Sindh
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Date
1924
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SIND is unfortunate in its record. Inscriptions and archaeological finds have hitherto added little to our knowledge of her past; her written record leaves centuries untold and buries the truths of other centuries in fiction. Her geographical features, by their apparent simplicity, have perverted research and added mystery to mystery unsolved, theory to theory irre· concilable ; geographical factors have played a destructive part the extent of which we cannot gauge. It is wellnigh impossible to write a continuous history of the valley. The interest of the valley, however, is probably in proportion to her many mysteries; the lure of exploration is always there to attract; her history and her geographical changes alike baffle interpretation, and the pursuit of an ever elusive solution makes research into her past a perpetual adventure. In consequence of the limitations of,her materia kistorica one can write of Sind's many problems only with great diffidence, but the falsities that pass for fact are so crude, the fiction so bold that masquerades as truth, the conflicting theories of savants so numerous, that it is time to call a halt and review what measure of achievement has been made. I have attempted with this object, as far as I can, to verify every reference to native and European record that I have followed, and to leave a copy of the same for the reader to analyse for himself; I have examined the whole English record of the East India Company and European travellers, neglect of which alone is responsible for many errors, and in the form of essays I have attempted to cover the whole period of Sind's history. Several of these essays have already appeared in issues of the Calcutta Review; many another essay is an enlargement of an article that has been printed in the Pioneer. I have pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of the Editors of these papers in allowing me to use my earlier contributions.