Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/117

Rh talents of steel, a great store of cotton goods, a quantity of tortoise-shells, the skins of large lizards, with tame lions and tigers, in addition to a contingent of three hundred horsemen.

Philippos was then appointed satrap of the conquered nations, and the fleet, passing the third confluence, where the Hyphasis contributed its waters to the stream, continued its voyage to the fourth confluence, that of the Akesines (Chinab), including the Hydaspes (Jihlam), Hydraotes (Ravi), and Hyphasis (Bias), with the river which the ancient writers call the Indus. But it is probable that the "lost river of Sind," the Hakra, or Wahindah, then existed, and that all the Pan jab rivers, including the Indus, joined it, and formed one great stream, afterward known as the Mihran of Sind.

It is absolutely impossible to determine the position of any of the confluences in Alexander's time; but, long afterward, in the days of the early Arab writers, all the rivers met at a place called Dosh-i-ab, or "the Meeting of the Waters," in territory now belonging to the Bahawalpur State. Our complete uncertainty as to the courses of the rivers, which have ranged, as the old channels indicate, over a space a hundred and ten miles wide in the region of the final confluence, deprives the remainder of Alexander's river voyage of much of its interest. His course in Upper Sind cannot be indicated even approximately, and it is impossible to fix accurately the position of either the towns or the nations mentioned by the historians.