Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c29.t2.17

v2.c29.t2.17

Traditions of Greek Settlements.—Amidst these ruins of the Johyas, the name of Sikandar Rumi (Alexander the Great) [187] has fixed itself, and the desert retains the tradition that the ruin called Rangmahall, the ‘painted palace,’ near Dandusar, was the capital of a prince of this region punished by a visitation of the Macedonian conqueror. History affords no evidence of Alexander’s passage of the Gara, though the scene of his severest conflict was in that nook of the Panjab not remote from the lands of the Johyas. But though the chronicler of Alexander does not sanction our indulging in this speculation, the total darkness in which we appear doomed to remain with regard to Bactria and the petty Grecian kingdoms on the Indus, established by him, does not forbid our surmise, that by some of these, perhaps the descendants of Python, such a visitation might have happened.¹ The same traditions assert that these regions were not always either arid or desolate, and the living chronicle alluded to in the note repeated elsewhere given, which dated its deterioration from the drying up of the Hakra river, which came from the Panjab, and flowing through the heart of this country, emptied itself into the Indus between Rohri Bhakkar and Uchh.