The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t5.6

c11.t5.6

It was, again, the boats of the various Punjab republics that made up the fleet, 800 to 2,000 vessels strong, with which Nearchos was entrusted for the voyage down the Indus and up to the Persian Gulf.⁴ It is said that 4,000 Hindu boats had been assembled on the Indus to resist the earlier invasion of India by Semiramis, the Assyrian queen, and also that in much later times Mahmud the Moslem invader had to encounter the measures of national defense organized by a Punjab fleet of the same strength.¹