The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c4.69

c4.69

The natural boundaries of India are the Himâlaya mountains, the river Indus, and the sea. But on the west, these limits have been so frequently overstepped by powerful kings that most authors, from the time of Alexander down to a very late period, have considered Eastern Ariana, or the greater part of Afghani-stan, as forming a portion of the Indian continent. Thus Pliny* says that "most writers do not fix the Indus as the western boundary (of India), but add to it the four satrapies of the Gedrosi, Arachotæ, Arii, and Paropamisadæ,—thus making the river Cophes its extreme boundary." Strabo† also says that "the Indians occupy (in part) some of the countries situated along the Indus, which formerly belonged to the Persians. Alexander deprived the Ariani of them, and established there settlements of his own. But Seleukus Nikator gave them to Sandrokottus, in consequence of a marriage contract, and received in return five hundred elephants.” The prince here mentioned is the well-known Chandra Gupta Maurya, whose grandson Asoka dispatched missionaries to the most distant parts of his empire for the propagation of Buddhism. *Alasadda*, or Alexandria ad Caucasum, the capital of the *Yona*, or Greek country, is recorded as one of these distant places; and as the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsang notices several stupas in that neighbourhood as the work of Asoka, we have the most satisfactory proofs of the Indian occupation of the Kabul valley in the third and fourth centuries before Christ. The completeness of this occupation is well shown by the use of the Indian language on the coins of the Bactrian Greeks and Indo-Scythians, down to A.D. 100, or perhaps even later; and although it is lost for the next two or three centuries, it again makes its appearance on the coins of the Abtelites, or White Huns, of the sixth century. In the following century, as we learn from the Chinese pilgrim, the king of Kapisa was a *Kshatriya*, or pure Hindu. During the whole of the tenth century the Kabul valley was held by a dynasty of Brahmans, whose power was not finally extinguished until towards the close of the reign of Mahmud Ghaznavi. Down to this time, therefore, it would appear that a great part of the population of eastern Afghanistan, including the whole of the Kabul valley, must have been of Indian descent, while the religion was pure Buddhism. During the rule of the Ghaznavis, whose late conversion to Muhammadanism had only added bigotry to their native ferocity, the persecution of idol-loving Buddhists was a pleasure as well as a duty. The idolaters were soon driven out, and with them the Indian element, which had subsisted for the Lacedaemonians, who had been waiting for the signal, now attacked the city. The Plataeans, seeing the enemy already inside and their own men falling, and knowing nothing of the plot, were seized with panic and, thinking that the Thebans were far more numerous than they really were, surrendered at discretion. But when they discovered that the Thebans were few, they took heart and, resolving to attack them, closed the gates and fell upon them.