have stood
full in the tide of human immigration to India for centuries in the
past. It is a true gateway, and the story of it belongs to a period
more ancient than any.
Owing to the peculiar geographical conformation of the country, Quetta
holds in her keeping all the approaches from the west, thus
safeguarding Kalat. The Kalat fortress is only of minor importance as
the guardian of the Mula stairway to the plains of India. It is the
extraordinary conformation of ridge and valley which forms the great
defensive wall of the southern frontier. Only where this wall is
traversed by streams which break through the successive ridges
gathering countless affluents from left and right in their
course--affluents which are often as straight and rectangular to the
main stream as the branches of a pear-tree trained on a wall are to
the parent stem--is it possible to find an open road from the plains
to the plateau.
For very many miles north of Karachi the plains of Sind are faced by a
solid wall of rock, so rigid, so straight and unscalable (this is the
Kirthar range) as to form a veritably impracticable barrier. There is
but one crack in it. For a short space at its southern end, however,
it subsides into a series of minor ridges, and it is here that the
connection between Karachi and Las Bela is to be found. These southern
Las Bela approaches (about which there is more to be said) are not
only the oldest, but they have been the most persistently trodden of
any in the frontier, and they would be just as important in future as
they have been in the past but for their geographical position. They
are commanded from the sea. No one making for the Indus plains can
again utilize these approaches who does not hold command of the
Arabian Sea. In this way, and to this extent, the command of the
Arabian Sea and of the Persian Gulf beyond it becomes vitally
important to the security of India. Omitting for the present the Gomul
gateway (the story of the exploration of which belongs to a later
chapter), and in order to preserve something of chronological sequence
in this book, it is these most southern of the Baluchistan passes
which now claim our attention.
Until quite lately these seaboard approaches to India have been almost
ignored by historians and military strategists (doubtless because so
little was known about them), and the pages of recent text-books are
silent concerning them. They lead outwards from the lower Indus
valleys through Makran, either into Persia or to the coast ports of
the Arabian Sea. From extreme Western Persia to the frontiers of India
at Quetta, or indeed to the Indus delta, it is possible for a laden
camel to take its way with care and comfort, never meeting a
formidable pass, never dragging its weary limbs up any too steep
incline, with regular stages and more or less good pasturage through
all the 1400 or 1500 miles which intervene between Western Persia and
Las Bela. From the pleasant palm groves of Panjgur in Makran to India,
it might indeed be well to have an efficient local guide, and indeed
from Las Bela to Karachi the road is not to be taken quite haphazard;
nevertheless, if the camel-driver knew his way, he could not only
lead his charge comfortably along a well-trodden route, but he might
turn chauffeur at the end of his long march and drive an exploring
party back in a motor.
In the illimitable past it was this way that Dravidian peoples flocked
down from Asiatic highlands to the borderland of India. Some of them
remained for centuries either on the coast-line, where they built
strange dwellings and buried each other in earthen pots, or they were
entangled in the mass of frontier hills which back the solid Kirthar
ridge, and stayed there till a Turco-Mongol race, the Brahuis (or
Barohis, _i.e._ "men of the hills"), overlaid them, and intermixing
with them preserved the Dravidian language, but lost the Dravidian
characteristics. According to their own traditions a large number of
these Brahuis were implanted in their wild and almost inaccessible
hills by the conqueror Chenghiz Khan, and some of them call themselves
Mingals, or Mongols, to this day. This seems likely to be true. It is
always best to assume in the first instance that a local tradition
firmly held and strongly asserted has a basis of fact to support it.
Here are a people who have been an ethnological puzzle for many years,
talking the language of Southern Indian tribes, but protesting that
they are Mongols. Like the degenerate descendants of the Greeks in the
extreme north-west, or like the mixed Arab peoples of the Makran coast
and Baluchistan, these half-bred Mongols have preserved the
traditions of their fathers and adopted the tongue of their mothers.
It is strange how soon a language may be lost that is not preserved by
the women! What we learn from the Brahuis is that a Dravidian race
must once have been where they are now, and this supports the theory
now generally admitted, that the Dravidian peoples of India entered
India by these western gateways.
No more interesting ethnographical inquiry could be found in relation
to the people of India than how these races, having got thus far on
their way, ever succeeded in getting to the south of the peninsula. It
could only have been the earliest arrivals on the frontier who passed
on. Later arrivals from Western Persia (amongst whom we may reckon the
Medes or Meds) remained in the Indus valley. The bar to frontier
progress lies in the desert which stretches east of the Indus from the
coast to the land of the five rivers. This is indeed India's second
line of defence, and it covers a large extent of her frontier.
Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been obliged to follow up
the Indus to the Punjab before striking eastwards for the great cities
of the plains. Thus it is not only the Indus, but the desert behind
it, which has barred the progress of immigration and conquest from
time immemorial, and it is this, combined with the command given by
the sea, which differentiates these southern gates of India from the
northern, which lead on by open roads to Lahore, Delhi, and the heart
of India.
The answer to the problem of immigration is probably simple. There was
a time when the great rivers of India did not follow their courses as
they do now. This was most recently the case as regards the Indus and
the rivers of Central India. In the days when there was no Indus delta
and the Indus emptied itself into the great sandy depression of the
Rann of Katch, another great lost river from the north-east, the
Saraswati, fed the Indus, and between them the desert area was
immensely reduced if it did not altogether disappear. Then, possibly,
could the cairn-erecting stone-monument building Dravidian sneak his
way along the west coast within sight of the sea, and there indeed has
he left his monuments behind him. Otherwise the Dravidian element of
Central Southern India could only have been gathered from beyond the
seas; a proposition which it is difficult to believe. However, never
since that desert strip was formed which now flanks the Indus to the
east can there have been a right-of-way to the heart of India by the
gateways of the west. The earliest exploration of these western roads,
of which we can trace any distinct record, was once again due to the
enterprise of the Greeks. We need not follow Alexander's victorious
footsteps through India, nor concern ourselves with the voyage of his
fleet down the Indus, and from the mouth of the Indus to Karachi.
General Haig, in his pamphlet on the Indus delta, has traced out his
route[3] with patient care, demonstrating from observations taken
during the course of his surveys the probable position of the
coast-line in those early days.
From Karachi to the Persian Gulf, a voyage undertaken 300 years B.C.,
of which a log has been kept from day to day, is necessarily of
exceeding interest, if only as an indication of a few of the changes
which have altered the form of that coast-line in the course of
twenty-two centuries. This old route from Arabia to the west coast of
India can hardly be left unnoticed, for it illustrates the earliest
beginning of those sea ways to India which were destined finally to
supplant the land ways altogether. I have already pointed out that,
judged by the standard of geographical aptitude only, there is no
great difficulty in reaching Persia from Karachi. But geographical
distribution of mountain, river, and plain is not all that is
necessary to take into account in planning an expedition into new
territory. There is also the question of supplies. This was the rock
on which Alexander's enterprise split. In moving out of India towards
Persia he adopted the same principle which had stood him in good stead
on the Indus, viz. the maintenance of communication between army and
fleet. Naturally he elected to retire from India by a route which as
far as possible touched the sea. This was his fatal mistake, and it
cost him half his force.
We need not trouble ourselves further with the ethnographical
conditions of that extraordinary country, Makran, in Alexander's time;
nor need we follow in detail the changes which have taken place in the
general configuration of the coast-line between India and the Persian
Gulf during the last 2000 years, references to which will be found in
the _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_ for April 1901. Apart from
the enormous extension of the Indus delta, and in spite of the
disappearance of many small islands off the coast, the general result
has been a material gain by the land on the sea in all this part of
the Asiatic coast-line.
Alexander left Patala about the beginning of September 326 B.C. to
push his way through the country of the Arabii and Oritæ to Gadrosia
(or Makran) and Persia. The Arabii occupied the country between
Karachi and the Purali (or river of Las Bela), and the Oritæ and
Gadrosii apparently combined with other tribes to hold the country
that lay beyond the Purali (or Arabius). He had previously done all
that a good general can do to ensure the success of his movements by
personally reconnoitring all the approaches to the sea by the various
branches of the Indus; by pacifying the people and consolidating his
sovereignty at Patala so as to leave a strong position behind him
entirely subject to Greek authority; and by dividing his force so as
to utilize the various arms with the best possible effect. This force
was comprised in three divisions; one under Krateros included the
heavy transport and invalids, and this was despatched to Persia by a
route which was evidently as well known in that day as it is at
present. It is never contended by any historian that Alexander did not
know his way out of India. On the contrary, Arrian distinctly
insinuates that it was the perversity of pride, the "ambition to be
doing something new and astonishing" which "prevailed over all his
scruples" and decided him to send his crank Indus-built galleys to the
Euphrates by sea, and himself to prove that such an army led by "such
a general" could force a passage through the Makran wilderness where
the only previous records were those of disaster. He had heard that
Cyrus and Semiramis had failed, and that decided him to make the
attempt.
We can follow Krateros no farther than to point out that his route was
by the Mulla (and not the Bolan) Pass to Kalat and Quetta. Thence he
must have taken the Kandahar route to the Helmund, and following that
river down to the fertile and well-populated plains of lower Seistan
(or Drangia) he crossed the Kirman desert by a well-known modern
caravan route, and joined Alexander at or near Kirman; for Alexander
was "on his way to Karmania" at the time that Krateros joined him, and
not at Pura (the capital of the Gadrosii) as suggested by St. John.
One interesting little relic of this march was dug up by Captain
Mackenzie, R.E., during the construction of the fort on the Miri at
Quetta. A small bronze figure of Hercules was brought to light, and it
now rests in the Asiatic Society's Museum at Calcutta.
Alexander, as we have said, left Patala about the beginning of
September. But where was Patala? Probably it was neither Hyderabad (as
suggested by General Cunningham) nor Tatta (as upheld by other
authorities), but about 30 miles S.E. of the former and 60 miles
E.N.E. of the latter, in which locality, indeed, there are ruins
enough to satisfy any theory. From Patala we are told by Arrian that
he marched with a sufficient force to the Arabius; and that is all.
But from Quintus Curtius we learn that it was nine marches to Krokala
(a point easier of identification than most, from the preservation of
the name which survived through mediæval ages in the Karak--the
much-dreaded pirate of the coast--and can now be recognized in
Karachi) and five marches thence to the Arabius. He started in cool
monsoon weather. His route, after leaving Krokala, is determined by
the natural features of the country as then existing. There was no
shore route in these days. Alexander followed the subsequent mediæval
route which connected Makran with Sind in the days of Arab ascendancy,
a route that has been used as a highway into India for nearly eight
centuries. It is not the route which now connects Karachi and Las
Bela, but belongs to the later mediæval phase of history. As the sea
then extended at least to Liari, in the basin of the Purali or
Arabius, we are obliged to locate the position of his crossing that
river as being not far south of Las Bela; where in Alexander's time it
was "neither wide nor deep," and in these days is almost entirely
absorbed in irrigation. This does not, I admit, altogether tally with
the five marches of Quintus Curtius. It would amount to over a hundred
miles of marching, some of which would be heavy, though not very much
of it; but the discrepancy is not a serious one. The Arabius may have
been far to the east of its present channel--indeed, there are old
channels which indicate that it was so, and it does not follow that
the river was crossed at the point at which it was struck. The reason
for placing this crossing so far north is that room is required for
subsequent operations. After crossing, we are told that Alexander
"turned to his left towards the sea" (from which he was evidently
distant some space), and with a picked force he made a sudden descent
on the Oritæ. He marched one night only through desert country and in
the morning came to a well-inhabited district. Pushing on with cavalry
only, he defeated the Oritæ, and then later joining hands with the
rest of his forces, he penetrated to their capital city. For these
operations he must necessarily have been hedged in between the Purali
and Hala range, which he clearly had not crossed as yet. Now we are
expressly told by Arrian that the capital city of the Oritæ was but a
village that did duty for the capital, and that the name of it was
Rambakia. The care of it was committed to Hephæstion that he might
colonize it after the fashion of the Greeks. But we find that
Hephæstion certainly did not stay long there, and could only have left
the native village as he found it, with no very extensive
improvements.
It would be most interesting to decide the position of Rambakia. What
we want to find is an ancient site, somewhere approaching the
sea-coast, say 30 or 40 miles from the crossing of the Purali, in a
district that might once have been cultivated and populous. We have
found two such sites--one now called Khair Kot, to the north-west of
Liari, commanding the Hala Pass; and another called Kotawari,
south-west of Liari, and very near the sea. The latter has but
recently been uncovered from the sand, but an existing mud wall and
its position on the coast indicate that it is not old enough for our
purpose. The other, Khair Kot, is an undoubted relic of mediæval Arab
supremacy. It is the Kambali of Idrisi on the high-road from Armail
(now Bela) to the great Sind port of Debal, and the record of it
belongs to another history. Nevertheless, Khair Kot is exactly where
we should expect Rambakia to be, and quite possibly where Rambakia
was. Amongst the coins and relics collected there, there is, however,
no trace of Greek inscription; but that this corner of the Bela
district was once flourishing and populous there is ample evidence.
From Rambakia Alexander proceeded with half his targeteers and part of
his cavalry to force the pass which the Gadrosii and Oritæ had
conjointly seized "with the design of stopping his progress." This
pass might either have been the turning pass at the northern end of
the Hala, or it might have been on the water-parting from which the
Phur River springs farther on. I should think it was probably the
former, where there is better room for cavalry to act.
Immediately after defeating the Oritæ (who apparently made little
resistance) Alexander appointed Leonatus, with a picked force, to
support the new Governor of Rambakia (Hephæstion having rejoined the
army), and left him to make arrangements for victualling the fleet
when it arrived, whilst he pushed on through desert country into the
territory of the Gadrosii by "a road very dangerous," and drawing down
towards the coast. He must then have followed the valley of the Phur
to the coast, and pushed on along the track of the modern telegraph
line till he reached the neighbourhood of the Hingol River. We are
indebted to Aristobulus for an account of this track in Alexander's
time. It was here that the Ph[oe]nician followers of the army
gathered their myrrh from the tamarisk trees; here were the mangrove
swamps, and the euphorbias, which still dot the plains with their
impenetrable clumps of prickly "shoots or stems, so thick set that if
a horseman should happen to be entangled therewith he would sooner be
pulled off his horse than freed from the stem," as Aristobulus tells
us. Here, too, were found the roots of spikenard, so precious to the
greedy Ph[oe]nician followers. These same products formed part of the
coast trade in the days when the Periplus was written, 400 years
later, though there is little demand for them now.
It was somewhere near the Hingol River that Alexander made a
considerable halt to collect food and supplies for his fleet. His
exertions and his want of success are all fully described by Arrian,
as well as the rude class of fishing villages inhabited by
Ichthyophagi, all the latter of which might well be cut out of the
pages of Greek history and entered in a survey report as modern
narrative. After this we have but slight indications in Arrian's
history of Alexander's route to Pura, the capital of Gadrosia. Three
chapters are full of most graphic and lively descriptions of the
difficulties and horrors of that march. We only hear that he reached
Pura sixty days after leaving the country of the Oritæ, and there is
no record of the number of troops that survived. Luckily, however, the
log kept by the admiral of the fleet, Nearkhos, comes into our
assistance here, and though it is still Arrian's history, it is
Nearkhos who speaks.
We must now turn back to follow the ships. I cannot enter in detail
into the reasons given by General Haig, in his interesting pamphlet on
the Indus Delta Country, for selecting the Gharo creek as the
particular arm of the Indus which was finally selected for the passage
of the fleet seaward. I can only remark that whilst the nature of the
half-formed delta of that period is still open to conjecture, so that
I see no reason why the island of Krokala, for instance, should not
have been represented by a district which bears a very similar name
nowadays, I fully agree that the description of the coast as given by
Nearkhos can only possibly apply to that section of it which is
embraced between the Gharo creek and Karachi.
It is only within very recent times that the Gharo has ceased to be an
arm of the Indus. For the present, at any rate, we cannot do better
than follow so careful an observer as General Haig in his conclusions.
There can be little doubt that Alexander's haven, into which the fleet
put till the monsoon should moderate, and where it was detained for
twenty days, was _somewhere near_ Karachi. That it was the modern
Karachi harbour seems improbable. Of all parts of the western coast of
India, that about Karachi has probably changed its configuration most
rapidly, and there is ample room for conjecture as to where that haven
of refuge of 2000 years ago might actually have been. Let us accept
the fleet of river-built galleys, manned with oars, and open to every
phase of wind and weather, as having emerged from it about the
beginning of October, and as having reached the island of Domai, which
I am inclined to identify with Manora.
Much difficulty has been found in making the estimate of each day's
run, as given in stadia, tally with the actual length of coast. I
think the difficulty disappears a good deal if we consider what means
there were of making such estimates. Short runs in the river between
known landmarks are very fairly consistent in the Greek accounts. On
the basis of such short runs, and with a very vague idea of the effect
of wind and tide, the length of each day's run at sea was probably
reckoned at so much per hour. There could hardly have been any other
way of reckoning open to the Greeks. They recognized no landmarks
after leaving Karachi. Even had they been able to use a log-line it
would have told them but little. Wind and current (for the currents on
this part of the sea mostly follow the monsoon wind) were either
against them or on their beam all the way to the Hingol, and they
encountered more than one severe storm which must have broken on them
with the full force of a monsoon head wind. From the point where the
fleet rounded Cape Monze and followed the windings of the coast to the
harbour of Morontobara the estimates, though excessive, are fairly
consistent; but from this point westward, when the full force of
monsoon wind and current set against them, the estimates of distance
are very largely in excess of the truth, and continue so till the
pilot was shipped at Mosarna who guided them up the coast of Persia.
Thenceforward there is much more consistency in their log. It must not
be supposed that Nearkhos was making a voyage of discovery. He was
following a track that had often been followed before. It was clear
that Alexander knew the way by sea to the coasts of Persia before he
started his fleet, and it is a matter of surprise rather than
otherwise that he did not find a pilot amongst the Malli, who, if they
are to be identified with the Meds, were one of the foremost sea-going
peoples of Asia. His Ph[oe]nician and Greek sailors evidently were
strangers to the coast, and some of his mixed crew of soldiers and
sailors had subsequently to be changed for drafts from the land
forces.
We cannot now follow the voyage in detail, nor could we, even if we
would, indicate the precise position of those islands of which Arrian
writes between Cape Monze and Sonmiani; some of them may now be
represented by shoals known to the coasting vessels, whilst others may
be connected with the mainland. I have no doubt myself that
Morontobara (the "woman's haven") is represented by the great
depression of the Sirondha lake. Between Morontobara and Krokala
(which about answers to Ras Kachari) they touched at the mouth of the
Purali, or Arabius, not far from Liari, having an island which
sheltered them from the sea to windward, which is now part of the
mainland. Near by the mouth of the Arabius was another island "high
and bare" with a channel between it and the mainland. This, too, has
been linked up with the shore formation, and the channel no longer
exists, but there is ample evidence of the ancient character of this
corner of the coast. Between the Arabius and Krokala (three days'
sail) very bad weather was made, and two galleys and a transport were
lost. It was at Krokala that they joined hands with the army again.
Here Nearkhos formed a camp, and it was "in this part of the country"
that Leonatus defeated the Oritæ and their allies in a great battle
wherein 6000 were slain. Arrian adds that a full account of the action
and its sequel, the crowning of Leonatus with a golden crown by
Alexander, is given in his other work, but as a matter of fact the
other account is so entirely different (representing the Oritæ as
submitting quietly) that we can only suppose this to have been a
separate and distinct action from the cavalry skirmish mentioned
before.
It must be noted that the coast hereabouts has probably largely
changed. A little farther west it is changing rapidly even now, and it
is idle to look for the names given by the Greeks as marking any
positive locality known at present. Hereabouts at any rate was the
spot where Alexander with such difficulty had collected ten days'
supplies for the fleet. This was now put on board, and the bad or
indifferent sailors exchanged for better seamen. From Krokala, a
course of 500 stadia (largely over-estimated) brought them to the
estuary of the Hingol River (which is described a winter torrent under
the name of Tomeros), and from this point all connection between the
fleet and the army appears to have been lost. It was at the mouth of
the Hingol that a skirmish took place with the natives which is so
vividly described by Nearkhos, when the Greeks leapt into the sea and
charged home through the surf. Of all the little episodes described in
the progress of the voyage this is one of the most interesting; for
there is a very close description given of certain barbarians clothed
in the skins of fish or animals, covered with long hair, and using
their nails as we use fish-knives, armed with wooden pikes hardened in
the fire, and fighting more like monkeys than men. Here we have the
real aboriginal inhabitants of India. Not so very many years ago, in
the woods of Western India, a specimen almost literally answering to
the description of Nearkhos was caught whilst we were in the process
of surveying those jungles, and he furnished a useful contribution to
ethnographical science at the time. Probably these barbarians of
Nearkhos were incomparably older even than the Turanian races which we
can recognize, and which succeeded them, and which, like them, have
been gradually driven south into the fastnesses of Central and
Southern India.
Makran is full of Turanian relics connecting it with the Dravidian
races of the south; but there is no time to follow these interesting
glimpses into prehistoric ethnography opened up by the log of
Nearkhos. Nor, indeed, can we follow the voyage in detail much
farther, for we have to take up the route of Alexander, about which
very much less has hitherto been known than can be told about the
voyage of Nearkhos. We may, however, trace the track of Nearkhos past
the great rocky headland of Malan, still bearing the same name that
the Greeks gave it, to the commodious harbour of Bagisara, which is
likely enough the Damizar, or eastern bay, of the Urmara headland. The
Padizar, or western bay, corresponds more nearly with the name
Bagisara, but as they doubled a headland next day it is clear they
were on the eastern side of the Isthmus. The Pasiris whom he mentions
have left frequent traces of their existence along the coast. Kalama,
reached on the second day from Bagisara, is easily recognizable in the
Khor Khalmat of modern surveys, and it is here again that we can trace
a very considerable extension of the land seawards that would
completely have altered the course of the fleet from the coasting
track of modern days. The island of Karabine, from which they procured
sheep, may very well have been the projecting headland of Giaban, now
connected by a low sandy waste with the mainland. It could never have
been the island of Astola, as conjectured by M'Crindle and others.
From Kalama to Kissa (now disappeared) and Mosarna, along the coast
called Karbis (now Gazban), the course would again be longer than at
present, for there is much recent sand formation here; and when we
come to Mosarna itself, after doubling the headland of Jebel Zarain,
we find the harbour completely silted up. It may be noted that this
western bay of Pasni was probably exactly similar to the Padizar of
Urmara or of Gwadur, and that there is a general (but not universal)
tendency to shallowing on the western sides of all the Makran
headlands. Here they took the pilot on board, and after this there was
little difficulty.
In three more days they made Barna (or Badara), which answers to
Gwadur, where were palm trees and myrtles, and we need follow them for
the present no farther. Colonel Mockler, who was well acquainted with
the Makran coast, but hardly, perhaps, appreciated all the changes
which the coast-line has undergone (neither, indeed, did I till the
surveys were complete), has traced the course of that historic fleet
with great care. He has pointed out correctly that two islands (Pola
and Karabia) have disappeared from the eastern neighbourhood of the
Gwadur headland and one (Derenbrosa) from its western extremity; and
he might have added that yet another is breaking up, and rapidly
disappearing off the headland of Passabandar, near Gwadur. He has
identified Kyiza (or Knidza), the small town built on an eminence not
far from the shore, which was captured by stratagem, beyond doubt, and
has traced the fleet from point to point with a careful analysis of
all existing records that I cannot pretend to imitate. We cannot,
however, leave Nearkhos without a passing reference to that island on
the coast of the Ichthyophagi, and which was sacred to the sun, and
which was, even in those days, enveloped in such a halo of mystery and
tradition that even Arrian holds Nearkhos up to contempt for expending
"time and ingenuity in the not very difficult task of proving the
falsehood" of these "antiquated fables." I have been to that island,
the island of Astola, and the tales that were told to Nearkhos are
told of it still. There, off the southern face of it, is the "sail
rock," the legendary relic of a lost ship which may well have been the
transport which Nearkhos did undoubtedly lose off its rocky shores.
There, indeed, I did not find the Nereid of such fascinating manners
and questionable customs as Nearkhos describes on the authority of the
inhabitants of the coast, but sea-urchins and sea-snakes abounded in
such numbers as to make the process of exploration quite sufficiently
exciting; and there were not wanting indications of those later days
when the Meds (now an insignificant fish-eating people scattered in
the coast hamlets) were the dreaded pirates of the Arabian Sea, and
used to convey the crews of the ships they captured to that island,
where they were murdered wholesale. It is curious that the name given
by Nearkhos is Nosala, or Nuhsala. In these days it is Astola, or more
properly Hashtala, sometimes even called Haftala. I am unable to
determine the meaning of the termination to which the numerals are
prefixed. Another name for it is Sangadip, which is also the mediæval
name for Ceylon. There can be no doubt about the identity of this
island of sun worship and historic fable.
We must now turn to Alexander. We left him near the mouth of the
Hingol, then probably four or five miles north of its present
position, and nearer the modern telegraph line. So far he had almost
step by step followed out the subsequent line of the Indo-Persian
telegraph, and at the Hingol he was not very far south of it. Near
here Leonatus had had his fight with the Oritæ, and Alexander had
spent much time (for it must be remembered that he started a month
before his fleet, and that the fleet and Leonatus at least joined
hands at this point) in collecting supplies of grain from the more
cultivated districts north, and was prepared to resume his march along
the coast, true to his general tactical principle of keeping touch
with his ships. But an obstacle presented itself that possibly he had
not reckoned on. The huge barrier of the Malan range, abutting direct
on the sea, stopped his way. There was no "Buzi" pass (or goat track)
in those days, such as finally and after infinite difficulty helped
the telegraph line over, though there was indeed an ancient stronghold
at the top, which must have been in existence before his time, and was
likely enough the original city of Malan. He was consequently forced
into the interior, and here his difficulties began.
We should be at a loss to follow him here, but for the fact that there
is only one possible route. He followed up the Hingol till he could
turn the Malan by an available pass westward. Nothing here has altered
since his days. Those magnificent peaks and mountains which surround
the sacred shrine of Hinglaz are, indeed, "everlasting hills," and it
was through them that he proceeded to make his way. It would be a
matter of immense interest could one trace any record of the Hinglaz
shrine in classical writings, but there is none that I know of. And
yet I believe that shrine which, next possibly to Juggernath, draws
the largest crowds of pilgrims (Hindu and Mussulman alike) of any in
India, was in existence before the days of Alexander. For the shrine
is sacred to the goddess Nana (now identified with Siva by Hindus),
and the Assyrian or Persian goddess Nana is of such immense antiquity
that she has furnished to us the key to an older chronology even than
that of Egypt. The famous cylinder of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria,
tells us that in the year 645 B.C. he destroyed Susa, the capital of
Elam, and from its temple he carried back the Chaldean goddess Nana,
and by the express command of the goddess herself, took her from
whence she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not appointed her," and
reinstated her in her own sanctuary at Urukh (now Warka in
Mesopotamia), whence she had originally been taken 1635 years before
by a conquering king of Elam, who had invaded Accad territory. Thus
she was clearly a well-established deity in Mesopotamia 2280 years
B.C. Alexander, however, would have left that Ziarat hidden away in
the folds of the Hinglaz mountain on his left, and followed the
windings of the Hingol River some forty miles to its junction with a
stream from the west, which would again give him the chance of
striking out parallel to the coast.
We should be in some doubt at what particular point Alexander left the
Hingol, but for the survival of names given in history as those of a
people with whom he had to contend, viz. the Parikanoi, the Sagittæ,
and the Sakæ, names not mentioned by Arrian. Now, Herodotus gives the
Parikanoi and Asiatic Ethiopians as being the inhabitants of the
seventeenth satrapy of the Persian Empire, and Bellew suggests that
the Greek Parikanoi is a Greek transcript of the Persian form of
Parikan, the plural of the Sanscrit Parvá-ka--or, in other words, the
_Ba-rohi_--or men of the hills. However this may be, there is the bed
of the stream called Parkan skirting the north of the Taloi range and
leading westwards from the Hingol, and we need look no farther for the
Parikanoi. In support of Bellew's theory it may be stated that it is
not only in the heart of the Brahui country, but the Sajidi are still
a tribe of Jalawan Brahuis, of which the chief family is called Sakæ,
and that they occupy territory in Makran a little to the north of the
Parkan. There is every reason why Alexander should have selected this
route. It was his first chance of turning the Malan block, and it led
most directly westwards with a trend towards the sea. But at the time
of the year that he was pushing his way through this low valley
flanked by the Taloi hills, which rose to a height of 2000 feet above
him on his left, there would not be a drop of water to be had, and the
surrounding wilderness of sandy hillocks and scanty grass-covered
waste would afford his troops no supplies and no shelter from the
fierce autumn heat. All the miseries of his retreat were concentrated
into the distance (about 200 miles) between the Hingol and the coast.
The story of that march is well told by Arrian. It was here that
occurred that gallant episode when Alexander proudly refused to drink
the small amount of water that was offered him in a helmet, because
his army was perishing with thirst. It must have been near the harbour
of Pasni, once again almost on the line of the present telegraph, that
Alexander emerged from the sand-storm with but four horsemen on to
the sea-coast at last, and instantly set to work to dig wells for his
perishing troops. Thenceforward Arrian tells us only that he marched
for seven days along the coast till he reached the well-known highway
to Karmania, when he turned inland, and his difficulties were at an
end. Now, that well-known highway was almost better known then than it
is now. He could only leave the coast near the Dasht River at Gwadur,
and strike across into the valley of the Bahu, which would lead him
through a country subsequently great in Arabic history, over the yet
unsuspected sites of many famous cities, to Bampur, the capital of
Gadrosia. From leaving the coast to Bampur the duration of his march
with an exhausted force would be little less than a month. Working
backward again from that same point (which may be regarded as an
obligatory one in his route) the seven days' weary drag through the
sand of the coast would carry him no farther than from the
neighbourhood of Pasni, and that is why I have selected that point for
the historic episode of his guiding his army by chance and emerging on
to the shore unexpectedly, rather than the neighbourhood of the Basol
River, to which the Parkan route should naturally have led him. He
clearly lost his way, as Arrian says he did, or else the estimated
number of marches is wrong. We are told by Arrian that he reached
Pura, the capital of Gadrosia, on the sixtieth day after leaving the
country of the Oritæ. This is a little indefinite, as he may be
considered to have left the country of the Oritæ when he started to
collect supplies from the northern district, and we do not know how
long he was on this reconnaissance. Probably, however, the date of
leaving the coast and striking inland up the Hingol River is the date
referred to by Arrian, in which case we may estimate that he spent
about twenty-four days negotiating the fearful country opened up to
him on the Parkan route ere he touched the seashore again. This is by
no means an exaggerated estimate if we consider the distance
(something short of 200 miles) and the nature of his army. A
half-armed mob, which included women and children, and of which the
transport consisted of horses and mules and wooden carts dragged by
men, cannot move with the facilities of a modern brigade. Nor would a
modern brigade move along that line with the rapidity that has
distinguished some of our late man[oe]uvres in South Africa. On the
whole, I think the estimate a probable one, and it brings us to
Bampur, the ancient capital of Gadrosia.
We have now followed Alexander out of India into Persia. Thenceforward
there are no great geographical questions to decipher, or knots to be
untied. His progress was a progress of triumph, and the story of his
retreat well ends with the thrilling tale of his meeting again with
Nearkhos, after the latter had harboured his fleet at the mouth of the
Minab River and set out on the search for Alexander, guided by a
Greek who had strayed from Alexander's army. Blackened by exposure and
clothed in rags, Nearkhos was unrecognized till he announced himself
to the messenger sent to look for him. Even Alexander himself at first
failed to recognize his admiral in the extraordinary apparition that
was presented to him in his camp, and could only believe that his
fleet must have perished and that Nearkhos and Arkias were sole
survivors. We can imagine what followed. Those were days of ready
recognition of service and no despatches, and all Persia was open to
the conquerors to choose their reward.
After Alexander's time many centuries elapsed before we get another
clear historic view into Makran, and then what do we find? A country
of great and flourishing cities, of high-roads connecting them with
well-known and well-marked stages; armies passing and re-passing, and
a trade which represented to those that held it the dominant
commercial power in the world, flowing steadily century after century
through that country which was fatal to Alexander, and which we are
rather apt now to consider the fag-end of the Baluchistan wilderness.
The history of Makran is bound up with the history of India from time
immemorial. Not all the passes of all the frontiers of India put
together have seen such traffic into the broad plains of Hindustan as
for certainly three, and possibly for eight, centuries passed through
the gateways of Makran. As one by one we can now lay our finger on
the sites of those historic cities, and first begin faintly to measure
the importance of Makran to India ere Vasco da Gama first claimed the
honour of doubling the Cape and opened up the ocean highway, we can
only be astonished that for four centuries more Makran remained a
blank on the map of the world.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] _Indus Delta Country_, 1894.