This is a Greek word meaning victorious, and may possibly be a translation of the indigenous name of the place. Wilson (Ar. Antiq. p. 183) takes this view, and fixes the site of Nikaia on the plain of Begrâm at a spot with ruins about some eighteen miles distant from Houpiân. The original name of the place may have been Jayapura, which means the city of victory. According to others, Nikaia is a transliteration of Nichaia-gram, a place said to be in Kafîristân—that is, in the upper part of the valleys which slope away from the Hindu-Kush and carry their waters to the Kâbul river on its left. A belief was at one time current that the Kafîrs of Bajour were descended from the Macedonians whom Alexander had left there when he passed through the country on his way to India. They had, it was said, many points of character in common with the Greeks. They were celebrated for their beauty and their European complexions. They worshipped idols, drank wine in silver cups or vases, used chairs and tables, and spoke a language unknown to their neighbours. Elphinstone during his Kâbul mission (in 1808) caused inquiries to be made as to the truth of these reports, which had greatly excited his curiosity. It was found that though they were in the main correct, yet the fact that the people had no certain traditions of their own as to their origin, while the languages spoken by the different tribes were all of them closely allied to Sanskrit, showed the theory of their Greek origin to be untenable. In the list which was furnished to the envoy of the names of their tribes and villages, Nisa is the only one in which any similarity to Nikaia can be traced. In Lassen’s opinion, Nikaia was not built on the site of any previously existing town, but was first founded by Alexander, who named it the victorious in anticipation of the triumphs which awaited him in India. General Abbott identified it with Nangnihar, a place about four or five miles west of Jalâlâbâd, which he thought Curtius took to be the point where Alexander first entered Indian territory. General Cunningham again, like Ritter and Droysen, thinks that Nikaia must have been Kâbul, otherwise that important town, through which Alexander must have marched, would be passed over by his historians without mention. He cites in proof a passage from the Dionysiakê of Nonnus, in which Nikaia is described as a stone city situated near a lake. The lake, he says, is a remarkable feature which is peculiar in Northern India to Kâbul and Kâshmîr. The authority of Nonnus, however, on such a point is of no worth whatever. Wilson’s view that Nikaia occupied the site of Bagrâm seems preferable to any other. It is the view also which Bunbury favours. (See his History of Ancient Geography, p. 439 n.)
Note C.—Aspasioi Assakênoi
The Aspasioi are the people called by Strabo, in his list of the tribes which occupied the country between the Kôphês and the Indus, the Hippasioi. They are easily to be recognised under either of these names as the Aśvaka who are mentioned in the Mahâbhârata along with the Gândhâra as the barbarous inhabitants of far distant regions in the north. The name of the Aśvaka, derived from aśva, “a horse,” means cavaliers, and indicates that their country was renowned in primitive times, as it is at the present day, for its superior breed of horses. The fact that the Greeks translated their name into Hippasioi (from ἵππος, a horse) shows that they must have been aware of its etymological signification. V. de Saint-Martin inclines to think that the name of the Hippasioi is partly preserved in that of the Pachaï, a considerable tribe located in the upper regions of the Kôphês basin. It is more distinctly preserved in Asip or Isap, the Pukhto name of this tribe, called by Mohammedans the Yusufzai. The name of the Assakênoi, like that of the Aspasioi, represents the Sanskrit Aśvaka, which in the popular dialect is changed into Assaka, and by the addition of the Persian plural termination into Assakan, a form which Arrian has all but exactly transcribed, and which appears without any change in the Assakanoi of Strabo and the Assacani of Curtius. They are now represented by the Aspîn of Chitral and the Yashkun of Gilgit. Some writers think, however, that the name of the Assakans or Asvakans is still extant in that of the Afghans, for the change of the sibilant into the rough aspirate is quite normal, and also that of k into g, a mute of its own order. Dr. Bellew, however, in his Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, finds the source of the name in the Armenian Aghván, and says it seems clear from what he has explained that the name Afghân merely means “mountaineer,” and is neither an ethnic term of distinct race nationality nor of earlier origin than the period of the Roman dominion in Asia Minor. See the Inquiry, pp. 196-208.
Note D.—Mazaga
The name of this place, which in Sanskrit would appear as Mâśaka, has various forms in the classics—Massaga as in our author here, Massaka in his Indika, Mazaga in Curtius, and Masoga in Strabo, who says it was the capital of King Assakanos. The exact position of this important place has not yet been ascertained, but its name as that of an ancient site still remains in the country. The Emperor Baber states in his Memoirs that at the distance of two rapid marches from the town of Bajore (the capital of the province of the same name), lying to the west of the river Pañjkoré, there was a town called Mashanagar on the river of Sévad (Swât). Rennell identified this name with the Massaga of Alexander’s historians, and no doubt correctly. M. Court, who has given interesting information about the country of the Yuzafzaïs, which he collected among the inhabitants of the plains, learned from them that at twenty-four miles from Bajore there exists a ruined site known under the double name of Maskhine and Massangar (Massanagar). In the grammar again of Pânini, who was a native of Gândhâra, in which the Assakan territory was comprised, the word Mâśakâvatî occurs, given as the name both of a river and a district. It may then fairly be presumed that Massaga was the capital of the Mâśakâvatî district, and that the impetuous stream which, as we learn from Curtius, ran between steep banks and made access to Massaga difficult on the east side, was the Mâśakâvatî of Pânini (v. Lassen, Ind. Alt. II. pp. 136-138; V. de Saint-Martin, Étude, pp. 35, 36; and Abbott, Gradus ad Aornon). Curtius (viii. 37, 38) describes with more minuteness than Arrian the nature of the engineering operations designed to make the attack against the walls practicable. He states that Assacanus, the king of the place, died before Alexander’s arrival, and not after the siege had begun, as Arrian relates. He adds that Assacanus was succeeded by his mother (wife?), whose name was Cleophis, and who, according to Justin, bore a son whose paternity was ascribed to Alexander. In reference to this statement Dr. Bellew remarks that at the present day several of the chiefs and ruling families in the neighbouring states of Chitral and Badakhshan boast a lineal descent from Alexander the Great.
Note E.—Bazira
Some writers have taken Bazira to be Bajore, which lies midway between the river of Kunâr and the Landaï, but there is nothing beyond the similarity of the two names to recommend this view. As the Bazirians fled for refuge to the rock Aornos, which overhung the Indus, it is evident they could not have inhabited a place so remote from the rock as Bajore. Cunningham finds a more likely position for Bazira at Bâzâr, “a large village situated on the Kalpan, or Kâli-pâni river, and quite close to the town of Rustam, which is built on a very extensive old mound.... According to tradition this was the site of the original town of Bâzâr. The position is an important one, as it stands just midway between the Swât and the Indus rivers, and has therefore been from time immemorial the entrepôt of trade between the rich valley of Swât and the large towns on the Indus and Kâbul rivers.... This identification is much strengthened by the proximity of Mount Dantalok, which is most probably the same range of hills as the Montes Daedali of the Greeks.” See his Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 65, 66.
Note F.—Aornos
The identification of this celebrated rock has been one of the most perplexing problems of Indian archaeology. The descriptions given of it by the classical writers are more or less discrepant, and their indications as to its position very vague and obscure. It has thus been identified with various positions, against each of which objections of more or less weight may be urged, but the view of General Abbott, who has identified it with Mount Mahâban, has the balance of argument in its favour, and is now generally adopted. The rock, to judge from Arrian’s description of it, must have been in reality a mountain of very considerable height, with a summit of tableland crowned here and there with steep precipices. Curtius, on the other hand, says that the rock, which was on all sides steep and rugged, did not rise to its pinnacle in slopes of ordinary height and of easy ascent, but that in shape it resembled the conical pillar of the racecourse, called the meta, which springs from a broad basis and gradually tapers till it terminates in a sharp point. Here Arrian, who drew his facts from Ptolemy, a prominent actor in capturing Aornos, is, as usual, a safer guide than Curtius, who wrote for effect, and often dealt unscrupulously with the facts of history. Arrian, again, is at variance with Diodôros in his estimate both of the circuit and of the height of the rock, for while with him it has a circuit of 200 stadia (about 23 miles) and a height of 11, Diodôros reduces the circuit by one-half and increases the height to 16 stadia. Curtius is silent on these points, but he mentions a circumstance of great importance which Arrian has failed to note, namely, that the roots of the rock were washed by the river Indus. That he is right here cannot be questioned, for the statement is corroborated both by Diodôros and by Strabo (xv. 687), while Arrian, who says nothing that can lead us to think that his view was different, supplies us with a proof that Aornos was close to the Indus, for he says of the city of Embolima, which we now know to have been on the Indus, that it was situated close to Aornos. The position thus indicated is about sixty miles above Attak, where the Indus escapes into the plains from a long and narrow mountain gorge which the ancients mistook for its source. Colonel Abbott in 1854 explored this neighbourhood, and came to the conclusion that Mount Mahâban, a hill which abuts precipitously on the western bank of the Indus about eight miles west from the site of Embolima, was Aornos. His arguments in support of this identification are given in his Gradus ad Aornon. His description of Mount Mahâban agrees in the main with that which Arrian has given of Aornos. “The rock Aornos,” he says, “was the most remarkable feature of the country, as is the Mahâban. It was the refuge of all the neighbouring tribes. It was covered with forests. It had good soil sufficient for a thousand ploughs, and pure springs of water everywhere abounded. It was 4125 feet above the plain, and 14 miles in circuit. It was precipitous on the side of Embolima, yet not so steep but that 220 horse and the war-engines were taken to the summit. The summit was a plain where cavalry could act. It would be difficult to offer a more faithful description of the mount.” “Why the historians,” he adds, “should all call it the rock Aornos, it would be difficult to say. The side on which Alexander scaled the main summit had certainly the character of a rock, but the whole description of Arrian indicates a table mountain.” Cunningham, in his Ancient Geography of India, advances some arguments against this identification, but they cannot be considered sufficiently cogent to warrant its rejection unless a better could be substituted. That which he proposes, however, is altogether untenable. What he suggests is that the hill-fortress of Râni-gat, situated immediately above the small village of Nogram, about sixteen miles north by west from Ohind, which he takes to be the site of Embolima, corresponds in all essential particulars, except in its elevation (under 1200 feet), with the description of Aornos as given by Arrian, Strabo, and Diodôros. Now if the elevation stated, which is some 6000 feet under what Arrian assigns to Aornos, was really the height of the rock, then the details of the operations by which it was captured are rendered partly unintelligible. Thus, why should Ptolemy, after ascending the rock to a certain distance, have kindled a fire to let Alexander, who remained at the base, know where he was? Can we not easily see with the naked eye from the foot to the top of a small hill only ten or eleven hundred feet high? Moreover, we are informed that it took Alexander from daybreak till noon to reach the position occupied by Ptolemy. Can it be supposed that all that space of time was required for the ascent of a hill not much higher than Arthur’s Seat, near Edinburgh? The highest mountain in Great Britain could be climbed in half the time. Another equally fatal objection to this theory is the distance of Râni-gat from the Indus. The roots of the rock were indubitably washed by that river, but Râni-gat is no less than sixteen miles distant from it. At the same time, if Râni-gat were Aornos, then Ohind cannot be Embolima, for Arrian says that Embolima was close to (ξύνεγγυς) Aornos. The identification of the rock with Raja Hodi’s fort opposite Attak, first suggested by General Court and afterwards supported by the learned missionary Loewenthal, has in its favour the fact that the position is on the Indus, but it is otherwise untenable. It is uncertain whether the name Aornos is purely Greek or an attempt at the transliteration of the indigenous name. If purely Greek, then Dionysios Perieg. (l. 1150) is right in saying that men called the rock Aornis because even swift-winged birds had difficulty in flying over it. If indigenous, the name may be referred to Aranai, which, as Dr. Bellew states, is a common Hindi name for hill ridges in these parts. He identifies the rock as Shàh Dum or Malka, on the heights of Mahâban, the stronghold of the Wahabi fanatics, at the destruction of which he was present in 1864. See his Inquiry, p. 68.