155 
1892.] H. G. Raverty— The Mihrdn of Sind and its Tributaries . 
11th. Jati or ‘Birth’ represents a child connected by a ‘ navel- 
string ’ with its parent. 
12th. Jaramarana or 1 Decay and Death’ This is a sitting figure, 
which the lamas, to whom I have shown the picture, say is a corpse 
bound and ready for removal. 
The body of the disc appears to have been divided by radii into 
A pictorial cycle of compartments, of which only portions of 
Buddha’s own exis- five now remain. The scenes in these com- 
tence. partments, seem to me, illustrations of some 
of the more celebrated of the mythical former births of Buddha as 
contained in the Jataka tales, e. g ., a brahman giving charity, existence 
as Indra and earthly kings, a garuda and snake, an elephant, a deer, a 
monkey, a pigeon, a thief, ascetic, &c., &c. This Ajanta picture therefore 
seems to be the Pictorial Cycle of Existence of Buddha himself. 
The Mihrdn of Sind and its Tributaries: a Geographical and Historical 
Study.—By Major H. G. Raverty, Bombay Army (Retired). 
(With three plates). 
The identification of the routes taken by Alexander the Macedo¬ 
nian, and the countries, towns, and rivers mentioned in his campaigns, 
extending from the mountains of Hindu-Kush to the Persian Sea, in¬ 
cluded in the present Af gh an state, the territory of the Panj-ab, and 
Sind, has exercised the ingenuity of many oriental scholars, and also 
of many students of oriental subjects. 1 Later on come the travels of the 
Chinese pilgrims, Fa Hian and Hwen Thsang, of whom the former 
visited India about seven hundred, and the latter nearly one thousand 
years, after the time of Alexander; and these also exercise the in¬ 
genuity of scholars and students, and exercise it very greatly too, parti¬ 
cularly the travels of the last named pilgrim, who enters into much 
greater detail. He remained many years in India, and is said to have 
been “ well-versed in the Turki and Indian languages,” but he chose to 
write all the names of places and persons in the Chinese. 
Most of the writers on these subjects, if we exclude their 11 identi¬ 
fications ” in the Afghan state, appear to have based their theories 
chiefly upon the present courses of the rivers of Northern and Western 
India, which, probably, have altered their courses a hundred times over, 
and to have expected to find places on their banks 'now as they stood 
1 I make a difference between the two, as between those who can refer to the 
native writers for themselves, and those who have to depend upon Dow’s and 
Briggs’s ‘ Ferislita,’ and the like. 
