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The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s4.t18: Ajudhan, or Pákpatan.

The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s4.t18

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Ajudhan, or Pákpatan.

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The ancient town of Ajudhan is situated on the high bank of the old Satlej, 28 miles to the south-west of Depâlpur, and 10 miles from the present course of the river. Its foundation is assigned to a Hindu saint, or raja, of the same name, of whom nothing else is recorded. This part of the Doâb is still known as Surátdes, a name which recalls the Surakousæ of Diodorus, and the Sudrakæ and Oxudrakæ of other Greek writers. Now, the Sudrakæ are always coupled with the Malli by classical authors, just as Ajudhan and Multân are joined together by the Muhammadan historians. I think, therefore, that we may look upon Ajudhan and its neighbour Depâlpur as two of the chief cities of the Sudrakas, or Surakas, who, in the time of Alexander, were one of the free nations of India. Dionysius and Nonnus use the form of Hudarkæ, Pliny has Sydracæ, which agrees with Strabo's Sudrakæ; and Diodorus has Surakousæ. Arrian and Curtius alone give Oxudrakæ. Strabo adds that they were said to be descendants of Bacchus;* and as Chares of Mytilene states that the name of the Indian god Σοροάδειος meant οἰνοποιός, or the “Wine-bibber,” I infer that the people who boasted a descent from Bacchus may have called themselves Surákas, or Bacchidæ. The *d* in *Sudrakæ* I look upon as a redundant addition of the Greeks, which is also found in the *Adraistæ* of Arrian and the *Andrestæ* of Diodorus. The Sanskrit name of this people was *Arásh-traka*, or “the Kingless,” which is well preserved in Justin’s *Arestæ*. Surakai, or the descendants of *Sura*, must therefore be the true Greek form. This is confirmed by the longer form of the name given by Diodorus as Συρακοῦσαι, which is most probably derived from the Sanskrit *surâ*, “wine,” and *kusa*, “mad, or inebriated.” It would thus mean simply the “drunkards,” a nickname which was no doubt given by their Arian neighbours, who were very liberal in their abuse of the Turanian population of the Panjâb. Thus the Kathæi of Sangala are stigmatized in the Mahâbhârata as “thieving *Bâhikas*,” as well as “wine-bibbers” and “beef eaters.”† They are also called by a variety of names, as Madra, *Bâhika*, Araṭṭa, and Jârttikka, and not even once by their own proper name, which, as we know from Alexander’s historians, was *Kathæi*, which is still preserved in the *Kathi* of the present day. I confess, therefore, that I look upon many of the ethnic appellations which the Greeks have handed down to us as mere nicknames, or abusive epithets applied by the Brahmanical Arians to their Turanian neighbours. For instance, the name of Kambistholi, which Arrian* gives to a people on the Hydraotes, or Râvi, is most probably derived from the Sanskrit Kapiṣasthala, that is, “Wine-land, or the Tavern,” which would be a natural epithet for the country of the Surákuṣas, or “wine-bibbers.” Similarly I would explain Oxudraka as Asuraka, or the “Demons.”

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∗ Geogr., xiv. 1, 8, and 33.

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† Stenâ-Bâhikâ dhânâgauḍasavam-pîtwa gomânsam.

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The doubt now arises whether Suráka, or “the drinkers,” can have been the true name of this people. Arrian† places the Oxudraka at the junction of the Hydaspes and Akesines, where Curtius locates the Sobii, Diodorus the Ibæ, and Strabo the Sibæ. The only explanation of this discrepancy that I can suggest is, the probable confusion between the name of Sobii, or Chobiya, of Ferishta,‡ and that of Sorii, or Suraka. The former was the name of the subjects of Sopeithes, or Sophytes, whose rule extended over the Salt Range of mountains above the junction of the Hydaspes and Akesines. The latter name I would refer to Shorkot, which I have already identified with Alexandria Sóriane. It is still the capital of the district of Shor, which lies just below the junction of the Hydaspes and Akesines. The Sobii, therefore, were the immediate neighbours of the Sorii, the former people occupying the country above the confluence of the rivers, and the latter the country just below it.

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This location of the Sorii, or Surákas, explains the statement of Arrian§ that the Kathæi were allies of the Oxudraka and Malii. They were neighbouring nations, who were generally at war with each other, but were always ready to join against a common enemy.

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∗ ‘Indica,’ iv. † ‘Indica,’ iv. ‡ Briggs’s ‘Ferishta,’ Introduction, i. lxxii.

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Pliny places the limit of Alexander’s career in the territory of the Sudrakas, “in Sudracis expeditio Alexandri termino,”* and the altars on the opposite bank of the Hyphasis, or Biâs river. From this point to the river Sydrus, that is the Hesidrus, or Satlej, he makes the distance 168 Roman, or 154 British miles; and from the Sydrus to the Jomanes, or Jumna, exactly the same. But as the whole distance from the Biâs to the Jumna varies from 150 to 160 miles, from the foot of the hills down to Kasûr on the former river, and down to Karnâl on the latter river, I presume that only one distance, namely, that from the Biâs to the Jumna, was stated in Pliny’s original authority. The famous spot on the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, where “Alexander halted and wept,”† must have been somewhere in the low ground between the Satlej and the Biâs, at a short distance above the old junction opposite Kasûr and Bazidpur. For 20 miles above this point the courses of the two rivers ran almost parallel, and within a few miles of each other, from the earliest times down to A.D. 1796, when the Satlej suddenly changed its course, and joined the Biâs above Hari-ki-patan. Within this range of 20 miles the space between the two rivers was so small that it might easily have been overlooked in stating the distance from Alexander’s camp to the Jumna. I believe, however, that it was actually noted by Alexander’s contemporaries, for Pliny, after stating the distance to the Jumna, says, “some copies add five miles more.”‡

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† Gibbon, ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:’ “On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the verge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept.” ‡ Hist. Nat., vi. 21.: “Exemplaria aliqua adjiciunt quinque millia passuum.”

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Now these five Roman miles are the exact distance of the old bed of the Satlej from the eastern bank of the Biâs, a measurement which some of the ancient writers may have omitted to note as a matter of little importance. On a general review of all the data, I think that the site of Alexander's altars must be looked for along the line of the present course of the Satlej, at a few miles below Hari-ki-patan, and not far from the well-known field of Sobraon, which is barely five miles distant from several bends of the old bed of the Satlej. To this point, therefore, the territory of the Sudrakæ, or Surákas, must have extended in the time of Alexander.

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For many centuries Ajudhan was the principal ferry on the Satlej. Here met the two great western roads from Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismaïl Khan; the first viâ Mânkera, Shorkot, and Harapa; the second viâ Multân. At this point the great conquerors Mahmud and Timur, and the great traveller Ibn Batuta, crossed the Satlej. The fort is said to have been captured by Sabuktugin in A.H. 367, or A.D. 977-78, during his plundering expedition in the Panjâb; and again by Ibrâhim Ghaznavi, in A.H. 472, or A.D. 1079-80. On the invasion of Timur, the mass of the population fled to Bhatner, and the few people that remained were spared by that ruthless barbarian out of respect for the famous saint Farid-ud-din Shakar-ganj, whose shrine is in Ajudhan. From this saint the place derives its modern name of Pák-pattan, or the "Ferry of the Pure One," that is, of Farid, whose latter days were spent at Ajudhan. By continued fasting his body is said to have become so pure that whatever he put into his mouth to allay the cravings of hunger, even earth and stones, was immediately turned into sugar, whence his name of *Shakar-ganj*, or “Sugar-store.” This miraculous power is recorded in a well-known Persian couplet:—

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“*Sang dar dast o guhar gardad,*
*Zahar dar kâm o shakar gardad:*”

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which may be freely rendered:—

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“Stones in his hand are changed to money (jewels),
And poison in his mouth to honey (sugar).”

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From another memorial couplet we learn that he died in A.H. 664, or A.D. 1265-66, when he was 95 lunar years of age. But as the old name of *Ajudhan* is the only one noted by Ibn Batuta in A.D. 1334, and by Timur’s historian in A.D. 1397, it seems probable that the present name of *Pák-pattan* is of comparatively recent date. It is, perhaps, not older than the reign of Akbar, when the saint’s descendant, *Núr-ud-din*, revived the former reputation of the family by the success of his prayers for an heir to the throne.

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