T. the river Oxus. He advanced towards the east, as far as Maracanda', then a city of some note, and destined in a future period, under the modern name of Samarcand, to be the capital of an empire not inferior to his own, either in extent or in power. In a progress of several months, through provinces hitherto unknown to the Greeks, in a line of march often approaching near to India, and among people accustomed to much intercourse with it, he learned many things concerning the state of a country that had been long the object of his thoughts and wishes3, which increased his desire of invading it. Decisive and prompt in all his resolutions, he set out from Bactria, and crossed that ridge of mountains which, under various denominations, forms the stony girdle, if I may use an expression of the oriental geographers, which encircles Asia, and constitutes the northern barrier of India. The most practicable avenue to every country, it is obvious, must be formed by circumstances in its natural situation, such as the defiles which lead through mountains, the course of rivers, and the places where they may be passed with the greatest ease and safety. In no place of the earth is this line of approach marked and defined more conspicuously, than on the northern frontier of India; insomuch that the three great invaders of this country, Alexander, Tamerlane, and Nadir shah, in three distant ages, and with views and talents extremely different, advanced by the same route, with very little deviation. Alexander had the merit of having first discovered the way. After passing the mountains, he encamped at Alexandria Paropamisana, not far from the mountains denominated the Indian Caucasus by his historians, now known by the name of Hindoo Kho; and having subdued or conciliated the nations seated on the north-west bank of the Indus, he crossed the river at Taxila, now Attock, where its stream is so tranquil that a bridge can be thrown over it with greater ease than at any other place. After passing the Indus, Alexander marched forward in the road which leads directly to the Ganges, and the opulent provinces to the south-east, now comprehended under the general name of Indostan. But, on the banks of the Hydaspes, known in modern times by the name of the Betah or Chelum5, he was opposed by Porus, a powerful monarch of the country, at the head of a numerous army. The war with Porus, and the hostilities in which he was successively engaged with other Indian princes, led him to deviate from his original route, and to turn more towards the south-west. In carrying on these operations, Alexander marched through one of the richest and best peopled countries of India, now called the Panjab, from the five great rivers by which it is watered; and as we know that this march was performed in the rainy season, when even Indian armies cannot keep the field, it gives an high idea both of Alexander's persevering spirit, and of the extraordinary vigour and hardiness of constitution, which soldiers, in ancient times, derived from the united effects of gymnastic exercise and military discipline. In every step of his progress, objects no less striking than new Rennell, Mem. p. 92. See Note iv. 3 Arrian, iv. c. 15. 5 In the second edition of his Memoir, major Rennell gives the modern names of the Hydaspes, with some variation in their orthography, Behut' and 'Ihylam.' kk presented themselves to Alexander. The magnitude of the Indus, even after he had seen the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, must have filled him with surprise'. No country he had hitherto visited was so populous and well cultivated, or abounded in so many valuable productions of nature and of art, as that part of India through which he had led his army. But when he was informed in every place, and probably with exaggerated description, how much the Indus was inferior to the Ganges, and how far all that he had hitherto beheld was surpassed in the happy regions through which that great river flows, it is not wonderful that his eagerness to view and to take possession of them should have prompted him to assemble his soldiers, and to propose that they should resume their march towards that quarter, where wealth, dominion, and fame awaited them. But they had already done so much, and had suffered so greatly, especially from incessant rains and extensive inundations, that their patience as well as strength were exhausted', and with one voice they refused to advance farther. In this resolution they persisted with such sullen obstinacy, that Alexander, though pos sessed, in the highest degree, of every quality that gains an ascendant over the minds of military men, was obliged to yield, and to issue orders for marching back to Persia3. The scene of this memorable transaction was on the banks of the Hyphasis, the modern Beyah, which was the utmost limit of Alexander's progress in India. From this, it is manifest that he did not traverse the whole extent of the Panjab. Its south-west boundary is formed by a river anciently known by the name of Hysudrus, and now by that of the Setlege, to which Alexander never approached nearer than the southern bank of the Hyphasis, where he erected twelve stupendous altars, which he intended as a monument of his exploits, and which, if we may believe the biographer of Apollonius Tyanæus, were still remaining, with legible inscriptions, when that fantastic sophist visited India, three hundred and seventy-three years after Alexander's expedition. The breadth of the Panjab, from Ludhana on the Setlege to Attock on the Indus, is computed to be two hundred and fifty-nine geographical miles, in a straight line; Alexander's march, computed in the same manner, did not extend above two hundred miles. But, both as he advanced and returned, his troops were so spread over the country, and often acted in so many separate divisions, and all his movements were so exactly measured and delineated by men of science, whom he kept in pay for the purpose, that he acquired a very extensive and accurate knowledge of that part of India 5. As When, upon his return, he reached the banks of the Hydaspes, he found that the officers to whom he had given it in charge to build and collect as many vessels as possible, had executed his orders with such activity and success that they had assembled a numerous fleet. amidst the hurry of war, and the rage of conquest, he never lost sight of his pacific and commercial schemes, the destination of this fleet was to sail down the Indus to the ocean, and from its mouth to proceed to 1 Strabo, lib. xv. p. 1027, C. et not. 5, Casaub. 3 Arrian, v. c. 24, 25. the Persian gulf, that a communication by sea might be opened with India and the centre of his dominions. The conduct of this expedition was committed to Nearchus, an officer equal to that important trust. But as Alexander was ambitious to acquire fame of every kind, and fond of engaging in new and splendid undertakings, he himself accompanied Nearchus in his navigation down the river. The armament was, indeed, so great and magnificent, as deserved to be commanded by the conqueror of Asia. It was composed of an army of an hundred and twenty thousand men, and two hundred elephants, and of a fleet of near two thousand vessels, various in burthen and form'; on board of which one-third of the troops embarked, while the remainder marching in two divisions, one on the right and the other on the left of the river, accompanied them in their progress. As they advanced, the nations on each side were either compelled or persuaded to submit. Retarded by the various operations in which this engaged him, as well as by the slow navigation of such a fleet as he conducted, Alexander was above nine months before he reached the ocean". Alexander's progress in India, in this line of direction, was far mo e considerable than that which he made by the route we formerly traced; and when we attend to the various movements of his troops, the number of cities which they took, and the different states which they subdued, he may be said not only to have viewed, but to have explored, the countries through which he passed. This part of India has been so little frequented by Europeans in later times, that neither the position of places, nor their distances, can be ascertained with the same accuracy as in the interior provinces, or even in the Panjab. But from the researches of major Rennell, carried on with no less discernment than industry, the distance of that place on the Hydaspes, where Alexander fitted out his fleet, from the ocean, cannot be less than a thousand British miles. Of this extensive region a considerable portion, particularly the upper Delta, stretching from the capital of the ancient Malli, now Moultan, to Patala, the modern Tatta, is distinguished for its fertility and population 3. Soon after he reached the ocean, Alexander, satisfied with having accomplished this arduous undertaking, led his army by land back to Persia. The command of the fleet, with a considerable body of troops on board of it, he left to Nearchus, who, after a coasting voyage of seven months, conducted it safely up the Persian gulf into the Euphrates4. In this manner did Alexander first open the knowlege of India to the people of Europe, and an extensive district of it was surveyed with greater accuracy than could have been expected from the short time he remained in that country. Fortunately an exact account, not only of his military operations, but of every thing worthy of notice in the countries where they were carried on, was recorded in the memoirs or journals of three of his principal officers, Ptolemy the son of Lagus, Aristobulus, and Nearchus. The two former have not, indeed, reached our times; but it is probable that the most important facts which they contained are preserved, as Arrian professes to have followed them as his guides in his History of the Expedition of Alexander'; a work which, though composed long after Greece had lost its liberty, and in an age when genius and taste were on the decline, is not unworthy the purest times of Attic literature. With respect to the general state of India, we learn from these writers, that, in the age of Alexander, though there was not established in it any powerful empire, resembling that which, in modern times, stretched its dominion from the Indus almost to cape Comorin, it was even then formed into monarchies of considerable extent. The king of the Prasii was prepared, on the banks of the Ganges, to oppose the Macedonians, with an army of twenty thousand cavalry, two hundred thousand infantry, two thousand armed chariots, and a great number of elephants'. The territory of which Alexander constituted Porus the sovereign, is said to have contained seven distinct nations, and no fewer than two thousand towns 3. Even in the most restricted sense that can be given to the vague indefinite appellations of 'nations' and 'towns,' an idea is conveyed of a very great degree of population. As the fleet sailed down the river, the country, on each side, was found to be in no respect inferior to that of which the government was committed to Porus. It was likewise from the memoirs of the same officers that Europe derived its first authentic information concerning the climate, the soil, the productions, and the inhabitants of India; and in a country where the manners, the customs, and even the dress of the people, are almost as permanent and invariable as the face of nature itself, it is wonderful how exactly the descriptions given by Alexander's officers delineate what we now behold in India, at the distance of two thousand years. The stated change of seasons, now known by the name of 'monsoons;' the periodical rains; the swelling of the rivers; the inundations which these occasion; the appearance of the country during their continuance, are particularly mentioned and described. No less accurate are the accounts which they have given of the inhabitants, their delicate and slender form, their dark complexion, their black uncurled hair, their garments of cotton, their living entirely upon vegetable food, their division into separate tribes or casts,' the members of which never intermarry, the custom of wives burning themselves with their deceased husbands, and many other particulars, in all which they perfectly resemble the modern Hindoos. To enter into any detail with respect to these in this place would be premature; but as the subject, though curious and interesting, will lead unavoidably into discussions not well suited to the nature of an historical work, I shall reserve my ideas concerning it for an Appendix, to be annexed to this Disquisition; and hope they may contribute to throw some additional light upon the origin and nature of the commerce with India. Much as the western world was indebted for its knowledge of India to the expedition of Alexander, it was only a small portion of that vast continent which he explored. His operations did not extend beyond the modern province of Lahor, and the countries on the banks of the Indus from Moultan to the sea. These, however, were surveyed with that ↑ Arrian, lib. i. in proemio. 2 Diod. Sicul. lib. xvii. p. 232. degree of accuracy which I have already described; and it is a circumstance not unworthy of notice, that this district of India which Europeans first entered, and with which they were best acquainted in ancient times, is now less known than almost any part of that continent', neither commerce nor war, to which, in every age, geography is chiefly indebted for its improvement, having led any nation of Europe to frequent or explore it. If an untimely death had not put a period to the reign of the Macedonian hero, India, we have reason to think, would have been more fully explored by the ancients, and the European dominion would have been established there two thousand years sooner. When Alexander invaded India, he had something more in view than a transient incursion. It was his object to annex that extensive and opulent country to his empire; and though the refractory spirit of his army obliged him, at that time, to suspend the prosecution of his plan, he was far from relinquishing it. To exhibit a general view of the measures which he adopted for this purpose, and to point out their propriety and probable success, is not foreign from the subject of this Disquisition, and will convey a more just idea than is usually entertained, of the original genius and extent of political wisdom which distinguished this illustrious man. When Alexander became master of the Persian empire, he early perceived, that with all the power of his hereditary dominions, reinforced by the troops which the ascendant he had acquired over the various states of Greece might enable him to raise there, he could not hope to retain in subjection territories so extensive and populous; that, to render his authority secure and permanent, it must be established in the affection of the nations which he had subdued, and maintained by their arms; and that, in order to acquire this advantage, all distinctions between the victors and vanquished must be abolished, and his European and Asiatic subjects must be incorporated, and become one people, by obeying the same laws, and by adopting the same manners, institutions, and discipline. Liberal as this plan of policy was, and well adapted to accomplish what he had in view, nothing could be more repugnant to the ideas and prejudices of his countrymen. The Greeks had such an high opinion of the preeminence to which they were raised by civilization and science, that they seem hardly to have acknowledged the rest of mankind to be of the same species with themselves. To every other people they gave the degrading appellation of barbarians, and, in consequence of their own boasted superiority, they asserted a right of dominion over them, in the same manner, to use their own expression, as the soul has over the body, and men have over irrational animals. Extravagant as this pretension may now appear, it found admission, to the disgrace of ancient philosophy, into all the schools. Aristotle, full of this opinion, in support of which he employs arguments more subtile than solid', advised Alexander to govern the Greeks like subjects, and the barbarians as slaves; to consider the former as companions, the latter as creatures of an inferior nature3. But the sentiments of the pupil were more 4 Rennell, Mem. p. 114. 2 Aristot. Polit. i. c. 3-7. 3. Plut. de Fortuna Alex. Orat, i. p. 302. vol. vii. edit. Reiske. Strabo, lib. i. p. 116. A. |