Note 174 — Chapter XV · —Appointment of Satraps—Voyage down the Indus to the dominions of Mousikanos, who tenders his submission

The name of this city is not given by any of the historians, but in all probability it bore the name of its founder. Its site has generally been referred to the neighbourhood of Mithânkôt, a town situated on the western bank of the Indus a little below the junction of that river with the united streams of the Panjâb. V. de Saint-Martin identifies it more precisely with Chuchpûr or Chuchur, an ancient fort standing on the eastern bank of the Indus right opposite Mithânkôt. This fort bore formerly the names of Askalanda, Askelend, and Sikander, which are but variant forms of Alexandreia. The great confluence, however, did not anciently take place at Mithânkôt, but at Uchh, an old city lying forty miles to the north-east of the confluence at Mithânkôt. The place is called by Rashed-ud-din Askaland-usah, which, as Cunningham points out, would be an easy corruption of Alexandria Uchha or Ussa, as the Greeks must have written it. The word uchha means “high” both in Sanskrit and in Hindi, and Uchh seems to owe its name to the fact that it stands on a mound. “Uchh is chiefly distinguished (says Masson) by the ruins of the former towns, which are very extensive, and attest the pristine prosperity of the locality.” v. V. de Saint-Martin, Etude, pp. 124, 125; Cunningham’s Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 242-245.