In quest of the identification and geographical location of the Brahmin town of Harmatelia, known for Alexander's siege which became a favourite literary theme throughout the Hellenistic age, the author has studied this minor problem within the much wider context of the historico-geographic conditions of Sind and Baluchistan about 500 B.C. - A.D. 25. Starting from a well-balanced assessment of the data supplied by western classic authors as well as by Indian and other oriental sources, he has compared the views held by General Cunningham's contemporaries with the fresh evidence we have at our disposal nowadays, such as the data collected by Aurel Stein during his archaeological reconnaissances in Baluchistan, the numerous notes which W.W. Tarn has inserted in his papers and books on Alexander the Great, and the recent geomorphological studies by the German geologist H. Wilhelmy on the Indus river basin in general, and the Indus delta in particular. An interesting feature of this book is the new method the author has developed. His interpretation is based on what he calls the Law of the strings of geographical names, viz. the principle according to which the early geographers listed the toponyms of towns, tribes, and mountains.
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