The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c2.21

c2.21

This rapid survey of Hwen Thsang's route is sufficient to show the great extent and completeness of his Indian travels, which, as far as I am aware, have never been surpassed. Buchanan Hamilton's survey of the country was much more minute, but it was limited to the lower provinces of the Ganges in northern India and to the district of Mysore in southern India. Jacquemont's travels were much less restricted; but as that sagacious Frenchman's observations were chiefly confined to geology and botany and other scientific subjects, his journeyings in India have added but little to our knowledge of its geography. My own travels also have been very extensive throughout the length and breadth of northern India, from Peshawar and Multan near the Indus, to Rangoon and Prome on the Irawadi, and from Kashmir and Ladâk to the mouth of the Indus and the banks of the Narbada. Of southern India I have seen nothing, and of western India I have seen only Bombay, with the celebrated caves of Elephanta and Kanhari. But during a long service of more than thirty years in India, its early history and geography have formed the chief study of my leisure hours; while for the last four years of my residence these subjects were my sole occupation, as I was then employed by the Government of India as Archæological Surveyor, to examine and report upon the antiquities of the country. The favourable opportunity which I thus enjoyed for studying its geography was used to the best of my ability; and although much still remains to be discovered I am glad to be able to say that my researches were signally successful in fixing the sites of many of the most famous cities of ancient India. As all of these will be described in the following account, I will notice here only a few of the more prominent of my discoveries, for the purpose of showing that I have not undertaken the present work without much previous preparation.