The Gates Of India, Being An Historical Narrative - free ebook by Thomas Hungerford Holdich

THE GATES OF INDIA

BEING AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE BY COLONEL SIR THOMAS HOLDICH K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B., D.Sc. AUTHOR OF 'THE INDIAN BORDERLAND,' 'INDIA,' 'THE COUNTRIES OF THE KING'S AWARD' WITH MAPS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1910...

13 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFACE

As the world grows older and its composition both physical and human becomes subject to ever-increasing scientific investigation, the close interdependence of its history and its geography becomes more and more definite. It is hardly too much to say that geography has so far shaped history that in unravelling some of the more obscure entanglements of historical record, we may safely appeal to our modern knowledge of the physical environment of the scene of action to decide on the actual course o

6 minute read

Read Chapter

LIST OF MAPS

OROGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFGHANISTAN &amp; BALUCHISTAN COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS H. HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B. View larger image...

8 minute read

Read Chapter

INTRODUCTION

Since the gates of India have become water gates and the way to India has been the way of the sea, very little has been known of those other landward gates which lie to the north and west of the peninsula, through which have poured immigrants from Asia and conquerors from the West from time immemorial. It has taken England a long time to rediscover them, and she is even now doubtful about their strategic value and the possibility of keeping them closed and barred. It is only by an examination of

9 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER I

EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. GREECE AND PERSIA AND EARLY TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER. It is unfortunately most difficult to trace the conditions under which Europe was first introduced to Asia, or the gradual ripening of early acquaintance into inter-commercial relationship. Although the eastern world was possessed of a sound literature in the time of Moses, and although long before the days of Solomon there was "no end" to the "making of books," it is remarkable how li

29 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER II

ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN—ANCIENT LAND ROUTES—POSSIBLE SEA ROUTES With the building up of the vast Persian Empire, and the gradual fostering of eastern colonies, and the consequent introduction of the manners and methods of Western Asia into the highlands of Samarkand and Badakshan, other nationalities were concerned besides Persians and Greeks. Captive peoples from Syria had been deported to Assyria seven centuries before Christ. The House of Israel had been broken up (for Samaria had fallen in 7

19 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER III

GREEK EXPLORATION—ALEXANDER—MODERN BALKH—THE BALKH PLAIN AND BAKTRIA Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the first military expedition from Europe was organized and led into the wilds of an Asia which was probably as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand two hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches of the Indian frontier, where a mound here and there testifies to the former existence of some forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the evening sun faint indications may be

38 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IV

GREEK EXPLORATION—ALEXANDER—THE KABUL VALLEY TO THE INDUS Alexander passed the next winter at the city of his own founding, Alexandreia, in the Koh Daman to the north of Kabul. And from thence in two divisions he started for the Indus, sending the main body of his troops by the most direct route, with Taxila (the capital of the Upper Punjab) for its objective, and himself with lighter brigades specially organized to subdue certain tribes on the northern flank of the route who certainly would imp

44 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER V

GREEK EXPLORATION—THE WESTERN GATES OF INDIA South of the Khaibar route from Peshawur to Kabul and separated from it by the remarkable straight-backed range of Sufed Koh, is an alternative route via the Kuram valley, at the head of which is the historic Peiwar Pass. From the crest of the rigid line of the Sufed Koh one may look down on either valley, the Kabul to the north or the Kuram to the south; and but for the lack of any convenient lateral communications between them, the two might be rega

37 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VI

CHINESE EXPLORATIONS—THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH There are many gateways into India, gateways on the north as well as the north-west and west, and although these far northern ways are so rugged, so difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be regarded as of political or strategic importance, yet they are many of them well trodden and some were once far better known than they are now. Opinions may perhaps differ as to their practical value as military or commercial approaches under new condi

22 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VII

MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY—SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN It was about eight centuries before Buddhism, debased and corrupted, tainted with Siva worship and loaded with all the ghastly paraphernalia of a savage demonology, had been driven from India across the Himalayas, that the Star of Bethlehem had guided men from the East to the cradle of the Christian faith—a faith so like Buddhism in its ethical teaching and so unlike in its spiritual conceptions,—and during those eight centuries Christianity had already

51 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VIII

ARAB EXPLORATION—MAKRAN Between Arabia and India is the strange land of Makran, in the southern defiles and deserts of which country Alexander lost his way. Had he by chance separated himself from the coast and abandoned connection with his fleet he might have passed through Makran by more northerly routes to Persia, and have made one of those open ways which Arab occupation opened up to traffic 1000 years later. Makran is not an attractive country for the modern explorer. It is not yet a popula

44 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IX

EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION—CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER The Arabs of the Mediæval period, whose footsteps we have been endeavouring to trace, were after their fashion true geographers and explorers. True that with them the process of empire-making was usually a savage process in the first instance, followed by the peaceable extension of commercial interests. Trade with them (as with us) followed the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the most of a newly-acquired property was ever the motive f

19 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER X

AMERICAN EXPLORATION—MASSON In 1832 Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General of India, found Shah Sujah, the deposed Amir of Kabul, living as a pensioner at Ludhiana when he visited the Punjab for an interview with its ruler Ranjit Singh. At that interview the question of aiding Shah Sujah to regain his throne from the usurper Dost Mahomed, who was suspected of Russian proclivities, was mooted; and it was then, probably, that the seeds of active interference in Afghan politics were sown, alt

49 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XI

AMERICAN EXPLORATION—MASSON ( continued ) On Masson's return to Kabul he observed the first symptoms of active interest in Afghan politics on the part of the Indian Government, in the person of an accredited native agent (Saiad Karamat Ali) who had travelled with Lieut. Conolly to Herat. Colonel Stoddart was at that time detained in Bokhara, and was apparently under the impression that he was befriended by a "profligate adventurer," one Samad Khan, who had succeeded in establishing himself there

21 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XII

ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION—LORD AND WOOD Then followed the Afghan Campaign of 1839-40, a campaign which was in many ways disastrous to our credit in Afghanistan both as diplomats and soldiers, but which undoubtedly opened out an opportunity for acquiring a general knowledge of the conformation of the country which was not altogether neglected. With the political methods attending the inception of the campaign (treated with such scathing scorn by Masson), and the strange bungling of an overweig

33 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XIII

ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA—MOORCROFT One of the most disappointing of the early British explorers of our Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft. Disappointing, because he got so little geographical information out of so large an area of adventure. Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an unusually good education and all the impulse of a nomadic wanderer. He was Superintendent of the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his views on agricultural subjects generally, especially the impr

8 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XIV

BURNES No traveller who ever returned to his country with tales of stirring adventure ever attracted more interest, or even astonishment, than Lieut. Alexander Burnes. He published his story in 1835, when the Oxus regions of Asia were but vaguely outlined and shadowy geography. It did not matter that they had been the scene of classical history for more than 2000 years, and that the whole network of Oxus roads and rivers had been written about and traversed by European hosts for centuries before

12 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XV

THE GATES OF GHAZNI—VIGNE Amongst original explorers of Afghanistan place must be found for G. T. Vigne, who made in 1836 a venturesome, and, as it proved, a most successful exploration of the Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni. Vigne was not a professional geographer so much as a botanist and geologist, and the value of his work lies chiefly in the results of his researches in those two branches of science, although he has left on record a map of his journey which quite sufficiently illustrat

7 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVI

ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION—BROADFOOT In the year 1839 and in the month of October Lieut. J. S. Broadfoot of the Indian Engineers made a memorable excursion across Central Afghanistan, intervening between Ghazni and the Indus Valley, which resulted in the acquisition of much information about one of the gates of India which is too little known. No one has followed his tracks since with any means of making a better reconnaissance, nor has any one added much to the information obtained by him. It

6 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVII

FRENCH EXPLORATION—FERRIER Amongst modern explorers of Afghanistan who have earned distinction by their capacity for single-handed geographical research and ability in recording their experiences, the French officer M. Ferrier is one of the most interesting and one of the most disappointing. He is interesting in all that relates to the historical and political aspects of Afghanistan at a date when England was specially concerned with that country, and so far and so long as his footsteps can now

25 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVIII

SUMMARY The close of the Afghan war of 1839-40 left a great deal to be desired in the matter of practical geography. It was not the men but the methods that were wanting. The commencement of the second and last Afghan war in 1878 saw the initiation of a system of field survey of a practical geographical nature, which combined the accuracy of mathematical deduction with the rapidity of plane table topography. It was the perfecting of the smaller class of triangulating instruments that made this s

32 minute read

Read Chapter