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states:-Mahârâshtra and Kosala, in the north; Kalinga, Andhra, Konkana, and Dhanakakata, in the centre; and Jorya, Drâvida, and Mâlakuta, in the south. These complete the round number of eighty kingdoms into which India was divided in the seventh century of our era.

*

I. NORTHERN INDIA.

The natural boundaries of India are the Himâlaya mountains, the river Indus, and the sea. But on the west, these limits have been so frequently overstepped by powerful kings that most authors, from the time of Alexander down to a very late period, have considered Eastern Ariana, or the greater part of Afghanistan, as forming a portion of the Indian continent. Thus Pliny says that "most writers do not fix the Indus as the western boundary (of India), but add to it the four satrapies of the Gedrosi, Arachotæ, Arii, and Paropamisada,-thus making the river Cophes its extreme boundary." Strabot also says that "the Indians occupy (in part) some of the countries situated along the Indus, which formerly belonged to the Persians. Alexander deprived the Ariani of them, and established there settlements of his own. But Seleukus Nikator them to Sandrokottus, in consequence of a marriage contract, and received in return five

gave

Plin. Hist. Nat., vi. 23. "Etenim plerique ab occidente non Indo amne determinant, sed adjiciunt quatuor satrapias, Gedrosos, Arachotas, Arios, Paropamisadas, ultimo fine Cophete fluvio."

+ Geogr., xv. 2, 9. In another place, xv. 1, 11, he states that at the time of the invasion of Alexander "the Indus was the boundary of India and of Ariana, situated towards the west, and in the possession of the Persians, for afterwards the Indians occupied a larger portion of Ariana, which they had received from the Macedonians."

hundred elephants." The prince here mentioned is the well-known Chandra Gupta Maurya, whose grandson Asoka dispatched missionaries to the most distant parts of his empire for the propagation of Buddhism. Alasadda, or Alexandria ad Caucasum, the capital of the Yona, or Greek country, is recorded as one of these distant places; and as the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsang notices several stupas in that neighbourhood as the work of Asoka, we have the most satisfactory proofs of the Indian occupation of the Kabul valley in the third and fourth centuries before Christ. The completeness of this occupation is well shown by the use of the Indian language on the coins of the Bactrian Greeks and Indo-Seythians, down to A.D. 100, or perhaps even later; and although it is lost for the next two or three centuries, it again makes its appearance on the coins of the Abtelites, or White Huns, of the sixth century. In the following century, as we learn from the Chinese pilgrim, the king of Kapisa was a Kshatriya, or pure Hindu. During the whole of the tenth century the Kabul valley was held by a dynasty of Brahmans, whose power was not finally extinguished until towards the close of the reign of Mahmud Ghaznavi. Down to this time, therefore, it would appear that a great part of the population of eastern Afghanistan, including the whole of the Kabul valley, must have been of Indian descent, while the religion was pure Buddhism. During the rule of the Ghaznavis, whose late conversion to Muhammadanism had only added bigotry to their native ferocity, the persecution of idol-loving Buddhists was a pleasure as well as a duty. The idolaters were soon driven out, and with them the Indian element, which had subsisted for

was occupied by the Kurus and Pânchálas; in the east was Kumarupa, or Assam; in the south were the Pundras, Kalingas, and Magadhas; in the west were the Surashtras, Suras, Abhiras, Arbudas, Kárushas, Málavas, Sauviras, and Saindhavas; and in the north the Hunas, Salwas, Sâkalas, Rámas, Ambashtas, and Parásikas.

In the Geography of Ptolemy the true shape of India is completely distorted, and its most striking feature, the acute angle formed by the meeting of the two coasts of the Peninsula at Cape Comorin is changed to a single coast-line, running almost straight from the mouth of the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges. The cause of this mistake is partly due to the erroneous value of 500, instead of 600, Olympic stadia, which Ptolemy assigned to an equatorial degree, partly to an over-estimate in converting road-distance into mapmeasurement, but chiefly to the excess which he allowed for the distances of land journeys over those of sea voyages.*

If the measures of distance by sea had been increased in the same proportion, or had been estimated at the same value, as the measures of distance by land, all the places would have retained the same relative positions. But the consequence of Ptolemy's unequal estimate of the value of land and sea distances was to

and Sakalas certainly belonged to the north, I presume that the north has been accidentally omitted. There is a similar omission of the name of Kumârika in this Purâna, which has only eight names for the Nine Divisions.

*The question of Ptolemy's erroneous longitudes is treated at length in Appendix C, where I have given all the data on which Sir Henry Rawlinson has founded his correction of three-tenths of the geogra pher's distances in easting.

so many centuries in Eastern Ariana, finally disap

peared.

NORTHERN INDIA.

I. KAOFU, OR AFGHANISTAN.

For several centuries, both before and after the Christian era, the provinces of Northern India beyond the Indus, in which the Indian language and religion were predominant, included the whole of Afghanistan from Bamian and Kandahar on the west to the Bholân Pass on the south. This large tract was then divided into ten* separate states or districts, of which Kapisa was the chief. The tributary states were Kabul and Ghazni in the west, Lamghân and Jalâlâbâd in the north, Swât and Peshawar in the east, Bolor in the north-east, and Banu and Opokien in the south. The general name for the whole would appear to have been Kao-fu, which in the second century before Christ is described as being divided between the Parthians, the Indians, and the Su or Sacæ of Kipin. According to this statement, the south-west district of Kandahar would have belonged to the Parthians, the eastern districts of Swât, Peshawar, and Banu, to the Indians, and the north-western districts of Kabul and Ghazni with Lamghân and Jalâlâbâd to the Saca Scythians. Kaofu has usually been identified with Kabul on account of its similarity of name and correspondence of position; but this can only be accepted as politically correct, by extending the boundaries of Kabul into Parthiat on the west, and into India on

M. Julien's Hiouen Thsang,' i. 71.

+ That Kandahar then belonged to Persia is proved by the fact, that the begging-pot of Buddha, which Hwen Thsang (ii. 106) mentions as

C

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