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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Sec. ii]   UP THE BAMPUR RIVER   i is

collectively by the name of Fahreh, and this name, recorded also as Fehruj, has been connected with that of the capital of Gedrosia, TTovpa, where Alexander rested his army after its disastrous march through Makrân.l Philological evidence is inadequate for this particular location of Pura, as also for the conjecture which would seek a survival of its name in the last syllable of the name Bampûr. But on general topographical grounds it appears highly probable, as I hope to prove when discussing Alexander's route through Gedrosia to Karmania in another place, that the capital of the Gedrosia of his time must have lain somewhere in the vicinity of Bampiir, which has remained the chief place of the province ever since. Possibly some notice of Arab geographers may yet supply a link rendering a more exact determination possible.

Fahreh enjoys a permanent supply of good water from a series of gandts which

tap the subterraneous drainage from the right bank of the Bampûr river some distance below the point where it debouches from the Damin valley in the north. The canals fed by them some two miles farther down irrigate lands situated near one of the flood-beds in which the river spreads itself to the east of Fahreh before it takes a sharp turn to the west in a deep-cut united bed. The scrub-covered area to the east, over which those flood-beds extend, holds patches of cultivation, but this is liable to damage by inundation and the vagaries of the river. This potentially fertile ground is hence likely to have undergone considerable changes during historical times. The village of Shahr-darâz, situated in this area at a distance of about 3 miles from Tran-shahr, bears a name meaning `the large town', but counts only some fifty dwellings, almost all mere mat-huts. The small mound some 4 to 5 feet high nearby, known as Tump, which had been reported to me as an old site, showed only a few painted potsherds of uncertain type, and a small debris area west of it only fragments of late ware.

But on proceeding about a mile farther to the south-east towards the hamlet

of Sar-kahûrân we were shown another small debris area close to where the wide main flood-bed of the river from Damin is joined by another descending from the hills above Aptâr. Here fragments of grey and red ware with painted designs of the same chalcolithic type as at Bampûr were plentiful (Shd. 1, 5, 7, 9; Pl. XI ) . They suffice to prove that prehistoric occupation extended over this area. At Sar-kahûrân, reached after another mile, there was found a mound, about 20 feet high and manifestly artificial, but showing no remains apart from some low decayed mud walls forming enclosures.

Near Fahreh itself the only place with remains of former occupation is the mound called Qalâtuk, not far from the foot of the gravel terraces which overlook Iran-shahr from the north-east. The mound rises about 40 feet above a flood-bed 1 Cf. Curzon, Persia, ii. p. 263.

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