The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c16.66

c16.66

¹ For an account of the Samārāh lake, see Raverty, op. cit., pp. 465, 477. It is marked as Samaro on the India Office map. In Alexander’s time the Ran (Runn) of Cutch (Kachchh) must have been an estuary of the sea, extending northward to about parallel 25°, where the eastern arm of the great river fell into it. The lake was only a short distance from the mouth of the river (Arrian, *Anab.* vi, 20). The coast-line has extended enormously. The spot called Mughalbin, where Akbar’s officer, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, stood to get a view of the ocean, is now quite 50 miles from the sea. Farther west, at Somniyāni, near the Purāli (Arabios) river, the coast has advanced at least 20 miles since Alexander’s time. Most of the land to the south of Badin, which stands in about N. lat. 24° 40′, has been formed since the reign of Akbar: the coast-line had a mean latitude of about 24° 30′ in the eighth century when the Arab conquest took place. In Alexander’s time, a thousand years earlier, the coast-line was, of course, considerably farther north, but no man can delineate it with any approach to accuracy. The parallel of 25° may be taken as an approximate definition of the coast reconnoitred by Alexander. The land at the Kohrāi mouth (vulgo ‘Khori Creek’) now extends to about 23° 30′. (See Raverty, op. cit., pp. 468, 469, 470, 477, &c.; Haig, op. cit., pp. 136, 139; and a good paper by Mr. R. Sivewright ‘Cutch and the Ran’, *Geogr. Journal*, vol. xxix (1907), p. 518; also Sir Bartle Frere, ‘Notes on the Runn of Cutch’, ibid., 1871.) The first published account of the Runn is that by Alex. Burnes in his *Travels into Bokhara, &c.*, 1835 (2nd ed., vol. i, chap. xvii). The sites of the old harbours were still pointed out, e.g. at Nerona, about 20 miles NNW. of Bhūj, at Charee, Puchum, &c. Anchor-stones were found, and at Wawania, the wreck of a large vessel 15 ft. below the surface (pp. 320–5). The same work gives details of the changes caused by the great earthquake of 1819.