O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was bornWho from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,In Sum Baral assembled you have been.Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?
O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was bornWho from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,In Sum Baral assembled you have been.Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?
O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was born
Who from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,
On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,
Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,
In Sum Baral assembled you have been.
Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?
The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?
Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?
The words within brackets are introduced, otherwise the translation is literal. Gir-Nysa means the mountain of Nysa, Gir being a common prefix denoting a peak or hill. Katan Chirak is explained to be an ancient town in the Minjan valley of Badakshan, now in ruins; but it was the first large place that the Kafirs captured, and is apparently held to be symbolical of victory. This reference connects the Kamdesh Kafirs with Badakshan, and shows these people to have been more widespread than they are at present. Sum Bughal is a deep ravine leading down to the plain of Sum Baral, where armies are assembled for war. Sanji appears to be the oracle consulted before war is undertaken. The chief interest of this verse (for I believe it is only one verse of many, but it was all that our friends were entitled to repeat) is the obvious reference in the first line to the mountain of Bacchus, the Meros from which he was born, on the slopes of which stood the ancient Nysa. It is, indeed, a Bacchic hymn (slightly incoherent, perhaps, as is natural), and only wants the accessories of vine-leaves and ivy to make it entirely classical.
That eminent linguistic authority, Dr. Grierson, thinks that the language in which the hymn wasrecited is derived from what Sanscrit writers said was the language of the Pisacas, a people whom they dubbed "demons" and "eaters of raw flesh," and who may be represented by the "Pashai" dwellers in Laghman and its vicinity to-day. Possibly the name of the chief village of the Kunar valley Pashat may claim the same origin, for Laghman and Kunar both spread their plains to the foot of the mountains of Kafiristan.
The vine and the ivy are not far to seek. In making slow progress through one of the deep "darras," or ravines, of the western Kunar basin, leading to the snow-bound ridges that overlook Bashgol, I was astonished at the free growth of the wild vine, and the thick masses of ivy which here and there clung to the buttresses of the rugged mountain spurs as ivy clings to less solid ruins in England. The Kafirs have long been celebrated for their wine-making. Early in the nineteenth century, when the adventurer Baber, on his way to found the most magnificent dynasty that India has ever seen at Delhi, first captured the ancient city of Bajaor, and then moved on to the valley of Jandoul—now made historic by another adventurer, Umra Khan—he was perpetually indulging in drinking-parties; and he used to ride in from Jandoul to Bajaor to join his cronies in a real good Bacchic orgy more frequently than was good for him. He has a good deal to say about the Kafir wine in that inimitable Diary of his, and his appreciation ofit was not great. It was, however, much better than nothing, and he drank a good deal of it. Through the kindness of the Sipah Salar, the Amir's commander-in-chief, I have had the opportunity of tasting the best brand of this classical liquor, and I agree with Baber—it is not of a high class. It reminded me of badly corked and muddy Chablis, which it much resembled in appearance.
Greek Retreat from IndiaView larger image
Greek Retreat from IndiaView larger image
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 routeviathe 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 theopen 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, butthey 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 Gomulviathe 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 dimpledstream, 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. Theroad 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 safeguardingKalat. 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. Inthis 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 leadhis 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-bredMongols 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 ofIndia 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 yearsB.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 touchedthe 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 theJournal of the Royal Society of Artsfor 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 326B.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 hisforce 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) assuggested 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 notthe 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 hedgedin 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 possiblywhere 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 Phœnicianfollowers 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 Phœnician 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 ourassistance 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, wassomewhere nearKarachi. 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 2000years 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 fairlyconsistent; 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 Phœnician 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 (whichabout 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 atany 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 succeededthem, 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 headlandof 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 breakingup, 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, stoppedhis 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 645B.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 yearsB.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, theBa-rohi—or men of the hills. However this may be, there is the bed of thestream 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 withbut 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 manœuvres 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 forAlexander, 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 ofMakran. 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.
CHINESE EXPLORATIONS—THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH
There are many gateways into India, gateways on the north as well as the north-west and west, and although these far northern ways are so rugged, so difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be regarded as of political or strategic importance, yet they are many of them well trodden and some were once far better known than they are now. Opinions may perhaps differ as to their practical value as military or commercial approaches under new conditions of road-making, but they never have, so far, been utilized in either sense, and the interest of them is purely historical. These are the ways of the pilgrims, and we are almost as much indebted to Chinese records for our knowledge of them as we are to the researches of modern explorers.
For many a century after Alexander had left the scene of his Eastern conquests historical darkness envelopes the rugged hills and plains which witnessed the passing of the Greeks. The faithof Buddha was strong before their day, but the building age of Buddhism was later. No mention is to be found in the pages of Greek history of the magnificent monuments of the creed which are an everlasting wonder of the plains of Upper India. Such majestic testimony to the living force of Buddhism could hardly have passed unnoticed by observers so keen as those early Greeks; and when next we are dimly lighted on our way to identify the lines of movement and the trend of commerce on the Indian frontier, we find a new race of explorers treading their way with pious footsteps from shrine to shrine, and the sacred books and philosophic teaching of a widespreading faith the objects of their quest. The Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian was the first to leave a permanent record of his travels. His date is aboutA.D.400, and he was only one of a large number of Chinese pilgrims who knew the road between India and China far better than any one knew it twenty-five years ago.
Although the northern approaches to India from the direction of China are rather far afield, yet recent revelations resulting from the researches of such enterprising travellers as Sven Hedin and Stein, confirming the older records, require some short reference to the nature of those communications between the outside world of Asia and India which distinguished the early centuries of our era. In those early centuries there was tobe found in that western extension of the Gobi desert which we call Chinese Turkistan, in the low-lying country, mostly sand-covered, which stretches to a yellow horizon northward beneath the shimmering haze of an almost perpetual dust veil, very different conditions of human existence to those which now prevail. The zone of cultivation fed by the streams of the Kuen Lun was wider, stretching farther into the desert. Rivers ran fuller of water, carrying fertility farther afield; great lakes spread themselves where now there are but marshes and reeds, and cities flourished which have been covered over and buried under accumulating shifting sand for centuries. A great central desert there always has been within historic period, but it was a desert much modified by bordering oases of green fertility, and a spread of irrigated cultivation which is not to be found there now.
Amongst the most interesting relics recovered from some of these unearthed cities are certain writings in Karosthi and Brahmi (Indian) script, which testify to the existence of roads and posts and a regular system of communication between these cities of the plain, which must have been in existence in those early years of the Christian era when Karosthi was a spoken language in Northern India. All this now sand-buried country was Buddhist then, and a great city overlooked the wide expanse of the Lop Lake, and the rivers of the southern hills carried fertilityfar into the central plain. When the pilgrim Fa Hian trod the weary road from Western China to Chinese Turkistan by way of Turfan and the Buddhist city of Lop, he followed in a groove deep furrowed by the feet of many a pilgrim before him, and a highway for devotees for many a century after.
Strange as it may seem, the ancient people of this desert waste—the people who now occupy the cultivated strip of land at the foot of the Kuen Lun mountains which shut them off from Tibet—are an Indian race, or rather a race of Indian extraction, far more allied to the Indo-European than to any Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, or Turk race with which they may have been recently admixed. Did they spread northward from India through the rugged passes of Northern Kashmir, taking with them the faith of their ancestors? We do not know; but there can be little doubt that the Chanto of the Lop basin and of Turfan is the lineal successor of the people who welcomed the Chinese pilgrims in their search after truth. Buddhist then and Mahomedan now, they seem to have lost little of their genial spirit of hospitality to strangers.
Khotan (Ilchi) was the central attraction of Western Turkistan, one at least of the most blessed wayside fountains of faith, the ultimate sources of which were only to be found in India. Those ultimate sources have long left India. They are concentrated in Lhasa now, which city is still thesanctuary of Buddhism to the thousands of pilgrims who make their way from China on the east and Mongolia on the north as full of devout aspiration and of patient searching after spiritual knowledge as was ever a Chinese pilgrim of past ages. Not only was Western Turkistan full of the monuments and temples of Buddhism scattered through the length of the green strips of territory which bordered the dry steppe of the central depression watered on the north by the Tarim River, and on the south by the many mountain streams which rushed through the gorges of the Kuen Lun, but there was an evident extension of outward and visible signs of the faith to the northward, embracing the Turfan basin, which in many of its physical characteristics is but a minor repetition of that of Lop, and possibly even as far west as the great Lake Issyk Kul. Thus the old pilgrim route to India from Western China, which was chosen by the devotee so as to include as many sacred shrines as could possibly be made to assist in adding grace to his pilgrimage, was a very different route to that now followed by the pious Mongolian or Western Chinaman to Lhasa.
Avoiding the penalties of the Nan Shan system of mountains which guards the Tibetan plateau on the north-east, these early pilgrims held on their journey almost due west, and, skirting the Mongolian steppe within sight of the Tibetan frontier hills, they reached Turfan; then turningsouthward, they passed on to the Lop Nor lake region by a well-ascertained route, which at that time intersected the well-watered and fertile land of Lulan. There is water still in the lower Tarim and in the Konche River beds, but it has proved in these late years to be useless for agricultural development owing to the increasing salinity of the soil. Several recent attempts at recolonizing this area have resulted in total failure. From the Lop Lake to KhotanviaCherchen the old-world route was much the same as now, but the width of fertility stretched farther north from the Kuen Lun foothills, and the temples of Buddhism were rich and frequent, and thus were pious pilgrims refreshed and elevated every step of the way through this Turkistan region. Khotan appears to have been the local centre of the faith. No lake spread out its blue waters to catch the sky reflections here, but from the cold wastes of Tibet, through the gorges of the great Kuen Lun range, the waters of a river flowed down past the temples and stupas of Ilchi to find their way northward across the sands to the Tarim.
The high ritual of Buddhism in its ancient form was strange and imposing. When we read Fa Hian's account of the great car procession, we are no longer surprised at the effect which Buddhist symbolism exercised on its disciples. Fa Hian and his fellow-travellers were lodged in a sanghârâma, or temple of the "GreatVehicle," where were three thousand priests "who assemble to eat at the sound of theghantâ. On entering the dining hall their carriage is grave and demure, and they take their seats in regular order. All of them keep silence; there is no noise with their eating bowls; when the attendants give more food they are not allowed to speak to one another but only to make signs with the hand." "In this country," says Fa Hian, "there are fourteen great sanghârâmas. From the first day of the fourth month they sweep and water the thoroughfares within the city and decorate the streets. Above the city gate they stretch an awning and use every kind of adornment. This is when the King and Queen and Court ladies take their place. The Gomâti priests first of all take their images in the procession. About three or four li from the city they make a four-wheeled image car about 30 feet high, in appearance like a moving palace adorned with the seven precious substances. They fix upon it streamers of silk and canopy curtains. The figure is placed in the car with two Bodhisatevas as companions, while the Devas attend on them; all kinds of polished ornaments made of gold and silver hang suspended in the air. When the image is 100 paces from the gate the King takes off his royal cap, and changing his clothes for new ones proceeds barefooted, with flowers and incense in his hand, from the city, followed by his attendants. On meeting the image he bows down his head andworships at its feet, scattering the flowers and burning the incense. On entering the city the Queen and Court ladies scatter about all kinds of flowers and throw them down in wild profusion. So splendid are the arrangements for worship!"[4]Thus writes Fa Hian, and it is sufficient to testify to the strength of Buddhism and the magnificence of its ritual in the third century of our era, when India still held the chief fountains of inspiration ere the holy of holies was transferred to Lhasa and the pilgrim route was changed.
So far, then, we need not look for the influence exercised by the most recent climatic pulsation of Central Asia which has dried up the water-springs and allowed the sand-drifts to accumulate above many of the minor townships of the Lop basin, in order to account for the trend of Asiatic religious history towards Tibet. It was the gradual decay of the faith, and its final departure from its birthplace in the plains of India in later centuries, which sent pilgrims on another track, and left many of the northern routes to be rediscovered by European explorers in the nineteenth century. Most of the Chinese pilgrims visited Khotan, but from Khotan onward their steps were bent in several directions. Some of them visited Ki-pin, which has been identified with the upper Kabul River basin. Here, indeed, were scattered a wealth of Buddhist records to be studied,shrines to be visited, and temples to be seen. The road from Balkh to Kabul and from Kabul to the Punjab was pre-eminently a Buddhist route. Balkh, Haibak, and Bamian all testify, as does the neighbourhood of Kabul itself, to the existence of a lively Buddhist history before the Mahomedan Conquest, and between Kabul and India there are Buddhist remains near Jalalabad which rival in splendour those of the Swat valley and the Upper Punjab. All these places were objects of devout attention undoubtedly, but to reach KabulviaBalkh from Khotan it would be necessary to cross the Pamirs and Badakshan. It is not easy to follow in detail the footsteps of these devotees, but it is obvious that until they entered the "Tsungling" mountains they remained north of the great trans-Himalayan ranges and of the Hindu Kush. The Tsungling was the dreaded barrier between China and India, and the wild tales of the horrors which attended the crossing of the mountains testify to the fact that they were not much easier of access or transit at the beginning of the Christian era than they are now.
The direct distance between Khotan and Balkh is not less than 700 miles, and 700 miles of such a mountain wilderness as would be involved by the passing of the Pamirs into the valley of the Oxus and the plains of Badakshan would represent 900 to 1000 of any ordinary travelling. And yet there appear to be indications of a close connectionbetween these two centres of Buddhism. The great temple a mile or two to the west of Khotan, called the Nava Sanghârâma, or royal new temple, is the same as that to the south-west of Balkh, according to a later traveller, Hiuen Tsiang, while the kings of Khotan were said to be descended from Vaisravana, the protector of the Balkh convent. No modern traveller has crossed Badakshan from the Pamirs to Balkh, but the general conformation of the country is fairly well ascertained, and there can be no doubt that the journey would occupy any pilgrim, no matter how devout and enthusiastic, at least two and a half months, and another month would be required to traverse the road from BalkhviaHiabak, or Baiman, over the Hindu Kush to Kabul.
Now we are told that Fa Hian journeyed twenty-five days to the Tsen-ho country, from whence, by marching four days southward, he entered the Tsungling mountains. Another twenty-five days' rugged marching took him to the Kie-sha country, a country "hilly and cold" in "the midst of the Tsungling mountains," where he rejoined his companions who had started for Ki-pin. It is therefore clear that he did not rejoin them at Kabul, nor could they have gone there; and the question arises—Where is Kie-sha? The continuation of Fa Hian's story gives the solution to the riddle. Another month's wandering from Kie-sha across the Tsungling mountains took himto North India. It was a perilous journey. The terrors of it remained engraved on the memory of the saint after his return to his home in China. Great "poison dragons" lived in those mountains, who spat poison and gravel-stones at passing pilgrims, and few there were who survived the encounter. The impression conveyed of furious blasts of mountain-bred winds is vivid, and many travellers since Fa Hian's time have suffered therefrom. "On entering the borders" of India he came to a little country called To-li. To-li seems to be identified beyond dispute with Darel, and with this to guide us we begin to see where our pilgrims must have passed. Fifteen days more of Tsungling mountain-climbing southwards took him to Wuchung (Udyana), where he remained during the rains. Thence he went "south" to Sin-ho-to (Swat), and finally "descended" into Gandara, or the Upper Punjab.
From these final stages of his journey India-ward there is little difficulty in recognizing that Kie-sha must be Kashmir. In the first place, Kashmir lies on the most direct route between Chinese Turkistan and India. Nor is it possible to believe that the wealth of Buddhist remains which now appeal to the antiquarian in that delightful garden of the Himalayas were not more or less due to the first impulse of the devotees of the early faith to plant the seeds of Buddhism where the passing to and fro of innumerablebands of pilgrims would of necessity occur. Through Kashmir lay the high-road to High Asia, at that time included in the Buddhist fold, where Indian language had crystallized and corroborated the faith that was born in India. Thus it was that glorious temples arose amidst the groves and on the slopes of Kashmir hills, and even in the days of Fa Hian, when Buddhism was already nine centuries old, there must have been much to beguile the pilgrim to devotional study. In short, Kashmir could not be overlooked by any devotee, and whether the direct route thither was taken from Khotan, or whether Kashmir was visited in due course from Northern India, we may be certain that it was one of the chief objectives of Chinese pilgrimage.
Fa Hian says so little about the kingdom of Kie-sha which can be made use of to assist us, that it is not easy to identify the part of Kashmir to which he refers. Twenty-five days after entering the Tsungling mountains would enable him to reach the valley of Kashmir by the Karakoram Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the Sind valley. It is not a matter of much consequence for our purposes which route he took, as it is quite clear that all these northern routes were open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest times. The alternative route would be to the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over the Killik Pass, and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunzacountry (Kunjut) has always had an attraction for the Chinese. It has been conquered and held by China, and is still reckoned by its inhabitants as part of the Chinese Empire. Hunza and Nagar pay tribute to China to this day.
If we remember that the pains and penalties of a pilgrimage over any of the Hindu Kush passes, or by the Karakoram (the chief trade route through all time), to India, is as nothing to the trials which modern Mongolian pilgrims undergo between China and Lhasa, over the terrible altitudes of the Tibetan plateau, there will be little to surprise us in these earlier achievements. Pioneers of exploration in the true sense they were not, for the Himalayan byways must have been as well known to them as were the Asiatic highways to Alexander ere he attempted to reach India. We may assume, however, that Fa Hian entered the central valley of Kashmir from Leh, for it gives a reasonable pretext for his choice of a route out of it. It is not likely that he would go twice over the same ground. He witnessed the pomp and pageantry of Buddhist ritual in Kie-sha. The King of the country had kept the great five-yearly assembly. He had "summoned Sramanas from the four quarters, who came together like clouds." Silken canopies and flags with gold and silver lotus-flowers figure amongst the ritualistic properties, and form part of the processional arrangements which end with the invariable offerings to the priests. "The King,taking from the chief officer of the Embassy the horse he rides, with its saddle and bridle, mounts it, and then, taking white taffeta, jewels of various kinds, and things required by the Sramanas, in union with his ministers, he vows to give them all to the priests. Having thus given them, they are redeemed at a price from the priests." No mention is made of the price, but as the Kashmiri of the past has been excellently well described by another pilgrim as a true prototype of the Kashmiri of the present, it is unlikely that the King lost much by the deal.
The description of Kie-sha as "in the middle of the Tsungling range" would hardly apply to any country but Kashmir, and the fact is noted that from Kie-sha towards India the vegetation changes in character. Having crossed Tsungling, we arrive at North India, says Fa Hian, but to reach the "little country called To-li" (Darel) he would have to cross by the Burzil Pass into the basin of the Indus, and then follow the Gilgit River to a point under the shadow of the Hindu Koh range, opposite the head-waters of the Darel. Crossing the Hindu Koh, he would then drop straight into this "little country." Remembering something of the nature of the road to Gilgit ere our military engineers fashioned a sound highway out of the rocky hill-sides, one can sympathize with the pious Fa Hian when recalling in after years the frightful experiences of that journey.
A few miles beyond Gilgit the rough evidences of a ruined stupa, and a still rougher outline of a Buddhist figure cut on the rocks which guard a narrow gorge leading up the Hindu Koh slopes, points to the take-off for Darel. No modern explorer has followed that route, except one of the native explorers of the Indian survey who travelled under the soubriquet of "the Mullah." The Mullah made his way through the Darel valley to the Indus, and describes it as a difficult route. There is little variation in the tale of troubled progress, but "the Mullah" makes no mention of Buddhist relics, nor is it likely that they would have appealed to him had he seen them. There can be little doubt, however, that Darel holds some hidden secrets for future enterprise to disclose. "Keeping along Tsungling, they journeyed southward for fifteen days," says Fa Hian. "The road is difficult and broken with steep crags and precipices in the way. The mountain-side is simply a stone wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the sight is confused and there is no sure foothold. Below is a river called Sintu-ho (Indus). In old days men bored through the walls to make a way, and spread out side ladders, of which there are seven hundred in all to pass. Having passed the ladders, we proceed by a hanging rope bridge to cross the river." All this agrees fairly well with the Mullah's account of ladders and precipices, and locates the route without much doubt. The Darelstream joins the Indus some 30 to 35 miles below Chilas, where the course of the latter river is practically unsurveyed. Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung, which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of Buddhist remains north of Buner. No systematic search has been possible.
Investigations such as led to the remarkable discovery by Dr. Stein of the site of that famous Buddhist sanctuary marking the spot where Buddha, in a former birth, offered his body to the starving tigress on Mount Banj, south of Buner, have never been possible farther north, on account of the dangerous character of the hill-people of those regions. Other Chinese pilgrims, Song Yun (A.D.520) and Huec Sheng, have recorded that after leaving the capital of ancient Udyana (near Manglaor, in Upper Swat) they journeyed for eight days south-east, and reached the place where Buddha made his body offering. "There high mountains rose with steep slopes and dizzy peaks reaching to the clouds," etc. "There stood on the mountain the temple of the collected bones which counted300 priests." But there is no mention of other Buddhist sites of importance in the valley of the Indus. Leaving Udyana, Fa Hian and his companions went south to the country of Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), and finally ("descending eastward") in five days found themselves in Gandhara—or the Upper Punjab. Nine days' journey eastward from the point where they reached Gandhara they came to the place of Buddha's body-offering, or Mount Banj. Such, in brief outline, is the story of one pilgrim's journey across the Himalayas to India. Other pilgrims undoubtedly entered Indiaviathe Kabul River valley, but we need hardly follow them. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands, and the pains and penalties of the pilgrimage but served to add merit to their devotion.