Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c15.79

c15.79

According to Strabo, the river Oxus in the time of Alexander was quite navigable so that goods from India were carried down this river to the Caspian Sea on their way to the west. As Warmington points out [*Commerce between Roman Empire and India*, p. 21], there were three natural approaches to India from the west: (1) where the mountains of Afghanistan become very narrow just north of the head of the Kabul river where only the Hindukush separates the basins of the Oxus, and the Indus; (2) 500 miles to the west and south-west, where the Afghan mountains end and open up an easy way over 400 miles of plateau from Herat to Kandahar and to Kabul, along the Helmund valley, and another way from south-east of Kandahar into the Indus lowlands through the Bolan or the Mūla Pass; (3) by way of the deserts of Makran or along the coast of Baluchistana.