chapter xviii

. we must consider an obligatory point. (_Fah-hian_, p. 26; _Koeppen_, I. 70; _Pèlerins Boud._ II. 131–132.)

[“Tao-lin (a Buddhist monk like Hiuen Tsang) afterwards left the western regions and changed his road to go to Northern India; he made a pilgrimage to _Kia-che-mi-louo_ (Káshmir), and then entered the country of _U-ch’ang-na_ (Udyána)....” (Ed. Chavannes, _I-tsing_, p. 105.)—H. C.]

We must now turn to the name _Pashai_. The Pashai Tribe are now Mahomedan, but are reckoned among the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, which the Afghans are not. Baber mentions them several times, and counts their language as one of the dozen that were spoken at Kabul in his time. Burnes says it resembles that of the Kafirs. A small vocabulary of it was published by Leech, in the seventh volume of the _J. A. S. B._, which I have compared with vocabularies of Siah-posh Kafir, published by Raverty in vol. xxxiii. of the same journal, and by Lumsden in his _Report of the Mission to Kandahar_, in 1837. Both are Aryan, and seemingly of Professor Max Müller’s class _Indic_, but not _very_ close to one another.[1]

Ibn Batuta, after crossing the Hindu-Kúsh by one of the passes at the head of the Panjshir Valley, reaches the Mountain BASHÁI (Pashai). In the same vicinity the Pashais are mentioned by Sidi ’Ali, in 1554. And it is still in the neighbourhood of Panjshir that the tribe is most numerous, though they have other settlements in the hill-country about Nijrao, and on the left bank of the Kabul River between Kabul and Jalalabad. _Pasha_ and _Pasha_-gar is also named as one of the chief divisions of the Kafirs, and it seems a fair conjecture that it represents those of the Pashais who resisted or escaped conversion to Islam. (See _Leech’s Reports_ in Collection pub. at Calcutta in 1839; _Baber_, 140; _Elphinstone_, I. 411; _J. A. S. B._ VII. 329, 731, XXVIII. 317 _seqq._, XXXIII. 271–272; _I. B._ III. 86; _J. As._ IX. 203, and _J. R. A. S._ N.S. V. 103, 278.)

The route of which Marco had heard must almost certainly have been one of those leading by the high Valley of Zebák, and by the Doráh or the Nuksán Pass, over the watershed of Hindu-Kúsh into Chitrál, and so to Dir, as already noticed. The difficulty remains as to how he came to apply the name _Pashai_ to the country south-east of Badakhshan. I cannot tell. But it is at least possible that the name of the Pashai tribe (of which the branches even now are spread over a considerable extent of country) may have once had a wide application over the southern spurs of the Hindu-Kúsh.[2] Our Author, moreover, is speaking here from hearsay, and hearsay geography without maps is much given to generalising. I apprehend that, along with characteristics specially referable to the Tibetan and Mongol traditions of Udyána, the term Pashai, as Polo uses it, vaguely covers the whole tract from the southern boundary of Badakhshan to the Indus and the Kabul River.

But even by extending its limits to Attok, we shall not get within seven marches of Káshmir. It is 234 miles by road from Attok to Srinagar; more than twice seven marches. And, according to Polo’s usual system, the marches should be counted from Chitrál, or some point thereabouts.

Sir H. Rawlinson, in his _Monograph on the Oxus_, has indicated the probability that the name _Pashai_ may have been originally connected with _Aprasin_ or _Paresín_, the Zendavestian name for the Indian Caucasus, and which occurs in the Babylonian version of the Behistun Inscription as the equivalent of Gadára in the Persian, _i.e._ _Gandhára_, there applied to the whole country between Bactria and the Indus. (See _J. R. G. S._ XLII. 502.) Some such traditional application of the term Pashai might have survived.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The Kafir dialect of which Mr. Trumpp collected some particulars shows in the present tense of the substantive verb these remarkable forms:— _Ei sŭm_, _Tŭ sis_, _siga sĕ_; _Ima sĭmĭs_, _Wĭ sik_, _Sigĕ sin_.

[2] In the _Tabakāt-i-Násiri_ (_Elliot_, II. 317) we find mention of the Highlands of _Pasha-Afroz_, but nothing to define their position.

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