The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s2.t3.43

c5.s2.t3.43

I have now described all the different parts of this great city, the ruins of which, covering an area of six square miles, are more extensive, more interesting, and in much better preservation than those of any other ancient place in the Panjab. The city of *Sirkap*, with its citadel of *Hatiál*, and its detached works of *Bir* and *Kacha-kot*, has a circuit of 4 3/4 miles; and the large fort of *Sir-Suk*, with its outwork, is of the same size, each of them being nearly as large as Shah Jahan's imperial city of Delhi. But the number and size of the stupas, monasteries, and other religious buildings are even more wonderful than the great extent of the city. Here both coins and antiquities are found in far greater numbers than in any other place between the Indus and Jhelam. This then must be the site of Taxila, which, according to the unanimous testimony of ancient writers, was the largest city between the Indus and Hydaspes. Strabo and Hwen Thsang both speak of the fertility of its lands, and the latter specially notices the numbers of its springs and water-courses. As this description is applicable only to the rich lands lying to the north of the Tabrâ Nala, which are amply irrigated by numerous channels drawn from the Haro river, the proof of my identification is complete. Burnes crossed this tract in 1832, when he encamped at Usmân Khatar, 3 miles to the north of Shah-dheri, and about 1 mile to the south of the Haro river. He describes the village as standing “on a plain at the mouth of a valley close to the base of the outlying hills.”* This agrees most exactly with the accounts of Strabo and Pliny, who describe Taxila as situated in a level country where the hills unite with the plains. Of Usmân, Burnes goes on to say that “its meadows are watered by the most beautiful and crystal rivulets that flow from the mountains.” In the first part of this statement he is quite correct; but in the latter part he is undoubtedly wrong, as every rill of water that passes through Usmân is drawn by artificial means from the Haro river. Two miles to the south, towards the ruins of the old city, the irrigation is carried on by cuts from the Lundi Nala, but as the main body of water in this stream is artificially obtained from the Haro, the whole of the irrigation may be truly said to be derived from that river.