WESTERN H I N D O O S T A N. 15 



and Samarcand. Having fulfilled the objeils of his march he 

 returned, and from this place fet forth on his great defign, the 

 conqueft of India. I will attend his march acrofs the country 

 to the banks of the Indus. 



The conqueror took a north-eaftern courfe, and pafled by 

 the tra<51: of the modern towns of Kiilaut, Tazee, Meerout, Jom- 

 rood, and Gundermouk. He crofled feveral rivers in his way, 

 fuch as the Cophenes, or Cow river, or Nagaz, and the Cboey 

 which falls into the Gurteus, or modern Kameh. On the upper 

 part of the Cophenes, which is called Dilen, ftood Ghizni, once Ghizni. 

 the capital of a mighty empire of the fame name, which con- 

 fifted of the tracfl lying between the Indus and Parthia, to the 

 fouth of the Oxus, and part of the antient Ba£fria. The city is 

 now^ a heap of ruins, and fcarcely mentioned in hiftory. Its 

 emperor Mahmocd I. furnamed Ghizni, firll invaded India in the 

 year loco ; his firft conquefts extends only to Moultan. He in 

 1024 conquered the kingdom of Guzerat ; at that time all i?/;z- 

 doojian was inhabited by the aborigines. With true Mahometan 

 zeal he exercifed all forts of barbarities againft the Hindoos-, and 

 in order if poffible to exterminate their religion, levelled with 

 the ground their favorite Pagoda Sumnaut, and every other 

 object of their worfhip. The Ghiznian empire continued 207 

 years. Mahomed \iQ<g2Xi his reign in 977, and it became extinct 

 in I I 84. 



The city of Attock ftands oppofite to the jundion of the 

 Kameh with the Indus. In the diitridt of Bijorc, not remote 

 from hence, ftood the Aornos Petra, an inacceffible mountain, aornos Pktra« 

 towering into a conical form, with a caftle on its fummit, which 

 gave fo much trouble to Alexander, and which he took merely 



by 



