14 On the Antiquities of the Peshawur District. [ Nowy 
the conclusion ; indeed, there is sufficient evidence that the writer 
himself was not satisfied with the conclusion, and that he gets rather 
out of patience, and that justly, with his authorities, Arrian and 
Curtius. Without absolute violence, it is quite impossible to reconcile 
their discrepant statements; and not only are their statements 
utterly discordant as to the locality, but the most discordant points 
are found in one and the same writer. 
As to the general locality in which Aornos is to be sought, most 
investigators, as indeed Col. Abbott himself, have found Arrian so 
vague here, that they have held to the more graphic representations 
of the imaginative Curtius. Yet no writer can be more inaccurate. 
His best friends have never been able to defend him from the charge 
of romancing. His own ideas, too, in reference to geography and 
topography seem so confused, that what little value may be accorded 
to his narratives, the want of proper and true localization deprives 
them of all value as portions of history. Only a few paragraphs before 
this chapter about Aornos, he speaks of Alexander’s taking J/ara- 
canda, which, from all attending circumstances, must be Samarkand, 
and in the very next breath he speaks of the Scythians of the Tanais 
(the Don) as in the same neighbourhood. In this very narrative 
about Aornos, which he places on the Indus, he makes Alexander 
fight for the place as only a very important place such as commanded 
a ford or passage, could induce him to fight, and then, he makes 
Alexander march sixteen more marches in order to cross the Indus. 
The topographical indications, therefore, of the ancient writers, it 
must be confessed, have hitherto led to no satisfactory result in the 
search after the famous Aornos. May not another method of iden- 
tification prove more successful ? The mame Aornos can hardly be an 
invention of the Greeks. If the difficulties of Chinese transcription 
of Indian names have been so successfully overcome, may not a simi- 
lar linguistic method have equally happy results, if applied to those 
names in Alexander’s march, which have not been satisfactorily iden- 
tified yet P 
What appears most probable in reference to the disputed locality, 
is this: that the place was on or near the Indus, that it was a height 
near plains, that the people of the plains considered it an impreg- 
nable place of refuge, that Alexander thought it of sufficient impor- 
tance to make a very signal effort for its capture, and that its name 
was Aornos. ‘To begin with the name. 
