EARLY INDIA

I3

indicated by him under names that are sometimes
identical, sometimes closely connected, with the original
Greek. It is indeed hardly too much to say that five
centuries before our era the political geography of the
Khorasan and Makrian was better known to the ancient
Greeks than it was to English geographers of fifty years

ROUTES OF
ALEXANDER
ND HIS FORCES

_200 Miles

Fic. a

ago. It was, however, the first scientifically conducted
military expedition of the world—the invasion of India
by Alexander the Great about 327 B.C.—that furnished
for centuries all the data available for the construction
of a map, or plan, which should indicate with the roughest
degree of accuracy the physiography of India. Mountain
ranges thenceforward began to shape themselves correctly,
relatively to the valleys of the great rivers. The Helmund,