THE explorations described in these pages had for their scene a region beyond the administrative border of the Indian North-West Frontier not previously accessible to Europeans. In the initial chapter of this volume a brief account will be found of those recent developments in 'tribal politics' which through the rise to power of a strong and capable ruler in the person of the Miangul Badshah, now 'Wali of Swat', brought peace to a land singularly favoured by nature but for centuries torn by the discord of man. For the enlightened spirit with which he welcomed my visit and for the unfailing help and care by which he rendered my travels both safe and fruitful, I shall ever cherish deep gratitude. But equally grateful I feel to those kind friends on this side of the border whose willingly offered support, as recorded in the same chapter, made it possible for me to explore that fascinating country under the generous auspices of H.M.'s Indian Government.
A kindly Fate, and sympathetic comprehension on the part of those who officially dispense it, have enabled me, during intervals of my forty-one years' Indian service, to carry out explorations over the greater part of Innermost Asia, and along the whole of those north-western borderlands of India which by their historical past have powerfully attracted me since my early youth. These travels, devoted to antiquarian and geographical research, have taken me from westernmost China right through Central Asia and from the snowy Pamir ranges down to the desolate coast of the Ikhthyophagoi by the Arabian Sea. But nowhere did they touch ground so replete with historical interest as in that comparatively small area to the west of the Indus which Alexander's march of conquest towards India for a brief span of time illuminates as it were with the light of a meteor.
It was the main object of my tour to follow up the track of the great Macedonian in this region so far as it is at present accessible outside Afghanistan. The classical records of his campaign would alone suffice to invest these parts with a special human interest. But their history has been so exceptionally varied and eventful at other periods also, that a rapid review of it seems here justified, be it only to provide the right background for what the country reveals to us in the life of its present day and in the silent ruins of its past.
We have grown accustomed to divide the ancient world, as some do the modern, between East and West. But in many ways India stands apart, separated from either by its own ancient civilization, just as it is fenced off geographically by the ocean and great mountain ramparts. It is on this part of the North-West Frontier, where the main routes of trade and migration debouch from the Afghan highlands, that India, before modern times, came chiefly into contact both with the East and the West.
Long before Alexander's invasion produced the first direct impact of the West on India, the great valleys of Peshawar and Swat had seen the descent of conquerors from that part of the true East which we know as Iran. The victory won in prehistoric times by an invading Aryan chief on the banks of the Suvastu, the Swat river, is sung already in a hymn of the Rigveda. Gandhara, comprising the present Peshawar district with the neighbouring tracts, figures among the provinces that the great Darius had secured for the Persian empire of the Achaemenidian kings of kings. Alexander's triumphant invasion passed by, indeed, without leaving a trace in Indian literature or tradition. But Hellenistic princes from Bactria, which Alexander had colonized with Greeks, afterwards ruled on both sides of the Indus during a couple of centuries and there kept the door open for influences derived from the classical West. It is a fascinating chapter in history, though we can study it only in the fine Greek-modelled coins of these rulers and in those sculptures of Graeco-Buddhist art which the ruined Buddhist shrines of the Swat and Peshawar valleys have pre-served for us.
Then when the great Indo-Scythian empire of the Kushan dynasty had replaced the small Hellenistic chiefships on both sides of the Hindukush and had further extended its sway beyond the Indus, it was from this north-western border-land that fervent religious propaganda carried the Buddha's doctrine, together with Graeco-Buddhist art and Indian literary culture, into Central Asia and thence into China. This spread of Buddhism right across Asia may well be considered India's greatest contribution to the civilization of mankind in general. These fair border valleys, dotted with sacred Buddhist sites, thus acquired special sanctity for monastic communities so far away as the Yellow Sea, and attracted the visits of those pious Chinese pilgrims whose records now serve to guide us among the ruined sanctuaries of Swat, their Udyana, 'the Garden'.
Without these records we should have scarcely anything to lift the darkness that descended on this region during the centuries when White Hun and Turkish domination succeeded the decay of the Indo-Scythian empire. Declining Buddhism gave way to lingering Hindu worship and this in turn succumbed about A.D. 1000 to the victorious onslaught of Islam under the great Mahmud of Ghazna. From the civilization and art which the Muhammadan conquerors of India brought with them out of Iran, itself fertilized long before by Hellenistic influences, the border tracts could receive but little benefit.
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