The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s1.t11.25

c5.s1.t11.25

All the accounts of Aornos agree in describing it as a rocky hill of great height and steepness. Justin calls it *saxum miræ asperitatis et altitudinis*, “an exceedingly rugged and lofty rock.”* Diodorus, Strabo, Arrian, Curtius, and Philostratus, all call it *petra*, or a “rock fort.” Its rocky ruggedness was, therefore, a special feature of *Aornos*. According to Arrian, it was “only accessible by one difficult path, cut out by hand, and it possessed a fine spring of pure water on the very summit, besides wood and sufficient arable soil for the cultivation of one thousand men.” The last expression is still in common use in India, under the form of ploughs of land, and means simply as much land as one man can plough in a day. The same thing was expressed by the Greeks and Romans by yokes, each being as much as one yoke of oxen could plough in a single day. Now the smallest plough of land would not be less than 100 feet square, or 10,000 square feet, which would give 10,000,000 square feet for 1000 men. This would show an area of 4000 feet in length by 2500 feet in breadth, or, making allowance for buildings, of one mile in length by half a mile in breadth, or 2 miles in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth, which is just the size of Gwalior. But if such a vast fortress as Gwalior had ever existed on the western frontier of India, it would certainly not have escaped the notice of the early Muhammadan conquerors, and it could scarcely have eluded the searching inquiries of General Court and General Abbott. I, therefore, look upon the thousand ploughs of land as another gross exaggeration of Alexander's followers for the sake of ministering to their master's vanity. I accept the one difficult path of access and the spring of pure water, as two of the necessary possessions of a strong military post, but I unhesitatingly reject the 100 ploughs of arable land, for if such an extensive tract as half a square mile of irrigable land had ever existed on the top of a hill in this arid district, I cannot believe that such an important and valuable site ever would have been abandoned.