"From ancient times both Makran and Sind had been regarded as belong­ ing to India, even when these regions - as recurrently happened - were under Persian political control. The Arabic literature often conflates ‘Sind’ with ‘Hind’ into a single term but also refers to ‘Sind and Hind’, to distinguish the two. Sind, in point of fact, while vaguely defined ter­ritorially, overlaps rather well with what is currently Pakistan. It def­initely did extend beyond the present province of Sind and Makran; the whole of Baluchistan was included, a part of the Panjab, and the North- West Frontier Province. Sind derived its name and identity from the river which in Sanskrit was called Sindhu (meaning literally ‘river’ or ‘stream’), i.e. the ‘Indus’ of the Greeks and Romans, the Mihran of the Arabs. ‘The land of Sind’ designated the alluvial plains created by the river on both sides in its middle and lower course, from Attock to the coast, with varying por­tions of the rocky uplands (Kuhistan) adjoining Baluchistan and of the sandhills of the Thar."