National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Sec. i]   PAST THE JAZ-MDRIAN DEPRESSION   137

burden and many camels, because they learned that he was taking the route through the Gedrosians, and conjectured that his army would suffer, as it actually did. These men therefore arrived very opportunely, as did also their camels and beasts of burden.'5 A look at the map shows that this transport, anyhow from the side of Sistan, would have reached Alexander in good time while his army was still in the Bampûr area.

SECTION H—BY THE LOWER HAUL ROD

From Chah Hasan I turned to the south-west in order to reach the Halil Rûd at Tumbut, which the local information collected indicated as the lowest permanently occupied place on the river. The line followed by our guide took us first across a grassy plain to graziers' huts near Jamûri, a conspicuous sandy ridge, and then into a wide stretch of scrub-covered clayey ground known as Takkul. Here, at a distance of about 6 miles from Ziârat-i-Mir Mikdâd, I found a debris area where wind erosion working on the flat surface had exposed plentiful pottery of manifestly chalcolithic type over a space measuring some 440 yards from north-east to south-west and about half that across where widest. In addition to superior pinkish-red plain ware, many painted pieces of fine greyish pottery were to be picked up here, showing geometric patterns in black familiar from Bampûr sites and Shahi-tump, as seen in Tak. A. 8, 20, 28 (Pl. XX) . Part of a small cup, Tak. A. 16, has the characteristic small base of chalcolithic ware of this shape. Fragments of alabaster cups and some worked stones confirmed the dating.

About a mile to the south-south-west of this area, A, I was shown a second patch of pottery-strewn ground, B, roughly 300 by 200 yards in extent, rising to a small ridge about 8 feet high on the south. Here the patterns coarsely painted in black over ground, varying in colour from pink and purple to whitish and greenish grey, seemed to suggest a somewhat later make (Tak. B. 52; Pl. XX) . But flint flakes (Tak. 38, B. 55; Pl. XXX) were found here also as well as fragments of alabaster. At a third debris area, C, visited half a mile to the south and extending for some 500 yards from north to south and about 300 yards across, the plentiful painted pottery closely resembled that at B (c. 62, 68, 74; Pl. xx), but included also some pieces painted in two colours (c. 110, 112) . Flint flakes were collected here also.

The evidence, thus secured on the surface, of a fairly extensive prehistoric settlement having existed on this ground would have induced me to halt at Takkul for trial excavation. But the escort and baggage had moved ahead from

5 See Anabasis, vi. xxvii. 6, as translated in M'Crindle, Invasion of India, p. 178. Cf. also Curtius, ix. x. 17, 18.

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