The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative — John Shaqi
The Gates of India: Being an Historical NarrativeHoldich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
History
The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative
Holdich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
Afghanistan -- Description and travel; Balochistan (Pakistan) -- Description and travel
never existed in Alexander's day) that clear evidence exists of Greek
art conception. The classical features and folded raiment of the
sculptured saints and buddhas, which are found so freely in certain
parts of the Punjab, are obviously derived from original Greek ideals
which may very possibly have been transmitted through Rome.
With Alexander in India we have nothing to do in these pages. It is as
the first explorer in the regions beyond India, the Afghan and
Baluchistan hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it may
fairly be stated that no later expedition combining scientific
research with military conquest ever added more to the sum of the
world's knowledge of those regions than that led by Alexander. For
centuries after it no light arises on the geographical horizon of the
Indian border. Indeed, not until political exigencies caused by
Russia's steady advance towards India compelled a revision of
political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and India,
was any very accurate idea obtained of the geographical conditions of
Northern and Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of Southern
Persia. The mapping of these countries has been recent, and the
progress of it, as year by year the network of Indian triangulation
and topography spread westward and northward, has reopened many
sources of light which, if not altogether new, have lain hidden ever
since the Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long before the Greek
army mustered on the banks of the Hellespont we have seen that the
highways to the East were well trodden and well known. It was not
likely that Alexander's intelligence department was lacking in
information. For many centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise
of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world trade
communications and set the restless tides of human emigration into new
channels. But in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia to
interrupt the interchange of courtesies between East and West.
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