GREEK EXPLORATION—ALEXANDER—THE KABUL VALLEY TO THE INDUS

Alexander passed the next winter at the city of his own founding, Alexandreia, in the Koh Daman to the north of Kabul. And from thence in two divisions he started for the Indus, sending the main body of his troops by the most direct route, with Taxila (the capital of the Upper Punjab) for its objective, and himself with lighter brigades specially organized to subdue certain tribes on the northern flank of the route who certainly would imperil the security of his line of communication if left alone. This was his invariable custom, and it was greatly owing to the completeness with which these flanking expeditions were carried out that he was able to keep open his connection with Greece. There have been discussions as to the route which he followed. HyphÆstion, in command of the main body, undoubtedly followed the main route which would take him most directly to the plains of the Punjab, which route is sufficiently well indicated in these days as the "Khaibar." We hear very little about his march eastwards.

In the days preceding the use of fire-arms the march of a body of troops through defiles such as the Khurd Kabul or the Jagdallak was comparatively simple. So far from such defiles serving as traps wherein to catch an enemy unawares and destroy him from the cliffs and hills on either side, these same cliffs and hills served rather as a protection. The mere rolling down of stones would not do much mischief, even if they could be rolled down effectively, which is not usually the case; and in hand-to-hand encounters the tribespeople were no match for the armoured Greeks. Alexander's operations would preserve his force from molestation on its northern flank, and the rugged ridges and spread of desolate hill-slopes presented by the Safed Koh and other ranges on the south has never afforded suitable ground for the collection of fighting bodies of men in any great strength. General Stewart marched his force from Kabul to Peshawur in 1880 with his southern flank similarly unprotected with the same successful result, his movements being so timed as to give no opportunity for a gathering of the Ghilzai clans. On the northern flank of the Khaibar route, however, there had been large tribal settlements from the very beginning of things, and it was most important that these outliers should feel the weight of Alexander's mailed fist if the road between Kabul and the Indus were ever to be made secure. He accordingly directed his attention to a more northerly route to India which would bring him into contact with the Aspasians, Gauraians, and Assakenians.

We need not follow the ethnologists who identify these people with certain tribes now existing with analogous names. There may very possibly be remnants of them still, but they are not to be identified. They obviously occupied the open cultivable valleys and alluvial spaces which are interspersed amongst the mountains of the Kabul River basin, the Kohistan and Kafiristan of modern maps. The Gauraians certainly were the people of the Panjkora valley, and there is no difficulty in assigning to the Aspasians the first great fertile tract of open valley which would be encountered on the way eastwards. This is Laghman (or Lamghan) with its noble reach of the Kabul River meeting a snow-fed affluent, the Alingar, from the Kafir hills. There is, indeed, no geographical alternative. Similarly with even a cursory knowledge of the actual geographical conformation of the country, it is impossible to imagine that Alexander would choose any other route from Alexandreia towards Laghman than that which carries him past Kabul. The Koh Daman (the skirts of the hills) which intervene between Alexandreia (or Bagram) and Kabul is one of the gardens of Afghanistan. There one may wander in the sweet springtide amidst the curves and folds of an undulating land, neither hill nor plain, with the scent of the flowering willow in the air, and the rankness of a spring growth of flower and grass bordering narrow runlets and irrigation channels; an unwinking blue above and a varied carpet beneath, whilst the song of the labourer rises from fields and orchards. Westward are the craggy outlines of Paghman (a noble offshoot of the Hindu Kush hiding the loveliness of the Ghorband valley behind it), down whose scarred and wrinkled ribs slide waterfalls and streams to gladden the plain. Piled up on steep and broken banks from the very foot of the mountains are scattered white-walled villages, and it is here that you may find later in the year the best fruit in Afghanistan.

In November a gentle haze rests in soft indecision upon the dust-coloured landscape—heavier and bluer over the low-lying fields from which all vegetation has been lifted, lighter and edged with filmy skirts where it rises from the sun-warmed brow of the hills. It is a different world from the world of spring—all utterly sad-coloured and dust-laden; but it is then that the troops and strings of fruit-laden donkeys take their leisurely way towards the city, where are open shops facing the narrow shadowed streets with golden bulwarks of fruit piled from floor to roof. A narrow band of rugged hills shuts off this lovely plain on the east from the only valley route which could possibly present itself to an inexperienced eye as an outlet from the Charikar region to the Kabul River bed, ere it is lost in the dark defiles leading to the Laghman valley. The hills are red in the waning light, and when the snow first lays its lacework shroud over them in network patches they are inexpressibly beautiful. But they are also inexpressibly rough and impracticable, and the valley beyond is but a walled-in boulder-strewn trough, which no general in his senses would select for a military high-road. Alexander certainly did not march that way; he went to where Kabul is, and there, at the city of Nikaia, he made sacrifice to the goddess Athena. If Nikaia was not the modern Kabul it must have been very near it. Does not Nonnus tell us that it was a stone city near a lake? There is but one lake in the Kabul valley, and it is that at Wazirabad close to the city. It is usual to regard Nonnus as a most untrustworthy authority, but here for once he seems to have wandered into the straight and narrow path of truth. So far there can be no reasonable doubt about the direction of this great Pioneer's explorations in Afghanistan. Beyond this, once again, we prefer to trust to the known geographical distribution of hill and valley, and the opportunities presented by physical features of the country, rather than to any doubtful resemblance between ancient and modern place, or tribal, names, for determining the successive actions of the expedition. After the summons to Taxiles, chief of Taxila (itself the chief city of the Upper Punjab), and the satisfactory reply thereto, there was nothing to disturb the even course of Alexander's onward movements but the activity of the mountain tribespeople who flanked the line of route.

The valley of Laghman must always have been a populous valley. From the north the snow-capped peaks of Kafiristan look down upon it, and from among the forest-clad valleys at the foot of these peaks two important river systems take their rise, the Alingar and the Alishang, which, uniting, join the Kabul River in the flat plain, where villages now crowd in and dispute each acre of productive soil. It is difficult to reach the Laghman valley from the west. The defiles of the Kabul River are here impassable, but they can be turned by mountain routes, and Alexander's force, which included the Hyspaspists, who were comparatively lightly armed, with the archers, the "companion" cavalry and the lancers, was evidently picked for mountain warfare. The heavier brigades were with HyphÆstion who struck out by the straightest route for Peukelaotis, which has been identified with an ancient site about 17 miles to the north-east of Peshawur on the eastern bank of the Swat River, and was then the capital of the ancient Gandhara. We are told that Alexander's route was rugged and hilly, and lay along the course of the river called Khoes. Rugged and hilly it certainly was, but the Khoes presents a difficulty. He could not actually follow the course of the Kabul River (Kophen) from the Kabul plain because of the defiles, but he could have followed that river below Butkak to the western entrance of the Laghman valley where it unites with the Alingar, or Kao, River. It is impossible to admit that he reached the Kao River after crossing the Kohistan and Kafiristan, and then descended that river to its junction with the Kabul. No cavalry could have performed such a feat. Geographical conditions compel us to assume that he followed the Kabul River, which is sometimes called Kao above the junction of the Kao River.

It is far more impossible to identify the actual sites of Alexander's first military engagements than it is to say, for instance, at this period of history, where CÆsar landed in Great Britain, as we have no means of making exhaustive local inquiries; but subsequent history clearly indicates that his next step after settling the Laghman tribes was to push on to the valley of the Choaspes, or Kunar. It was in the Kunar valley that he found and defeated the chief of the Aspasians. The Kunar River is by far the most important of the northern tributaries of the Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs and is otherwise known as the Chitral River. The Kunar valley is amongst the most lovely of the many lovely valleys of Afghanistan. Flanked by the snowy-capped mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long level water parting which divides it from Bajaor and the Panjkora drainage on the east, it appears, as one enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed in and constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat narrow, but it widens out northward, where the ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off into low altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above the entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy pass across the divide from the west into the valley. This is a link in the oldest and probably the best trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has no part with the Khaibar. It links together these northern valleys of Laghman, Kunar, and Lundai (i.e. the Panjkora and Swat united) by a road north of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the plains chequered by the river network above Peshawur.

The lower Kunar valley in the early autumn is passing beautiful. Down the tawny plain and backed by purple hills the river winds its way, reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise colour—the opaque blue of silted water—blinking and winking with tiny sun shafts, and running emerald green at the edges. Sharp perpendicular columns of black break the landscape in ordered groups. These are the cypresses which still adorn in stately rows the archaic gardens of townlets which once were townships. The clustering villages are thick in some parts—so thick that they jostle each other continuously. There is nothing of the drab Punjab about these villages. They are white-walled and outwardly clean, and in at least one ancient garden there is a fair imitation of a Kashmir pavilion set at the end of a white eye-blinding pathway, leading straight and stiff between rows of cypress, and blotched in spring with inky splashes of fallen mulberries. The scent of orange blossoms was around when we were there, luscious and overpowering. It was the oppressive atmosphere of the typical, sensuous East, and the free, fresh air from the river outside the mud walls of that jealously-guarded estate was greatly refreshing when we climbed out of the gardens. All this part of the river must have been attractive to settlers even in Alexander's time, and it requires no effort of imagination to suppose that it was here that his second series of actions took place. Higher up the river the valley closes, until, long before Chitral is reached, it narrows exceedingly. Here, in the north, the northern winds rage down the funnel with bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages take to the hill-slopes or cluster in patches on the flat terraces at their foot. The revetted wall of small hillside fields outline the spurs in continuous bands of pasture, and at intervals quaint colonies of huts cling to the hills and seem ready to slither down into the wild rush of the river below. Such as a whole is the Kunar valley, which, centuries after Alexander had passed across it, was occupied by Kafir tribes who may have succeeded the Aspasian peoples, or who may indeed represent them. All the wild mountain districts west of the Kunar are held by Kafirs still, and there is nothing remarkable in the fact (which we shall see later on) that just to the east of the Kunar valley Alexander found a people claiming the same origin there that the Kafirs of Kashmund and Bashgol claim now.

It was during the fighting in the Kunar valley that we hear so much of that brilliant young leader Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, who was then shaping his career for a Royal destiny in Egypt. With all the thrilling incidents of the actual combat we have no space to deal, and much as they would serve to lighten the prosaic tale of the progress of Alexander's explorations, we must reluctantly leave them to Arrian and the Greek historians. We are told that after the Kunar valley action Alexander crossed the mountains and came to a city at their base called Arigaion. Assuming that he crossed the Kunar watershed by the Spinasuka Pass, which leads direct from Pashat (the present capital of Kunar) into Bajaor, he would be close to Nawagai, the present chief town of Bajaor. Arigaion would therefore be not far from Nawagai. The place was burnt down; but recognizing the strategic importance of the position, he left Krateros to fortify it and make it the residence not only of such tribespeople as chose to return to their houses, but also of such of his own soldiers as were unfit for further service. This seems to have been his invariable custom, and accounts for the traditions of Greek origin which we still find so common in the north-western borderland of India. The story of this part of his expedition reads almost as if it were journalistic. Then, as now, the tribesmen took to the hills. Then, as now, their position and approximate numbers could be ascertained by their camp-fires at night. Ptolemy was intelligence officer and conducted the reconnaissance, and on his report the plan of attack was arranged. This was probably the most considerable action fought by Alexander in the hills north of India. The conflict was sharp but decisive, and the Aspasians, who had taken up their position on a hill, were utterly routed. According to Ptolemy 40,000 prisoners and 230,000 oxen were taken, and the fact that the pick of the oxen were sent to Macedonia to improve the breed there shows how complete was the line of communication between Greece and Upper India. The next tribe to be dealt with were the Assakenians, and to reach them it was necessary to cross the Gauraios, or Panjkora, which was deep, swift as to current, and full of boulders. As we find no mention in Arrian's history of the passage of the Suastos (Swat River) following on that of the Gauraios, we must conclude that Alexander crossed the Panjkora below its junction with the Swat, where the river being much enclosed by hills would certainly afford a most difficult passage. There are other reasons which tend to confirm this view.

The next important action which took place was the siege and capture of the city called Massaga, which was only taken after four days' severe fighting, during which Alexander was wounded in the foot by an arrow. M'Crindle[1] quotes the various names given in Sanscrit and Latin literature, and agrees with Rennel in adopting the site of Mashanagar, mentioned by the Emperor Baber in his memoirs as lying two marches from Bajaor on the river Swat, as representing Massaga. M. Court heard from the Yasufzais of Swat that there was a place called by the double name of Mashkine and Massanagar 24 miles from Bajaor. It is not to be found now, but there is in the survey maps a place on the Swat River about that distance from Nawagai (the chief town in Bajaor) called Matkanai, close to the Malakand Pass, and this is no doubt the place referred to. It is very difficult even in these days to get a really authoritative spelling for place-names beyond, or even within, the British Indian border; and as these surveys were made during the progress of the Tirah expedition when the whole country was armed, such information as could be obtained was often unusually sketchy. If this is the site of Massaga it would be directly on the line of Alexander's route from Nawagai eastwards, as he rounded the spurs of the Koh-i-Mor which he left to the north of him, and struck the Panjkora some miles below its junction with the Swat. There can be little doubt that it was near this spot that the historic siege took place. His next objective were two cities called Ora and Bazira, which were obviously close together and interdependent. Cunningham places the position of Bazira, at the town of Rustam (on the Kalapani River), which is itself built on a very extensive old mound and represents the former site of a town called Bazar. Rustam stands midway between the Swat and Indus, and must always have been an important trade centre between the rich valley of Swat and the towns of the Indus. Ora may possibly be represented by the modern Bazar which is close by. Geographically this is the most probable solution of the problem of Alexander's movements, there being direct connection with the Swat valley through Rustam which is not to be found farther north. Alexander would have to cross the Malakand from the Swat valley to the Indus plains, but would encounter no further obstacles if he moved on this route. Bazira made a fair show of resistance, but the usual Greek tactics of drawing the enemy out into the plains was resorted to by Koenos with a certain amount of success; and when Ora fell before Alexander, the full military strength of Bazira dispersed and fled for refuge to the rock Aornos.

So far we have followed this Greek expedition into regions which are beyond the limits of modern Afghanistan, but the new geographical detail acquired during the most recent of our frontier campaigns enables new arguments to be adduced in favour of old theories (or the reverse), and this departure from the strict political boundaries of our subject leads us to regions which are at any rate historically and strategically connected with it. With Aornos, however, our excursion into Indian fields will terminate. Round about Aornos historical controversy has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century, and it is not my intention to add much to the literature which already concerns itself with that doubtful locality. I believe, however, that it will be some time yet before the last word is said about Aornos. Of all the positions assigned to that marvellous feat of arms performed by the Greek force, that which was advanced by the late General Sir James Abbott in 1854 is the most attractive—so attractive, indeed, that it is hard to surrender it. The discrepant accounts of the capture of the famous "rock" given by Arrian (from the accounts of Ptolemy, one of the chief actors in the scene), Curtius, Diodoros, and Strabo obviously deal with a mountain position of considerable extent, where was a flattish summit on which cavalry could act, and the base of it was washed by the Indus. All, however, write as if it were an isolated mountain with a definite circuit of, according to Arrian, 23 miles and a height of 6200 feet (according to Diodoros of 12 miles and over 9000 feet). The "rock" was situated near the city of Embolina, which we know to have been on the Indus and which is probably to be identified more or less with the modern town of Amb. The mountain was forest-covered, with good soil and water springs. It was precipitous towards the Indus, yet "not so steep but that 220 horse and war engines were taken up to the summit," all of which Sir James Abbott finds compatible with the hill Mahaban which is close to Amb, and answers all descriptions excepting that of isolation, for it is but a lofty spur of the dividing ridge between the Chumla, an affluent of the Buner River, and the lower Mada Khel hills, culminating in a peak overlooking the Indus from a height of 7320 feet. The geographical situation is precisely such as we should expect under the circumstances. The tribespeople driven from Bazira (assuming Bazira to be near Rustam) following the usual methods of the mountaineers of the Indian frontier, would retreat to higher and more inaccessible fastnesses in their rugged hills. There is but one way open from Rustam towards the Indus offering them the chance of safety from pursuit, and undoubtedly they followed that track. It leads up to the great divide north of them and then descends into the Chumla valley leading to that of Buner, and the hills which were to prove their salvation might well be those flanking the Chumla on the south, rising as they do to ever higher altitudes as they approach the Indus. This, in fact, is Mahaban. By all the rules of Native strategy in Northern India this is precisely the position which they would take up.

Aornos appears to have been a kind of generic name with the Greeks, applied to mountain positions of a certain class, for we hear of another Aornos in Central Asia, and the word translated "rock" seems to mean anything from a mountain (as in the present case) to a sand-bank (as in the case of the voyage of Nearkos). No isolated hill such as would exactly fit in with Arrian's description exists in that part of the Indus valley, and no physical changes such as alteration in the course of the Indus, or such as might be effected by the tectonic forces of Nature, are likely to have removed such a mountain. Abbott's identification has therefore been generally accepted for many years, and it has remained for our latest authority to question it seriously.

The latest investigator into the archÆological interests of the Indian trans-frontier is Dr. M. A. Stein, the Inspector-General of Education in India. The marvellous results of his researches in Chinese Turkistan have rendered his name famous all over the archÆological world, and it is to him that we owe an entirely new conception of the civilization of Indo-China during the Buddhist period. Dr. Stein's methods are thorough. He leaves nothing to speculation, and indulges in no romance, whatever may be the temptation. He takes with him on his archÆological excursions a trained native surveyor of the Indian survey, and he thus not only secures an exact illustration of his own special area of investigation, but incidentally he adds immensely to our topographical knowledge of little known regions. This is specially necessary in those wild districts which are more immediately contiguous to the Indian border, for it is seldom that the original surveys of these districts can be anything more than topographical sketches acquired, sometimes from a distance, sometimes on the spot, but generally under all the disadvantages and disabilities of active campaigning, when the limited area within which survey operations can be carried on in safety is often very restricted. Thus we have very presentable geographical maps of the regions of Alexander's exploits in the north, but we have not had the opportunity of examining special sites in detail, and there are doubtless certain irregularities in the map compilation. This is very much the case as regards those hill districts on the right bank of the Indus immediately adjoining the Buner valley both north and south of it. Mahaban, the mountain which in Abbott's opinion best represents what is to be gathered from classical history of the general characteristics of Aornos, is south of Buner, overlooking the lower valley close to the Indus River. Dr. Stein formed the bold project of visiting Mahaban personally, and taking a surveyor with him. It was a bold project, for there were many difficulties both political and physical. The tribespeople immediately connected with Mahaban are the Gaduns—a most unruly people, constantly fighting amongst themselves; and it was only by seizing on the exact psychological moment when for a brief space our political representative had secured a lull in these fratricidal feuds, that Stein was enabled to act. He actually reached Mahaban under most trying conditions of wind and weather, and he made his survey. Incidentally he effected some most remarkable Buddhist identifications; but so far as the identification of Mahaban with Aornos is concerned he came to the conclusion that such identification could not possibly be maintained. This opinion is practically based on the impossibility of fitting the details of the story of Aornos to the physical features of Mahaban. It is unfortunate (but perhaps inevitable) that even in those incidents and operations of Alexander's expedition where his footsteps can be distinctly traced from point to point, where geographical conformation absolutely debars us from alternative selection of lines of action, the details of the story never do fit the physical conditions which must have obtained in his time.

As the history of Alexander is in the main a true history, there is absolutely no justification for cutting out the thrilling incident of Aornos from it. There was undoubtedly an Aornos somewhere near the Indus, and there was a singularly interesting fight for its possession, the story of which includes so many of the methods and tactics familiar to every modern north-west frontiersman, that we decline to believe it to be all invention. But the story was written a century after Alexander's time, compiled from contemporary records it is true, but leaving no margin for inquiry amongst survivors as to details. If, instead of ancient history, we were to turn to the century-old records of our own frontier expeditions and rewrite them with no practical knowledge of the geography of the country, and no witness of the actual scene to give us an ex parte statement of what happened (for no single participator in an action is ever able to give a correct account of all the incidents of it), what should we expect? Some furtive investigator might study the story of the ascent of the famous frontier mountain, the Takht-i-Suliman (a veritable Aornos!), during the expedition of 1882-83, and find it impossible to recognize the account of its steep and narrow ascent, requiring men to climb on their hands and knees, with the fact that a very considerable force did finally ascend by comparatively easy slopes and almost dropped on to the heads of the defenders. Such incidents require explanation to render them intelligible, and at this distance of time it is only possible to balance probabilities as regards Aornos.

Alexander's objective being India, eventually, and the Indus (of India, not of the Himalayas) immediately, he would take the road which led straightest from Massaga to the Indus; it is inconceivable that he would deliberately involve himself and his army in the maze of pathless mountains which enclose the head of Buner. He would certainly take the road which leads from Malakand to the Indus, on which lies Rustam. It has always been a great high-road. One of the most interesting discoveries in connection with the Tirah campaign was the old Buddhist road, well engineered and well graded, which leads from Malakand to the plains of the Punjab—those northern plains which abound with Buddhist relics. If we identify Bazar, or Rustam, with Bazireh we may assume with certainty that a retreating tribe, driven from any field of defeat on the straight high-road which links Panjkora with the Indus, would inevitably retire to the nearest and the highest mountain ridge that was within reach. This is certainly the ridge terminating with Mahaban and flanking the Buner valley on the south, a refuge in time of trouble for many a lawless people. Probability, then, would seem to favour Mahaban, or some mountain position near it. The modern name of this peak is Shah Kot, and it is occupied by a mixed and irregular folk. Here Dr. Stein spent an unhappy night in a whirling snow-storm, but he succeeded in examining the mountain thoroughly. He decided that that position of Mahaban could not possibly represent Aornos, for the following reasons:—The hill-top is too narrow for military action; the ascent, instead of being difficult, is easy from every side; and there is no spring of water on the summit, which summit must have been a very considerable plateau to admit of the action described; finally, there is no great ravine, and therefore no opportunity for the erection of the mound described by Arrian, which enabled the Greeks to fusilade the enemy's camp with darts and stones. Can we reconcile these discrepancies with the text of history?

After the reduction of Bazira Alexander marched towards the Indus and received the submission of Peukelaotis, which was then the capital of what is now, roughly speaking, the Peshawur district. The site of this ancient capital appears to be ascertained beyond doubt, and we must regard it as fixed near Charsadda, about 17 miles north-east (not north-west as M'Crindle has it) from Peshawur. From this place Alexander marched to Embolina, which is said to be a city close adjoining the rock of Aornos. On the route thither he is said by Arrian to have taken "many other small towns seated upon that river," i.e. the Indus; two princes of that province, CophÆus and Assagetes, accompanying him. This sufficiently indicates that his march must have been up the right bank of the Indus, which would be the natural route for him to follow. Arrived at Embolina, he arranged for a base of supplies at that point, and then, with "Archers, Agrians, CÆnus' Troop" and the choicest, best armed, and most expeditious foot out of the whole army, besides 200 auxiliary horse and 100 equestrian archers, he marched towards the "rock" (8 miles distant), and on the first day chose a place convenient for an encampment. The day after, he pitched his tents much higher. The ancient Embolina may not be the modern Amb, but Amb undoubtedly is an extremely probable site for such a base of supplies to be formed, whether the final objective were Mahaban or any place (as suggested by Stein) higher up the river. The fact that there is a similarity in the names Amb and Embolina need not militate against the adoption of the site of Amb as by far the most probable that any sagacious military commander would select. A mere resemblance between the ancient and modern names of places may, of course, be most deceptive. On the other hand it is often a most valuable indication, and one certainly not to be neglected. Place-names last with traditional tenacity in the East, and obscured as they certainly would be by Greek transliteration (after all, not worse than British transliteration), they still offer a chance of identifying old positions such as nothing else can offer excepting accurate topographical description. Once again, if Embolina were not Amb it certainly ought to have been.

Alexander's next movements from Embolina most clearly indicate that he had to deal with a mountain position. There is no getting away from it, nor from the fact that the road to it was passable for horsemen, and therefore not insuperably difficult. At the same time he had to move as slowly as any modern force would move, for he was traversing the rough spurs of a hill which ran to 7800 feet in altitude. Further, the mountain was high enough to render signalling by fire useful. The "rock" was obviously either a mountain itself or it was perched on the summit of a mountain. Ptolemy as usual had conducted the reconnaissance. He established himself unobserved in a temporary position on the crest, within reach of the enemy, who attempted to dispossess him and failed; and it was he who (according to the story) signalled to Alexander. Ptolemy had followed a route, with guides, which proved rough and difficult, and Alexander's attempt to join him next day was prevented by the fierce activity of the mountaineers, who were plainly fighting from the mountain spurs. Then, it is said, Alexander communicated with Ptolemy by night and arranged a combined plan of attack. When it "was almost night" of the following day Alexander succeeded in joining Ptolemy, but only after severe fighting during the ascent. Then the combined forces attacked the "rock" and failed. All this so far is plain unvarnished mountain warfare, and the incidents follow each other as naturally as in any modern campaign. It becomes clear that the "rock" was a position on the crest of a high mountain, the ascent of which was rendered doubly difficult by fierce opposition. But it was practicable. Nothing is said about cavalry ascending. Why, then, did Alexander take cavalry? This question leads to another. Why do our frontier generals always burden themselves with cavalry on these frontier expeditions? They cannot act on the mountain-sides, and they are useless for purposes of pursuit. The answer is that they are most valuable for preserving the line of communication. Without the cavalry Alexander had no overwhelming force at his disposal, and it would not be very hazardous if we assumed that the force which actually reached the crest of the mountain was a comparatively small one—much of the original brigade being dispersed on the route.

Dr. Stein found the ascent too easy to reconcile with history. This might possibly be the effect of long weather action of the slopes of mountains subject to severe snow-falls. Twenty-three centuries of wind and weather have beaten on those scarred and broken slopes since Alexander's day. Those twenty-three centuries have had such effect on the physical outlines of land conformation elsewhere as absolutely to obliterate the tracks over which the Greek force most undoubtedly passed. What may have been the exact effect of them on Mahaban, whether (as usual) they rounded off sharp edges, cut out new channels, obliterated some water springs and gave rise to others, smoothing down the ruggedness of spurs and shaping the drainage, we cannot say. Only it is certain that the slopes of Mahaban—and its crest for that matter—are not what they were twenty-three centuries ago. We shall never recognize Aornos by its superficial features. Then, in the Greek story, follows the episode of filling up the great ravine which yawned between the Greek position and the "rock" on which the tribespeople were massed, and the final abandonment of the latter when, after three days' incessant toil, a mound had been raised from which it could be assailed by the darts and missiles of the Greeks. Arrian tells the story with a certain amount of detail. He states that a "huge rampart" was raised "from the level of that part of the hill where their entrenchment was" by means of "poles and stakes," the whole being "perfected in three days." On the fourth day the Greeks began to build a "mound opposite the rock," and Alexander decided to extend the "Rampart" to the mound. It was then that the "Barbarians" decided to surrender.

In the particular translation from which I have quoted (Rookes, 1829) there is nothing said about the "great ravine" of which Stein writes that it is clearly referred to by "all texts," and a very little consideration will show that it could never have existed. No matter what might have been the strength of Alexander's force it could only have been numbered by hundreds and not by thousands, when it reached the summit of the mountain. We might refer to the modern analogy of the expedition to the summit of the Takht-i-Suliman, where it was found quite impossible to maintain a few companies of infantry for more than two or three days. Numbers engaged in action are proverbially exaggerated, especially in the East; but the physical impossibility of keeping a large force on the top of a mountain must certainly be acknowledged. Even supposing there were a thousand men, and that no guards were required, and no reliefs, and that the whole force could apply themselves to filling up a "large ravine" with such "stakes and poles" as they could carry or drag from the mountain-slopes, it would take three months rather than three days to fill up any ravine which could possibly be called "large." General Abbott, as a scientific officer, was probably quite correct in his estimate of the "Rampart" as some sort of a "trench of approach with a parapet." There could not possibly have been a "great mound built of stakes and poles for crossing a ravine." It may be noted that Ptolemy's defensive work on his first arrival on the summit is called (or translated) "Rampart," and yet we know that it could only have been a palisade or an abattis. The story told by Arrian (and possibly maltreated by translators) is doubtless full of inaccuracies and exaggerations, but we decline to believe that it is pure invention. There is nothing in it, so far, which absolutely militates against the Mahaban of to-day (that refuge for Hindustani fanatics at one time, and for the discontented tribesfolk of the whole countryside through all time) being the Aornos of Arrian. No appearance of "precipices" is, however, to be found in the survey of the summit which accompanied Dr. Stein's report, and no opportunity for the defeated tribesmen to fall into the river. The story runs that the defeated mountaineers retreating from the victorious Greeks fell over the precipices in their hot haste, and that many of them were drowned in the Indus. This is indeed an incident which might be added as an effective addition to any tall story of a fight which took place on hills in the immediate neighbourhood of a river; but under no conceivable circumstances could it be adjusted to the formation of the Mahaban hill, even if it were admitted that armoured Greeks were any match in the hills for the fleet-footed and light-clad Indians. Probably the incident is purely decorative, but we need not therefore assume that the whole story is fiction. It has been pointed out by Sir Bindon Blood, who commanded the latest expedition to the Buner valley, that failing Mahaban there is north of the Buner River, immediately overlooking the Indus, a peak called Baio with precipitous flanks on the river side, which would fit in with the tale of Aornos better even than Mahaban. The Buner River joins the Indus through an impassable gorge steeply entrenched on either side, and a mile or two above it is the peak of Baio. So far as the Indus is concerned, that river presents no difficulties, for boats can be hauled up it far beyond Baio—even to Thakot. Looking northward or westward from above Kotkai one sees the river winding round the foot of the lower spurs of the Black Mountain on its left or eastern bank. Beyond is Baio on its right bank, towering (with a clumsy fort on its summit) over the Indus and forming part of a continuous ridge, beyond which again in the blue distance is the line of hills over which is the Ambela Pass at the head of the Chumla valley. (It is curious how the nomenclature hereabouts echoes faintly the Greek Embolina.) Above Baio is the ford of Chakesar, from which runs an old-time road westward to Manglaor, once the Buddhist capital of Swat. It would be all within reach of either Indians or Greeks, so we need not quite give up the thrilling tale of Aornos yet, even if Dr. Stein defeats us on Mahaban.

Then follows the narrative of an excursion into the country of the Assakenoi and the capture of the elephants, which had been taken for safety into the hills. The scene of this short expedition must have been near the Indus, and was probably the valley of the Chumla or Buner immediately under Mahaban, to the north. There was in those far-off days a different class of vegetation on the Indus banks to any which exists at present. We know that a good deal of the Indus plain below its debouchment from the hills was a reedy swamp in Alexander's time, and it was certainly the haunt of the rhinoceros for centuries subsequently, and consequently quite suitable for elephants, and it is probable that for some little distance above its debouchment the same sort of pasturage was obtainable. Most interesting perhaps of all the incidents in Arrian's history is that which now follows. We are told that "Alexander then entered that part of the country which lies between the Kophen and the Indus, where Nysa is said to be situate." Other authorities, however, Curtius (viii. 10), Strabo (xv. 697), and Justin (xii. 7), make him a visitor to Nysa before he crossed the Choaspes and took Massaga. All this is very vague; the river he crossed immediately before taking Massaga was certainly the Gauraios or Panjkora.

There is a certain element of confusion in classical writings in dealing with river names which we need not wait to investigate; nor is it a matter of great importance whether Alexander retraced his steps all the way to the country of Nysa (for no particular reason), or whether he visited Nysa as he passed from the Kunar valley to the Panjkora. The latter is far more probable, as Nysa (if we have succeeded in identifying that interesting relic of pre-Alexandrian Greek occupation) would be right in his path. Various authorities have placed Nysa in different parts of the wide area indicated as lying between the Kophen (Kabul) and the Indus, but none, before the Asmar Boundary Commission surveyed the Kunar valley in the year 1894, had the opportunity of studying the question in loco. Even then there was no possibility of reaching the actual site which was indicated as the site of Nysa; and when subsequently in 1898 geographical surveys of Swat were pushed forward wherever it was possible for surveyors to obtain a footing, they never approached that isolated band of hills at the foot of which Nysa once lay. The result of inquiries instituted during the progress of demarcating the boundary between Afghanistan and the independent districts of the east from Asmar have been given in the R.G.S. Journal, vol. vii., and no subsequent information has been obtained which might lead me to modify the views therein expressed, excepting perhaps in the doubtful point as to when, in the course of his expedition, Alexander visited Nysa. In the first engraved Atlas sheet of the Indian Survey dealing with the regions east of the Kunar River, the name of Nysa, or Nyssa, is recorded as one of the most important places in that neighbourhood, and it is placed just south of the Koh-i-Mor, a spur, or extension, from the eastern ridges of the Kunar valley. From what source of information this addition to the map was made it is difficult to say, now that the first compiler of those maps (General Walker) has passed away. But it was undoubtedly a native source. Similarly the information obtained at Asmar, that a large and scattered village named Nusa was to be found in that position, was also from a native (Yusufzai) source. No possible cause can be suggested for this agreement between the two native authorities, and it is unlikely that the name could have been invented by both. At the same time Nysa, or Nusa, is not now generally known to the borderland people near the Indian frontier, and it is certainly no longer an important village. It is probably no more than scattered and hidden ruins. Above it towers the three-peaked hill called the Koh-i-Mor, whose outlines can be clearly distinguished from Peshawur on any clear day, and on that hill grows the wild vine and the ivy, even as they grow in glorious trailing and exuberant masses on the scarped slopes of the Kafiristan hills to the west.

We may repeat here what Arrian has to say about Nysa. "The city was built by Dionysos or Bacchus when he conquered the Indians, but who this Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the Indians is hard to determine. Whether he was that Theban who from Thebes or he who from Tmolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous expedition into India ... is very uncertain." So here we have a clear reference to previous invasions of India from Greece, which were regarded as historical in Arrian's time. However, as soon as Alexander arrived at Nysa a deputation of NysÆans, headed by one Akulphis, waited on him, and, after recovering from the astonishment that his extraordinary appearance inspired, they presented a petition. "The NysÆans entreat thee O King, for the reverence thou bearest to Dionysos, their God, to leave their city untouched ... for Bacchus ... built this city for an habitation for such of his soldiers as age or accident had rendered unfit for military service.... He called this city Nysa (Nuson) after the name of his nurse ... and the mountain also, which is so near us, he would have denominated Meros (or the thigh) alluding to his birth from that of Jupiter ... and as an undoubted token that the place was founded by Bacchus, the ivy which is to be found nowhere else throughout all India, flourishes in our territories." Alexander was pleased to grant the petition, and ordered that a hundred of the chief citizens should join his camp and accompany him. It was then that Akulphis, with much native shrewdness, suggested that if he really had the good of the city at heart he should take two hundred of the worst citizens instead of one hundred of the best—a suggestion which appealed at once to Alexander's good sense, and the demand was withdrawn. Alexander then visited the mountain and sacrificed to Bacchus, his troops meanwhile making garlands of ivy "wherewith they crowned their heads, singing and calling loudly upon the god, not only by the name of Dionysos, but by all his other names." A sort of Bacchic orgy!

But who were the NysÆans, and what became of them? In Arrian's Indika he says: "The Assakenoi" (who inhabited the Swat valley east of Nysa) "are not men of great stature like the Indians ... not so brave nor yet so swarthy as most Indians. They were in old times subject to the Assyrians; then after a period of Median rule submitted to the Persians ... the Nysaioi, however, are not an Indian race, but descendants of those who came to India with Dionysos"; he adds that the mountain "in the lower slopes of which Nysa is built" is designated Meros, and he clearly distinguishes between Assakenoi and Nysaioi. M. de St. Martin says that the name Nysa is of Persian or Median origin; but although we know that Assyrians, Persians, and Medes all overran this part of India before Alexander, and all must have left, as was the invariable custom of those days, representatives of their nationality behind them who have divided with subsequent Skyths the ethnographical origin of many of the Upper Indian valley tribes of to-day, there seems no sound reason for disputing the origin of this particular name.

Ptolemy barely mentions Nysa, but we learn something about the NysÆans from fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes, which have been collected by Dr. Schwanbeck and translated by M'Crindle. We learn that this pre-Alexandrian Greek Dionysos was a most beneficent conqueror. He taught the Indians how to make wine and cultivate the fields; he introduced the system of retiring to the slopes of Meros (the first "hill station" in India) in the hot weather, where "the army recruited by the cold breezes and the water which flowed fresh from the fountains, recovered from sickness.... Having achieved altogether many great and noble works, he was regarded as a deity, and obtained immortal honours."

Again we read, in a fragment quoted by Strabo, that the reason of calling the mountain above Nysa by the name of Meron was that "ivy grows there, and also the vine, although its fruit does not come to perfection, as the clusters, on account of the heaviness of the rains, fall off the trees before ripening. They" (the Greeks) "further call the Oxydrakai descendants of Dionysos, because the vine grew in their country, and their processions were conducted with great pomp, and their kings, on going forth to war, and on other occasions, marched in Bacchic fashion with drums beating," etc.

Again we find, in a fragment quoted by PolyÆnus, that Dionysos, "in his expedition against the Indians, in order that the cities might receive him willingly, disguised the arms with which he had equipped his troops, and made them wear soft raiment and fawn-skins. The spears were wrapped round with ivy, and the thyrsus had a sharp point. He gave the signal for battle by cymbals and drums instead of the trumpet; and, by regaling the enemy with wine, diverted their thoughts from war to dancing. These and all other Bacchic orgies were employed in the system of warfare by which he subjugated the Indians and the rest of Asia."

All these lively legends point to a very early subjugation of India by a Western race (who may have been of Greek origin) before the invasions of Assyrian, Mede, or Persian. It could not well have been later than the sixth century B.C., and might have been earlier by many centuries. The NysÆans, whose city Alexander spared, were the descendants of those conquerors who, coming from the West, were probably deterred by the heat of the plains of India from carrying their conquests south of the Punjab. They settled on the cool and well-watered slopes of those mountains which crown the uplands of Swat and Bajaur, where they cultivated the vine for generations, and after the course of centuries, through which they preserved the tradition of their Western origin, they welcomed the Macedonian conqueror as a man of their own faith and nation. It seems possible that they may have extended their habitat as far eastward as the upper Swat valley and the mountain region of the Indus, and at one time may have occupied the site of the ancient capital of the Assakenoi, Massaga, which there is reason to suppose stood near the position now occupied by the town of Matakanai; but they were clearly no longer there in the days of Alexander, and must be distinguished as a separate race altogether from the Assakenoi. As the centuries rolled on, this district of Swat, together with the valley of Dir, became a great headquarters of Buddhism. It is from this part of the trans-frontier that some of the most remarkable of those sculptures have been taken which exhibit so strong a Greek and Roman influence in their design. They are the undoubted relics of stupas, dagobas, and monasteries belonging to a period of a Buddhist occupation of the country, which was established after Alexander's time. Buddhism did not become a State religion till the reign of Asoka, grandson of that Sandrakottos (Chandragupta) to whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador; and it is improbable that any of these buildings existed in the time of the Greek invasion, or we should certainly have heard of them.

But along with these Buddhist relics there have been lately unearthed certain strange inscriptions, which have been submitted by their discoverer, Major Deane,[2] to a congress of Orientalists, who can only pronounce them to be in an unknown tongue. They have been found in the Indus valley east of Swat, most of them being engraved on stone slabs which have been built into towers, now in ruins. The towers are comparatively modern, but it by no means follows that these inscriptions are so. It is the common practice of Pathan builders to preserve any engraved or sculptured relic that they may find, by utilizing them as ornamental features in their buildings. It has probably been a custom from time immemorial. In 1895 I observed evidences of this propensity in the graveyard at Chagan Sarai, in the Kunar valley, where many elaborately carved Buddhist fragments were let into the sides of their roughly built "chabutras," or sepulchres, with the obvious purpose of gaining effect thereby. No one would say where those Buddhist fragments came from. The Kunar valley appears at first sight to be absolutely free from Buddhist remains, although it would naturally be selected as a most likely field for research. These undeciphered inscriptions may possibly be found to be vastly more ancient than the towers they adorned. It is, at any rate, a notable fact about them that some of them "recall a Greek alphabet of archaic type." So great an authority as M. Senart inclines to the opinion that their authors must be referred to the Skythic or Mongolian invaders of India; but he refers at the same time to a sculptured and inscribed monument in the Louvre, of unknown origin, the characters on which resemble those of the new script. "The subject of this sculpture seems to be a Bacchic procession." What if it really is a Bacchic procession, and the characters thereon inscribed prove to be an archaic form of Greek—the forgotten forms of the NysÆan alphabet?

Whilst surveying in the Kunar valley along the Kafiristan borderland, I made the acquaintance of two Kafirs of Kamdesh, who stayed some little time in the Afghan camp, in which my own tent was pitched, and who were objects of much interest to the members of the Boundary Commission there assembled. They submitted gracefully enough to much cross-examination, and amongst other things they sang a war-hymn to their god Gish, and executed a religious dance. Gish is not supreme in their mythology, but he is the god who receives by far the greatest amount of attention, for the Kafir of the lower Bashgol is ever on the raid, always on the watch for the chance of a Mahomedan life. It is, indeed, curious that whilst tolerant enough to allow of the existence of Mahomedan communities in their midst, they yet rank the life of a Mussulman as the one great object of attainment; so that a Kafir's social position is dependent on the activity he displays in searching out the common enemy, and his very right to sing hymns of adoration to his war-god is strictly limited by the number of lives he has taken. The hymn which these Kafirs recited, or sang, was translated word by word, with the aid of a Chitrali interpreter, by a Munshi, who has the reputation of being a most careful interpreter, and the following is almost a literal transcript, for which I am indebted to Dr. MacNab, of the Q.O. Corps of Guides:—

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?