The Greeks in Bactria and India c27: Appendix 15. The Oxus Question To-day
The Greeks in Bactria and India c27
- Language
- English
Appendix 15. The Oxus Question To-day
c27.2
No competent person to-day believes that the Oxus ever entered the Caspian bodily in historical times. The dominant modern theory about the Oxus in the Greek period, as put forward by Professor A. Herrmann,¹ is that the river itself entered the Aral, as to-day, but that before reaching the Aral it threw off a branch into the huge Sary Kamish depression south-west of the Aral, and that that branch issued southward from Sary Kamish, flowed down the Uzboi channel, and entered the Caspian at Balkan Bay, admittedly the only point where a lost river could enter the Caspian. He relied on two things: (1) a study by W. (V. V.) Barthold² of Arab evidence of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and (2) an article in German by W. Obrutschew,³ who explored the Uzboi and published his results in Russian in 1890, of which book his German article is a summary.
c27.3
¹ *Petermanns Mitt.* 1913, ii, p. 70; 1930 p. 286; 1931 p. 75; *Gött. Abh.* xv, 1914 no. 4 (*the principal exposition*).
c27.4
² In R. Stube's *Quellen und Forschungen zur Erd- und Kulturkunde* II, 1910.
c27.5
³ *Petermanns Mitt.* 1914, i, p. 87.
c27.6
Herrmann has envisaged a regular lost river, perennial and large enough to carry shipping, not an occasional spill-way, though Obrutschew called it an overflow channel for Sary Kamish when it got full; but both were rather obsessed by the belief that they had got to explain the northern or Oxo-Caspian trade-route from India, which never existed (App. 14). It was unfortunate therefore that Obrutschew discovered two (dry) waterfalls on his line of route, which would necessitate unloading and reloading vessels twice, a point already rubbed in.⁴ Herrmann claimed one of these waterfalls, that at Igdy, as a confirmation of his view, it being, he thought, the waterfall of Polybius x, 48; it may suffice to say that Obrutschew gives the fall at Igdy as 3 to 5 metres high, while that in Polybius shoots the river clear to such a distance that a quarter of a mile of dry ground is left between cliff and water, a feat which even Niagara makes no attempt to emulate. In fact, that chapter in Polybius, with its Oxus running into the Caspian near Hyrcania (the Atrek again), is only a couple of yarns, told as such to Polybius or to his source: nomads can cross the Oxus because *either* (a) there is a miraculous waterfall *or* (b) the river conveniently dives underground for a space. They crossed in fact as Turkomans have always crossed, swimming and holding on to their swimming horses. Herrmann's theory is reproduced without comment on E. Herzfeld's map in Sakastan and elsewhere, but naturally has not escaped criticism;¹ for example, J. Kirste² has pointed out that Herrmann has neglected to notice the view of Fr. von Schwarz in his book Turkestan (1900) that the Uzboi was a salt-water channel connecting Aral and Caspian, which is why they were sometimes treated as a single sea (in fact, others beside von Schwarz have believed in a salt-water connection); and R. Hennig³ has recently collected examples of other rivers which were supposed in antiquity to discharge into, or send a branch into, some sea which they never in fact entered.
c27.7
⁴ By R. Hennig, *ib.* 1930 p. 288.
c27.8
¹ De Groot p. 16, on the Chinese evidence (which is conclusive that the Aral existed), calls Herrmann’s views on the Aral grotesque; but this does not necessarily touch the question of a lost river.
c27.9
² Wien SB CLXXXII, 1918, Abh. 2 p. 78.
c27.10
³ Klio XXVIII, 1935, p. 253; Terrae Incognitae 1936 p. 185.
c27.11
The scientific evidence is in a hopeless tangle. M. Konshin, who investigated the ground earlier than Obrutschew,⁴ and F. Walther, who investigated it later,⁵ gave results which on two different lines were incompatible with his and with a lost river; he in turn has declared that they are wrong, while Konshin has said that he is wrong.⁶ There seems to be no later scientific evidence, or rather, if such exists in Russia, it has not been made available to the western world. One important point, however, appears to have been overlooked. The Oxus is recorded to have burst through into Sary Kamish more than once during the nineteenth century, but it did not seek the Caspian or go any farther. If then 2000 years ago a perennial river, fed by the Oxus and large enough to carry shipping, flowed from Sary Kamish down the Uzboi to Balkan Bay, it would seem that the Oxus must have carried a far greater volume of water than it has done in modern times; certainly it then received some tributaries which do not now reach it, but on the other hand much more was being drawn off in Bactria for irrigation than in the nineteenth century.
c27.12
⁴ His results, published in Russian, are given by Moser, *À travers l’Asie Centrale* 1886 p. 228; E. Delmar Morgan, Proc. R. Geog. Soc. XIV, 1892, p. 236; Prince Kropotkin, J. Geog. Soc. XII, 1898, p. 306.
c27.13
⁵ Petermanns Mitt. 1898 p. 204; a good study.
c27.14
⁶ In a work of 1898 which I have not seen, probably in Russian.
c27.15
Here comes in Barthold’s Arab evidence.⁷ He says that only two Arab writers are independent witnesses, Kasvin in the fourteenth century and Kafizi-Abru in the fifteenth; both agree that in their day the Oxus entered the Aral by several mouths but sent a branch (whose route I cannot identify) over a waterfall and into the Caspian; and both state that in former times the whole river entered the Aral, the change having coincided with the appearance of the Mongols in the country. Now in Babylonia the Mongols utterly destroyed the irrigation system. If they did the same in Bactria, then the Oxus would suddenly increase in volume and might seek a new outlet, though it would remain strange that the new water got as far as Kwarizm before finding one. What knowledge of antiquity these two writers may have had I have no idea, neither do I know if their statements have been subjected to the necessary critical analysis; but evidently they met with no tradition that the Oxus had ever done this before, and so far as they go they are therefore against Herrmann’s view.
c27.16
⁷ I have been unable to see his German article which Herrmann used, but a summary of his views, from the Russian, appeared in the *Journal of the Geographical Society* XXII, 1903, p. 328. I have not looked for recent work on these Arab writers; it is not material to the point I want to make.
c27.17
I am not saying here that Herrmann’s theory for the Greek period is either right or wrong; no one can say that.¹ The Greek evidence does not support it, and the Arab evidence is *prima facie* against it; but that is not the point. The point, as I see it, is that it is not a question for scholars at all but for science, and that the only people who can settle it are the Russian Government; and apparently it may soon be too late. For it has been a Russian dream for centuries to ‘turn the Oxus back into the Caspian’; and the Soviet Government are credited with a plan² to break up the Oxus and to take one branch across the Kara-Kum desert (for irrigation purposes) to a point east of Balkan Bay, and another branch, which will join it there, from a point in the Khiva country down the Uzboi, avoiding the saline expanse of Sary Kamish; the two together will then enter the Caspian at Balkan Bay, if there be any water left to enter it. We are not explicitly told how far the plan has gone—if the amount of water available has been calculated, if the Uzboi has been surveyed (it used to be said that there was difficulty about the levels), and what is to be done with the Aral when half-dry; but there are said to have been ‘scientific expeditions’ and the branch across the Kara-Kum is said to have been begun. It is greatly to be hoped that, before work be started on the Uzboi, scientific experts may investigate *all* the various lines of evidence and decide whether that channel formerly carried fresh water, salt water, or no water at all (unless this has already been done); for once a river be brought down it the evidence will be destroyed, and the ‘Oxus question’ will, for the Greek scholar, remain for ever the nightmare which it has always been.
c27.18
¹ The *theory* might be right even if the actual course suggested be wrong.
c27.19
² N. Mikhaylov, *Soviet Geography* 1935 pp. 130-2.