Empires of the Indus

by Alice Albinia

  ‘“Worshippers who praise the Lord”’: tr. K. Singh, 1978, pp.18, 110.

  ‘“lions, tigers, leopards”’: K. Singh, 2005, p.9.

  ‘drops it on to his tongue like sherbet’: It is reminiscent of the story told of Divan Gidumal, the Hindu minister during Kalhora times in Sindh, who offered an Afghan invader the wealth of Sindh in two bags: one contained gold and the other holy dust collected from the tombs of Sindh’s saints (Schimmel, 1976, p.21).

  6: Up the Khyber

  ‘“Give a hundred thanks, Babur”’: Babur, tr. Beveridge, pp.484, 526.

  ‘a big red sandstone fort at Attock’: ‘One of the occurrences was the founding of the fort of Atak Benares. It was the secret design of the world-adorner that when the army arrived at this boundary, a lofty fortress should be built. On this occasion the place which far-sighted men had chosen was approved of. On 15 Khurdad (near the end of May 1588)…the foundation was laid by the holy hand in accordance with this name, just as in extremity of the eastern provinces there is a fortress named Katak Benares’ (Abul-Fazl, 1910, III, p.521). Olaf Caroe, however, says the fort was begun in 1581 and finished by 1586 (pp.208–11). G. T. Vigne wrote that ‘The name Attok is derived from Atkana, or Atukna, signifying in Hindustani, to stop; no pious Hindoo will venture beyond it of his own accord, for fear of losing caste’ (1840, p.30).

  ‘a “noble barrier”’: Abul-Fazl, 1910, III, pp.520–1.

  ‘“I am a drinker of wine”’: C. E. Biddulph, p.81. Pashtunwali also forbids drinking, at least in public.

  ‘“I am well acquainted with Aurangzeb’s justice”’: Raverty, 2002, p.188.

  ‘Khushal’s scorn’: Caroe, p.165.

  ‘Aurangzeb camped for two years at Attock’: C. E. Biddulph, p.xiii.

  ‘Khushal died heartbroken’: Raverty, 2002, p.146.

  ‘He wrote over three hundred and sixty works’: Mackenzie, p.12.

  ‘Kama Sutra-like, the Diwan’: interview with Professor Raj Wali Khattak, former head of the Pashto Academy, Peshawar University, April 2005.

  ‘his mother was an Afghan from Zabul’: Caroe, p.120.

  ‘spoke Turkic at home with his slaves’: Bosworth, p.130.

  ‘“The Establisher of Empires”’: The latter two titles were for his sons. Ferishta, tr. Briggs, I, p.81.

  ‘In the Hadith…’: Wink, 1999, p.193.

  ‘“The King,” wrote the historian Ferishta’: Ferishta, tr. Briggs, I, p.62.

  ‘“Fanatical bigots representing India as a country of unbelievers”’: Abul-Fazl, tr. Blochmann and Jarrett, 1927–49, III, p.377.

  ‘a monotheistic system’: Alberuni, tr. Sachau, p.xviii.

  ‘He drew favourable comparisons’: S. Sharma, p.137.

  ‘Mahmud is said to have so admired’: Elphinstone, pp.554–5.

  ‘Having sacked the temple of Somnath’: M. Habib, p.57.

  ‘He pardoned a Hindu king’: from Ferishta, tr. Briggs, I, p.67.

  ‘He even had a coin minted’: Kazmi, p.23.

  ‘In Zarang they sacked the Friday mosque’: Bosworth, p.89.

  ‘he shouted at the Caliph’s ambassador’: M. Habib, p.36.

  ‘Al Utbi described the end to one campaign’: Elliot, II, p.30.

  ‘Daud, the “Karmatian heretic”’: Nazim, p.97.

  ‘Sultan Mahmud was famous for having a romance with a man’: ibid., p.153.

  ‘Ghani Khan’: son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the ‘Frontier Gandhi’.

  ‘The last time that muhtasib…roamed the streets’: Bilgrami, pp.178ff.

  ‘the muhtasib’s proposed duties’: Government of NWFP, 2005.

  ‘Sharam, shame’: M. Ismail, 1997; Muhammad and Zafar.

  ‘there has never been a prosecution in Pakistan for sodomy’: ‘As elsewhere with unenforced sodomy proscriptions, the existence of the law is a threat–a threat conducive to blackmail’ (Murray and Badruddin Khan, p.120).

  ‘Male-male sex is simply accepted’: ‘You know what he is promised in paradise?’ Emma Duncan, the Economist journalist, recalls the Nawab of Bugti remarking disdainfully of his religious nephew, ‘Houris, ghilmans and sharab. Prostitutes, little boys and wine’ (Duncan, p.144).

  ‘they were affronted by the “frantic debauchery” of their women’: The same thing, Burton claimed, happened during the Mutiny of 1857: ‘There was a formal outburst of the Harems, and even women of princely birth could not be kept out of the officers’ quarters’ (Burton, 1919 (X), pp.205, 236).

  7: Buddha on the Silk Road

  ‘the Sakya-Sinha Buddha in his lion form’: M. Habib, p.14.

  ‘Ghazni itself had been a Buddhist settlement’: Baker and Allchin, p.24.

  ‘a poem by Mahmud’s court poet Unsuri’: ibid., pp.24–5.

  ‘In Bamiyan, after Islam came to the region’: Kepel, p.234.

  ‘It was famed for the beauty of its spoken Sanskrit’: Salomon, 1999, p.4.

  ‘“the witches of Swat prefer to ride on hyenas”’: Jettmar, 1961, p.94.

  ‘enlightenment through sexual union’: Cammann, p.8.

  ‘Padmasambhava travelled to Tibet’: Beyer, p.38. Some scholars maintain that Padmasambhava came from Ghazni: see Waddell, p.26.

  ‘Swat became a major pilgrimage site for Tibetans’: G. Tucci (Foreword) in Faccenna, 1964, p.7. See also Makin Khan, ‘The Tibetan Pilgrim, Urgyan-Pa, also passed through Swat valley in 1250 AD’ (p.16).

  ‘After his death, secret books written by him’: Tucci, p.38.

  ‘The serious monks lived’: Xuanzang, tr. Beal, 2000, pp.98, 120, 272.

  ‘a pet hero of the Tang dynasty’: Wriggins, p.xv.

  ‘Along the upper course of the Indus’: Fa Hsien, tr. Legge, p.23.

  ‘a fourth-century potsherd painted with Greek characters’: Faccenna, 1964, p.17.

  ‘Kanishka had eclectic tastes’: Foltz, pp.44–5.

  ‘immigrant Buddhism became known as the “religion of the images”’: Lopez, p.97.

  ‘but-shikan’: M. Habib, p.56.

  ‘the local gods of India’: These were shown in subservient positions to the Buddha but their presence was nevertheless comforting to the people who had once worshipped them. As with Islam later, it was a means of incorporating local faiths–a means, some have argued, of subordination: see Lopez, p.42.

  ‘all the erstwhile Vedic deities’: as dazzlingly attired, the scholar Etienne Lamotte noted, as their bejewelled human worshippers (pp.688–90).

  ‘lakes, springs and rivers’: Many of these sites had once been temples to the Nagas, and were converted by Buddhists into monasteries or stupas. See Coomaraswamy, p.13.

  ‘British colonial officers’: van Lohuizen de Leeuw, p.377.

  ‘influenced by Greek prototypes’: Narain, p.10; Tarn, p.408.

  ‘Menander’s Buddhism as wholly pragmatic’: Marshall, 1921, p.21.

  ‘the dharmachakra’: Narain, p.2.

  ‘Ashoka’s stupas, said to number 84,000’: according to the Ashokavadana, an early chronicle of the emperor’s reign. See Lamotte, p.239; Foucher, 1942, p.272.

  ‘The Buddha’s ashes were still warm’: Lamotte, p.23.

  ‘“At all times, whether I am eating”’: Sixth Major Rock Edict, quoted in Thapar, 1997, pp.252–3.

  ‘“All modern Indic scripts”’: Salomon, 1998: ‘the history of writing in India is virtually synonymous with the history of Brahmi script and its derivatives’ (p.17).

  ‘Subsequent Buddhist tradition has vaunted’: Lamotte, p.13.

  ‘serving as viceroy in Taxila’: according to the Tibetan tradition; see Marshall, 1921, p.17.

  ‘In Aramaic it transmogrified’: Thapar, 1997, pp.276–7.

  ‘it was monks from Uddiyana’: Salomon, 1999, p.6.

  ‘Buddhist animal tales that travelled west along the Silk Road’: Alberuni, tr. Sachau, p.xxix.

  ‘Timber, in particular, has been a lucrative export’: Stacul, p.76.

  ‘easy prey for angry Muslims’: The rise of vandalism also coincides with t
he Wali’s loss of control over Swat, according to Sardar (p.168).

  8: Alexander at the Outer Ocean

  ‘a sailor called Scylax’: Herodotus, tr. Rawlinson, p.313.

  ‘“the bravest man in early Greek history”’: Lane Fox, 1973, p.333.

  ‘“three hundred and sixty talents of gold dust”’: Herodotus, tr. Rawlinson, p.265.

  ‘black skin, he wrote, and black semen’: Karttunen, 1989, p.73.

  ‘Unani medicine–practised by hakims’: Balfour, p.13.

  ‘Babur ate majoon’: The word used for majoon, ‘confection’, is kamali: Babur, tr. A. Beveridge, I, p.373.

  ‘called the Guraeus by the Greeks’: This was either the Panjkora, or the combined waters of the Panjkora and Swat rivers. See Arrian, tr. Brunt, p.508, and Caroe, p.51.

  ‘“He crossed it with difficulty”’: Arrian, tr. Robson, I, p.427.

  ‘one hundred porters, thirty bodyguards, four army revolvers’: Stein, pp.74, 113.

  ‘marked on maps as “Unexplored Country”’: see the map in Knight.

  ‘the same highland breed that Alexander so admired’: Lane Fox, 1980, p.319.

  ‘“transported with Bacchic frenzy”’: Arrian, tr. Brunt, II, p.9.

  ‘modern historians have tended to assume that Nysa must be located in this region’: Robin Lane Fox deduced that Nysa was in Chitral (1980, p.313); Martha L. Carter argued for Kunar (1968, p.136).

  ‘the entire area between Jalalabad and the Indus’: see Jettmar, 2001, pp.77–9.

  ‘“Overland I went”’: Euripides, tr. Arrowsmith, pp.155–6.

  ‘Centuries after that, when Philostratus’: Philostratus, tr. Conybeare, p.139.

  ‘“Where you are going we cannot help you”’: The Malik’s comment, I find later, encapsulates the attitude of people from the ‘settled’ areas–who live according to the writ of central government–to those in the ‘tribal’ areas, who live by their own rules, grow poppy, and shun outsiders.

  ‘“These sailed down the Indus”’: Arrian, tr. Robson, I, p.447.

  ‘Strabo, Diodorus and Quintus Curtius’: Bunbury, pp.496–7.

  ‘consecrating hair to them at puberty’: Hornblower and Spawforth, eds, p.1320.

  ‘a peripeteia, a turning point’: Ehrenberg, p.53.

  ‘maddened with suffering’: Arrian, V.17.6, tr. Brunt, II, p.53.

  ‘where the streams dry up in summer’: see P. A. Brunt in his translation of Arrian, II, p.453, Appendix XVII.

  ‘such “limpid”, “delicious” waters’: Strabo, tr. Jones, IV, 2; Herodotus, tr. Rawlinson, IV, 53.

  ‘“It is sweet for men to live bravely”’: Arrian, V.25–6, tr. Brunt, II, pp.83–7.

  ‘“a fraudulent wonder”’: Quintus Curtius, IX.3.19, tr. Yardley, p.219.

  ‘he was preparing a campaign to Arabia’: Arrian, VII.19–20, tr. Robson, II, p.271.

  ‘the fate of Callisthenes’: Stoneman, p.21; Gunderson, p.4.

  ‘“manifold windings through the entire province”’: quoted in Allen, p.155.

  ‘Muslims also began to eulogize Alexander’: Schildgen, p.96.

  ‘Horsemen in the Pamir mountains’: Stoneman, p.1.

  ‘he “saw the sun rising”’: Qur’an 18.89, Dawood, p.213.

  ‘“Alexander…spurred by religious ardour”’: Southgate, p.20.

  ‘Pashtuns still claim him as their forebear’: as did the Gyalpos in Baltistan, along the river’s north-eastern course, at least until the nineteenth century (see Cunningham, p.28). Other Pashtun origin myths, meanwhile, suggest they are one of the lost tribes of Israel.

  9: Indra’s Beverage

  ‘“the so-called Niggers of India”’: Bryant and Patton, eds, p.472.

  ‘“Gypsey jargon”’: Stewart, IV, p.92. Max Müller commented on Dugald Stewart: 1891a, p.164.

  ‘As Max Müller himself commented’: Max Müller, 1891a, I, p.229.

  ‘“Dark and helpless utterances”’: Max Müller, 1891b, p.xxix.

  ‘“Striving for the victory prize”’: Doniger O’Flaherty, p.105.

  ‘resistant to scholarly penetration’: As the Sanskrit scholar Harry Falk writes, ‘The language of the poets obscures more facts than it clarifies’ (p.70).

  ‘engendered humanity’s concept of the divine’: Max Müller, 1907, p.152.

  ‘“The derivation of the name Indra”’: Max Müller, 1903, pp.395–6.

  ‘Indra’s waters fill the Indus’: Griffith, p.139.

  ‘“honey-growing flowers”’: Wilson, pp.205–6.

  ‘their women dance naked’: cited in Karttunen, 1989, p.217.

  ‘a Brahmin priest from Sindh’: Das.

  ‘“The Aryans did not cross the river into India”’: interview with Muhammad Zahir, Peshawar Museum, 2005.

  ‘In the 1960s, artefacts were recovered’: Dani, 1967, p.49.

  ‘a connection with the Vedic literature’: Stacul, 1987, p.123.

  ‘“Surely the child of the waters, urging on his swift horses”’: Doniger O’ Flaherty, p.105.

  ‘Proto-Sanskrit speakers entered north-west Pakistan’: Parpola, p.200; Dani, 1967, p.375.

  ‘warm the heart of any Gaul’: Horses were indeed the main food of Palaeolithic humans in Europe; see Curtis, p.21.

  ‘Indra, it is written’: Michael Witzel in Erdosy, ed., p.322.

  ‘pure Aryans of the high type’: J. Biddulph, p.128.

  ‘Indra has done these deeds’: Wilson, 1854, II, p. 246.

  ‘they had killed the sons of Ali’: J. Biddulph, p.131; Jettmar, 1986, p.133.

  ‘famous for its horses’: In the Buddhist text Majjhima the land of the Kamboja people was known as the homeland of horses; in the Arthasastra horse-dealers are known as Northerners.

  ‘Kalash mythology maintains’: Jettmar, 1974, p.75.

  ‘a “rude sculpture” of their god Taiban’s horse’: J. Biddulph, p.15.

  ‘horse sacrifices took place’: Parpola, too, considered that this signified that the ‘tribes of Nuristan in Northeastern Afghanistan have, in their isolation, kept their archaic Aryan religion and culture until the present century’ (p.245).

  ‘an early “protest movement among tribal Aryans”’: The similarities of the Rig Veda to the Iranian Avesta suggest a similar, rival relationship.

  ‘linguists have guessed’: A. and A. Cacopardo, pp.307, 310.

  ‘“the only existing remnants of ancient Aryan religion”’: Morgenstierne, p.2.

  ‘“Don’t let it jump here and there and bring floods”’: Wada, p.17.

  ‘“make the floods easy to cross, O Indra”’: Rig Veda 4.19.6, tr. Griffith, p.125.

  ‘they hope to prove a genetic link’: Genetics may yet prove where the Kalash came from. Preliminary studies have shown that they are a ‘distinct’ population cluster with ‘external contributions’ to their gene pool. See Qamar et al.

  ‘a Cambridge archaeologist’: F. R. Allchin, p.4.

  ‘One group of bodies’: Ihsan Ali, ed., 2005, p.140.

  ‘like the milk of cattle’: Doniger O’Flaherty, p.155.

  ‘a practice dating from Neanderthal times’: B. Allchin, p.153.

  ‘according to the Satapatha Brahmana’: Bryant, 2002, p.202.

  ‘“in complete sexual abandon”’: Jettmar, 1980a, pp.63–4.

  ‘In another orchard near the river’: The Pakistani archaeologist Professor A. H. Dani, who visited Yasin valley with Karl Jettmar, mistook this circle, which in those days belonged to a man called Ishaq (the current owner’s grandfather), for that described by Biddulph as being the most complete circle in the valley. In fact, Biddulph’s ‘circle in most perfect preservation’ is further south–exactly as he described it, on a tongue of land between two rivers.

  ‘repolished to a brown lustre’: Martin Bemmann at the Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway (Heidelberg Akademie) was kind enough to examine my photographs of the carving, which he knew about from an article by Haruko Tsuchiya (2000). He estimated that it was carved between
the sixth and second millennium BCE.

  ‘the art of Mesolithic hunters’: Jettmar, 2002, p.91.

  ‘a drawing by one of the Kalash’: Vigne, 1842, II, p.309.

  10: Alluvial Cities

  ‘to the east a residential area’: B. and R. Allchin, p.175. The population estimate is based on Irfan Habib, pp.22–3.

  ‘scented coffins’: Stacul, p.117; Chowdhury and Ghosh, pp.12–13.

  ‘a Fabian utopia’: Marshall, 1931, p.15.

  ‘This was semi-true’: Cloughley, p.376.

  ‘the burrows of marmots’: Peissel, p.148.

  ‘Ganoks itself was a “halting-place”’: Vohra, 1989a, p.39.

  ‘in Pakistan they have faded from view’: There are stories from the Indian side, relating to Pakistani intrusions into India during the Kargil War, which tell that men from Ganoks in Pakistan still speak Brogskad, the Dard language. See Swami.

  ‘“hydropathic” citizens’: Marshall, 1931, p.24.

  ‘“water luxury”’: Ardeleanu-Jansen, p.1.

  ‘wishing to prove that the horse-riding Aryans were indigenous to India’: see also the German writer Egbert Richter-Ushanas who has claimed both that ‘the Indus inscriptions are identical to verses of the early Rig-Veda’ and that the ‘Indus writers…are identical with the first Vedic seers and priests’ (Richter-Ushanas, pp.7–9).

  “‘ruined places”’: Michael Witzel in Erdosy, ed., p.98.

  ‘the technology has not changed’: see Kenoyer, p.151.

  ‘the alluvium that the river brought down’: B. and R. Allchin, p.167.

  ‘sesame and aubergine’: Diamond, p.100.

  ‘the date, Phoenix dactylifera’: B. and R. Allchin, p.108.

  ‘in Greek it was sindo-n’: quoted in Illustrated London News, 7 January 1928, p.32.

  ‘Villages inhabited by the “Meluhha”’: Perhaps the Indus valley Meluhhas became the Mlecchas–non-Sanskrit-speaking barbarians–of the later Rigvedic civilization.

  ‘moist jungles of the plains’: Marshall, 1931, p.19.

  ‘smeared the skeletons of their dead’: Pande, p.134.

  ‘Others suggest that it was the river…which caused their destruction’: The story of the flood in the Hindu Puranas, it has been argued, was derived from archaic legends of the unstable Indus river, themselves partly inspired by Mesopotamian stories (see Thapar, 1966, p.30).