Place · Indus ford & Shahi capital · Pakistan
Hund / Udabhāndapura
A village on the right bank of the Indus in Swabi district that was important for one reason for two thousand years: it is where the river can be crossed. Alexander bridged the Indus here in 327 BCE on his way to the Punjab. Thirteen centuries later the Hindu Shahis, pushed out of Kabul, made the same crossing their capital as Udabhāndapura, and held it until Mahmūd of Ghazni took it in 1001. Akbar later built a fort on the spot for the same reason.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.017, 72.431
Worth knowing
A Macedonian army, a Hindu Shahi court and a Mughal customs fort all chose the same few hundred metres of bank, because the Indus is fordable there and for a long way in either direction it is not.
Connections (6)
- Patronage networkAmb Temples, the Soon valley
Hund was the Hindu Shahi capital and the Salt Range temples are what the dynasty built. Having lost Kabul, the Shahis ruled from Udabhāndapura on the Indus until Mahmūd of Ghazni took it in 1001, and their territory ran south-east across the Salt Range, where Amb, Malot, Nandana and Katās Rāj mark the line. Nandana is where Mahmūd fought them again in 1014, so the same escarpment holds the dynasty's temples and the battlefields on which it ended, within about eighty kilometres.
- Life routeAlexander of Macedon
Alexander bridged the Indus at Hund in the spring of 327 BCE, having sent Hephaestion ahead to build the crossing, and it was from here that he went on to Taxila and then to the Hydaspes to fight Porus. The reason is hydrological rather than strategic: the Indus is fordable at this reach and for long distances above and below it is not. Every army moving between the Kabul valley and the Punjab had to come to the same few hundred metres of bank, which is why the site keeps reappearing.
- Route adjacencyHydaspes (Jhelum) battlefield
The Indus crossing at Hund and the Hydaspes battlefield are the two fixed points of Alexander's Punjab campaign, about two hundred kilometres apart. Having crossed at Hund he was received at Taxila by Ambhi, took on the elephants and cavalry that alliance provided, and met Porus on the Jhelum in the monsoon of 326 BCE. The route is the same one Mahmūd of Ghazni used in reverse a thousand years later to take Hund from the Shahis, and the Grand Trunk Road still runs it.
- Successor capital ofPurushapura / Peshawar
Purushapura was the Kushan capital, and Udabhāndapura was where the Hindu Shahis ruled from after they lost Kabul — two capitals of the same region, a hundred kilometres apart on either side of the Indus, separated by about eight centuries. The shift east across the river is the political geography of the whole period in miniature: pressure from the Kabul valley pushing the seat of government to the Indus bank, until Mahmūd of Ghazni crossed it too in 1001 and ended the Shahi state.
- Imperial administration ofKāfir Kot & Bilot
Hund was the Shahi capital on the Indus after Kabul was lost; Kāfir Kot and Bilot are Shahi temple groups three hundred kilometres downstream on the same river's right bank. Together they show the shape of the state: a court at the ford where the river could be crossed, and fortified temple complexes strung down the bank below it. Mahmūd of Ghazni took Hund in 1001 and the Salt Range forts by 1014, and the Indus temples were left to be renamed by the people who stayed.
- AnalogueAttock Fort
Two crossings of the same river, two thousand years apart, chosen for the same reason. Alexander bridged the Indus at Hund in 327 BCE and the Hindu Shahis later made that ford their capital. Akbar built Attock in 1581 about forty kilometres downstream, to hold the crossing on the road to Kabul during the campaign against his half-brother. Once the Mughal fort was there, the traffic moved to it: the Grand Trunk Road and later the railway bridge cross at Attock, and Hund became a village.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hund, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”. Arrian, Anabasis, on the Indus bridging; Abdur Rahman, The Last Two Dynasties of the Śāhis (1979); KP directorate of archaeology records.
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