The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c10.60

c10.60

The conquered provinces were formed into a separate satrapy, the twentieth, which was considered the richest and most populous province of the empire. It paid the enormous tribute of 360 Euboic talents of gold-dust, or 185 hundredweights, worth fully a million sterling, and constituting about one-third of the total bullion revenue of the Asiatic provinces. Although the exact limits of the Indian satrapy cannot be determined, we know that it was distinct from Arīa (Herāt), Arachosia (Kandahār), and Gandaria (North-western Panjāb). It must have comprised, therefore, the course of the Indus from Kālabāgh to the sea, including the whole of Sind, and perhaps included a considerable portion of the Panjāb east of the Indus. But when Alexander invaded the country, nearly two centuries later, the Indus was the boundary between the Persian empire and India, and both the Panjāb and Sind were governed by numerous native princes.¹ In ancient times the courses of the rivers were quite different from what they now are, and vast tracts in Sind and the Panjāb, now desolate, were then rich and prosperous.¹ This fact largely explains the surprising value of the tribute paid by the twentieth satrapy.