________________
THE EARLY FAITH OF ASOKA.
the already-prepared obverses of the Indo-Scythian kings, or reviving their semblance from time to time in apparent recognition of the suzerain power.
The enigma above outlined seems to me to be susceptible of but one solution, which singularly accords with the given circumstances of time and place-that is, that the 10,000 captives of the army of Crassus, who were transported to Mervul-rúd, on the extreme border of the Parthian dominions," a site intentionally most remote from their ancestral homes, finding even that fertile valley, that pleasant Siberia, unprepared to accommodate so large and so sudden an influx of population, spread and extended themselves into the proximate dominions of the Indo-Scythians,3 and freely ac
1 Plutarch in Crassus xxxi.-Λέγονται δ ̓ οἱ πάντες δισμύριοι μὲν ἀποθανεῖν, μύριοι δὲ ἁλῶναι ζῶντες. Repeated in Appian Parth., p. 66.
2 Pliny, N. H. vi. xvi. 18.-"Sequitur regio Margiane, apricitalis inclytæ, sola in eo tractu vitifera, undique inclusa montibus amoenis et ipsa contra Parthia tractum sita: in qua Alexander Alexandriam condiderat. Qua diruta a barbaris, Antiochus Seleuci filius, eodem loco restituit Syriam; nam interfluente Margo, qui corrivatur in Zotale, is maluerat illam Antiochiam appellari. Urbis amplitudo circumitur circuitu stadiis lxx; in hanc Orodes Romanos Crassiana clade captos deduxit."
The references in Vell. Patercnlus ii. 82, and Florus iv. 10, only go to show how mercifully the captives were treated, inasmuch as they were freely allowed to serve in the Parthian ranks. Justin, xlii. cap. v. affirms that the prisoners of both the armies of Crassus and Antony were collected and restored, with the standards, in B.C. 20, but this statement probably refers only to those who were within easy call; and the thirty-three years' residence in the distant valleys of the Indian Caucasus may well have reconciled the then surviving remnant of Crassus's force to their foreign home and new domestic ties. See. also Suetonius, in Angusto, c. xxi., in Tiberio, c. ix.
3 'AVTIÓXELα ʼn Kaλovμévn "Evuopos, or Antiochia irrigua, was distant 537 schani, by the Parthian royal road, from Ctesiphon, or Madain, on the Tigris: in continuation of the same highway, it was 30 scheni N.N.E. of 'Aλe¿ávöpeia ʼn ev 'Apelois or Alexandria Ariana, the modern "Herát," from whence the route proceeded by Farrah and the Lake of Zaranj to Sikohah, the ZakaσTav Zaкaν Zкubov or Sacastana Sacarum Scytharum, and hence to Bust and ̓Αλεξανδρόπολις, μητρόπολις ̓Αραχωσίας, or the modern Kandahár.—C. Müller, Geographi Græci Minores (Paris, pp. xci. 252, and Map No. x.).
مدرارم
69
was selected as the seat of government of Khorasan
Mero-ul-rúd
on the Arab conquest, in preference to the more northern Merv Shahjahan-both which names are to be found on the initial Arabico-Pahlavi coins of Selim bin Ziad and Abdullah Hazim, in 63 A.H. (J.R.A.S. Vol. XII. p. 293, and XIII. p. 404). The early Arabian geographers, who officially mapped-out every strategic and commercial highway, tell us that important routes conducted the merchant or traveller from Merv-ul-rúd eastwards, by Tálikán, Farayab and Maimana, to Balkh, whence roads branched-off to the southward, to Bamián, and by other lines to Andarábah, Parwán, and Kábul.
While Herát once reached, by the direct main line to the south, offered endless
عار
or Merv
1
