Note 176 — Chapter XV · —Appointment of Satraps—Voyage down the Indus to the dominions of Mousikanos, who tenders his submission

In Strabo (XV. i.) we find several references to the country of Mousikanos. These were based on information supplied by Onesikritos, who expatiates in praise of its fertility, on the virtues of its people, and the goodness of the laws and government under which they lived. It seems now generally agreed that Alôr, which was anciently and for many ages the metropolis of the rich and powerful kingdom of Upper Sindh, was the capital of Mousikanos. Its ruins were visited by M’Murdo and Lieutenant Wood, and afterwards by General Cunningham, who thus describes their site: “The ruins of Alôr are situated to the south of a gap in the low range of sandstone hills which stretches from Bhakar towards the south for about twenty miles until it is lost in a broad belt of sandhills which bound the Nâra, or old bed of the Indus, on the west. Through this gap a branch of the Indus once flowed, which protected the city on the north-west. To the north-east it was covered by a second branch of the river, which flowed nearly at right angles to the other at a distance of three miles.... In A.D. 680 the latter was probably the main stream of the Indus, which had gradually been working to the westward from its original bed in the old Nâra.” With regard to the name of the king it appears to be a territorial title, since Curtius designates the people Musicani. Lassen (Ind. Alt. ii. 176) takes this to represent the Sanskrit Mûshika (which means a mouse or a thief), and points out that a part of the Malabar coast was also called the Mûshika kingdom. Saint-Martin thinks that the Mûshika still exist in the great tribe of the Moghsis, which forms the most numerous part of the population of Kach Gandâra, a region bordering on the territories of the ancient Mûsikani (Etude, p. 162).