Indus

“ The mighty sound of the Indus ascends above the earth to the sky! She flows with mighty force and in radiant form. Her mighty sound is heard as if rains were descending from the clouds with great noise. ”

“ As might be expected, we have in the Rig-Veda frequent allusions to the Indus and its five tributaries, especially in the seventy-fifth hymn of the tenth book, which we translate in full:—
"O ye streams! The bard celebrates your excellent prowess in the house of the worshipper. They flow in three systems, seven streams in each system. The prowess of the Indus is superior to that of all others.
"O Indus! when you ran towards land rich in food, Varuna opened out the way for you. You flow over a spacious path on the land. You shine above all flowing rivers. ”

“ The first time I heard of Lâl was on a bright spring morning, one of those mornings when the plains of Northern India glitter with dew-drops; when a purple haze of cloud-mountain bounds the pale wheat-fields to the north, and a golden glow strikes skywards from the sand-hills in the south. I was in a tamarisk jungle on the banks of the Indus, engaged in the decorous record of all the thefts and restitutions made during the year by that most grasping and generous of rivers. ”

“ Dashing its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains, meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea; while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. ”

“ Again this same river unites with the Hydraotes, and after absorbing this river, still retains its own name. After this the Acesines takes in the Hyphasis, and finally flows into the Indus under its own name; but after the junction it yields its name to the Indus. From this point I have no doubt that the Indus proceeds 100 stades, [3] and perhaps more, before it is divided so as to form the Delta ; and there it spreads out more like a lake than a river. ”

“ There is not a more miserable country in the world than the low tract at the mouths of the Indus. The tide overflows their banks, and recedes to leave a desert dreary waste, overgrown with shrubs, but without a single tree. ”

“ It is, no doubt, the region of the Indus, with the Panjab, which is meant in the Avesta by the land hapta hindu (hendu) , i. e., the seven streams. The inscriptions of Darius call the dwellers on the Indus Idhus. These names the Greeks render by Indos and Indoi. ... Products of India, and among them such as do not belong to the land of the Indus, were exported from the land about 1000 B. C., under names given to them by the Aryas, and therefore the Aryas must have been settled there for centuries previously. ”

“ The following are statements about the river Indus which are quite unquestionable, and therefore let me record them. The Indus is the largest of all the rivers in Asia and Europe, except the Ganges, [1] which is also an Indian river. It takes its rise on this side mount Parapamisus, or Caucasus, and discharges its water into the Great Sea which lies near India in the direction of the south wind. ”

“ The Indus traverses, too, a comparatively barren and deserted country, thinly peopled and poorly cultivated; while the Ganges expends its waters in irrigation, and blesses the inhabitants of its banks with rich and exuberant crops. The Indus, even in the season of inundation, is confined to its bed by steeper and more consistent banks than the other river ”

“ Who, for instance, has properly appraised and inwardly digested, until it remains as a living picture in the mind's eye for ever, that quaint thirty days' halt of the Macedonian legions on the western bank of the Indus, while on the eastern lay, ripe for plucking, the rich harvest of the fertile plains of India? ”

“ For another 230 m., in a north-westerly direction, the Indus pursues a comparatively gentle and placid course over its sandy bed between the giant chains of Ladakh to the north and Zaskar (the main “snowy range” of the Himalaya) to the south, amidst an array of mountain scenery which, for the majesty of sheer altitude, is unmatched by any in the world. Then the river takes up the waters of the Shyok from the north (a tributary nearly as great as itself) , having already captured the Zasvar from the south, together with innumerable minor glacier-fed streams. ”

“ PUNJAUB, n.p. The name of the country between the Indus and the Sutlej. The modern Anglo-Indian province so-called, now extends on one side up beyond the Indus, including Peshāwar, the Derajāt, &c., and on the other side up to the Jumna, including Delhi. [In 1901 the Frontier Districts were placed under separate administration.] The name is Pers. Panj-āb, 'Five Rivers.' These rivers, as reckoned, sometimes include the Indus, in which case the five are (1) Indus, (2) Jelam (see JELUM) or Behat, the ancient Vitasta which the Greeks made Ὑδάσπης (Strabo) and Βιδάσπης (Ptol.) ”

“ The bar to frontier progress lies in the desert which stretches east of the Indus from the coast to the land of the five rivers. This is indeed India's second line of defence, and it covers a large extent of her frontier. Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been obliged to follow up the Indus to the Punjab before striking eastwards for the great cities of the plains. ”

“ As regards the physical peculiarities of that country, they are all to be found again on the Indus, with its affluents from{6} far inland Alps bringing down a periodical inundation, with its great delta spreading from Hyderabad, with its long course through a desert which affords it not a rivulet of increase: yet the peoples of the Indus have never thriven and waxed great like the Egyptians. ”

“ That such changes of river bed and channel should have occurred within a comparatively limited period of time is the less astonishing if we remember that the Indus, like many of the greatest rivers of the world, carries down sufficient detritus to raise its own bed above the general level of the surrounding plains in an appreciable and measurable degree. ”

“ The water of the Indus is considered superior, for every purpose of life, to that drawn from the wells of Sinde. When taken from the river it is very foul; but the rich keep it till the mud with which it is loaded subsides. There are few ferry-boats on the Indus; and it is a curious sight to see the people crossing it on skins and bundles of reeds. A native will often float down to a distance of fifteen or twenty [65] miles, accompanied by a whole herd of buffaloes, preferring this mode of travelling to a journey on the banks. ”

“ As the road lies altogether on the north or right bank of the Indus, the elevation and appearance of the mountains on that side cannot well be seen. This range separates the Indus valley from that of Shigar, which is in no part of Rondu more than twenty-five miles distant, and is crossed in several places by passes at the head of the larger ravines. These passes being still blocked up with snow, I could not cross them, nor ascertain their elevation, which is perhaps nowhere less than fourteen or fifteen thousand feet, except at the very eastern extremity of the ridge. ”

“ The other two lying between the rivers Euphrates and Indus are scarcely worthy to be compared with India, if they were joined together. They say that India is bounded towards the east and the east wind as far as the south by the Great Sea, towards the north by mount Caucasus, as far as its junction with the Taurus; and that the river Indus cuts it off towards the west and the north-west wind, as far as the Great Sea. The greater part of it is a plain, which, as they conjecture, has been formed by the alluvial deposits of the rivers ”

“ The whole of India is watered by rivers, some of which empty themselves into the two largest, the Indus and the Ganges; others discharge themselves into the sea by their own mouths. But all of them have their sources in the Caucasus. At their commencement their course is towards the south; some of them continue to flow in the same direction, particularly those which unite with the Indus; others turn to the east, as the Ganges. ”

“ The Indian outlook on life changes. A thousand years of life upon the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges had softened and sombred the character of the robust and joyful Aryan settlers of India. In common with their Iranian cousins whom they had left behind the Hindukush, the Vedic singers had sung of this world in laudatory terms and feverently prayed for long life in it with its riches and joys. ”

“ Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung, which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of Buddhist remains north of Buner. ”

“ The Indus in British India.—After reaching British India the Indus soon becomes the boundary dividing Hazára and Pesháwar, two districts of the North West Frontier Province. Lower down it parts Pesháwar from the Panjáb district of Attock. In this section after a time the hills recede on both sides, and the stream is wide and so shallow that it is fordable in places in the cold weather. There are islands, ferry boats and rafts can ply, and the only danger is from sudden freshets. ”

“ The Indus valley would offer to the military explorers from the West the first taste of the quality of the climate of the India of the plains which they would encounter. The Indus valley in the hot weather would possess little climatic attraction for the Western highlander. Alexander's troops mutinied when they got far beyond the Indus. Any other troops would mutiny under such conditions as governed their outfit and their march. It is more than possible that the great Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much the same difficulty. ”

“ On the north the highlands include the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan (Siwalik) tracts to the south and east of the Indus, and north of that river the Muztagh-Karakoram range and the bleak salt plateau beyond that range reaching almost up to the Kuenlun mountains. To the west of the Indus they include those spurs of the Hindu Kush which run into Chitral and Dir, the Buner and Swat hills, the Safed Roh, the Waziristan hills, the Suliman range, and the low hills in the trans-Indus districts of the North West Frontier Province. ”

“ In these facts, we have additional proof of the greater bulk of the Indus, as compared with the Ganges; when at the lowest, it retains a velocity of two and a half miles, with a medial depth of fifteen feet, and though running on as great, if not a greater slope than that river, never empties itself in an equal degree, though much more straight in its course. ”

“ Except on the south-east, where the Indus flows, it is encircled by mountains which are inhabited by the Mohmand, Utman Khel and Afridi tribes. The plain consists of alluvial deposits of silt and gravel. ”

“ The voyage of Nearchos from Alexander’s Haven to the Mouth of the Arabios (Append. Note F) .
Our author could scarcely have chosen for his subject one that is more beset with problems of aggravating perplexity. The Indus is notable even among Indian rivers for the frequency, and sometimes also for the suddenness, with which it changes its courses. As Colonel Holdich [xvii] well observes, “The difficulty of restoring to the map of India an outline of the ancient geography of Sindh and the Indus Delta is one which has baffled many generations of scholars. ”

“ That is the typical state of the Himalayan rivers, though the same Jhelam above Baramula is an exception, flowing there sluggishly through a very flat valley into a shallow lake.
The Indus Basin.— The river Sindh (Sanskrit, Sindhu) , more familiar to us under its classical name of the Indus, must have filled with astonishment every invader from the west, and it is not wonderful that they called after it the country that lay beyond. ”

“ On the authority of these documents, Eratosthenes and other writers have described India as a rhomboid, or unequal quadrilateral, in shape, with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north, and the sea on the east and south. [3] The shortest side was on the west, which Patrokles estimated at 12,000 stadia, and Eratosthenes at 13,000 stadia. [4] I All the accounts agree that the course of the Indus from Alexander's Bridge to the sea was 10,000 stadia, or 1149 British miles ”

“ When we remember that the natives of India have no name to describe the whole continent, it helps us to understand that India is in no way a single country. The British Government have given the continent the name India, taking it from the great river Indus, which itself takes its name from an old word, sindhu, meaning "river." ”

“ But still east of all these tributaries, the Indus itself rises three hundred miles away in those unknown lands of Tibet behind the Himalaya and near the source of that mysterious river of eastern India, the Bramaputra. ”

“ From this description then it would be possible for one to come to a conclusion by comparison, that the size of the river Indus has been stated not far from the fact by those who think that its mean breadth is forty stades, but that it contracts to fifteen stades where it is narrowest and therefore deepest ”

“ The greater part of the geographers, in fact, do not look upon India as bounded by the river Indus, but add to it the four Satrapies of the Gedrosi,375 the Arachotæ,376 the Arii,377 and the Paropanisidæ,378 the river Cophes379 thus forming the extreme boundary of India. ”