The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c16.19

c16.19

These facts, although indisputably true, have been generally ignored in practice by the historians of Alexander, who have pretended to trace the line of his river voyage on modern maps, and to 'identify' town after town on the banks of the several rivers. All such identifications are vain. No man can tell in which of the ancient beds the Chināb or any of the other rivers named flowed in the time of Alexander, and, when the positions of the rivers are not ascertainable, it is clear that we cannot reasonably expect to identify places on their banks. The most that is possible is to give general indications of the course of the voyage and of the location of the principal nations encountered by Alexander. The sites of the towns and the precise positions of the confluences and crossing-places mentioned by the ancient historians cannot be determined. Inasmuch as the courses of all the rivers were then much shorter than they now are, all the confluences must have been situated considerably farther north than at present, and this *a priori* inference appears to be fully supported by observation of the most ancient beds of the streams. The confluence of the Akesinēs and Hydaspes, the first of the four confluences described by Arrian, probably was situated not very far from the modern town of Jhang, and approximately in N. lat. 31°.¹