In this kingdom there are many strait and perilous passes, so difficult to force that the people have no fear of invasion. Their towns and villages also are on lofty hills, and in very strong positions.[{8}] They are excellent archers, and much given to the chase; indeed, most of them are dependent for clothing on the skins of beasts, for stuffs are very dear among them. The great ladies, however, are arrayed in stuffs, and I will tell you the style of their dress! They all wear drawers made of cotton cloth, and into the making of these some will put 60, 80, or even 100 ells of stuff. This they do to make themselves look large in the hips, for the men of those parts think that to be a great beauty in a woman.[{9}]
[Note 1.]—“The population of Badakhshan Proper is composed of Tajiks, Turks, and Arabs, who are all Sunnis, following the orthodox doctrines of the Mahomedan law, and speak Persian and Turki, whilst the people of the more mountainous tracts are Tajiks of the Shiá creed, having separate provincial dialects or languages of their own, the inhabitants of the principal places combining therewith a knowledge of Persian. Thus, the Shighnáni [sometimes called Shighni] is spoken in Shignán and Roshán, the Ishkáshami in Ishkásham, the Wakhi in Wakhán, the Sanglichì in Sanglich and Zebák, and the Minjáni in Minján. All these dialects materially differ from each other.” (Pand. Manphul.) It may be considered almost certain that Badakhshan Proper also had a peculiar dialect in Polo’s time. Mr. Shaw speaks of the strong resemblance to Kashmírís of the Badakhshán people whom he had seen.
The Legend of the Alexandrian pedigree of the Kings of Badakhshan is spoken of by Baber, and by earlier Eastern authors. This pedigree is, or was, claimed also by the chiefs of Karátegín, Darwáz, Roshán, Shighnán, Wakhán, Chitrál, Gilgít, Swát, and Khapolor in Bálti. Some samples of those genealogies may be seen in that strange document called “Gardiner’s Travels.”
In Badakhshan Proper the story seems now to have died out. Indeed, though Wood mentions one of the modern family of Mírs as vaunting this descent, these are in fact Sáhibzádahs of Samarkand, who were invited to the country about the middle of the 17th century, and were in no way connected with the old kings.
The traditional claims to Alexandrian descent were probably due to a genuine memory of the Græco-Bactrian kingdom, and might have had an origin analogous to the Sultan’s claim to be “Caesar of Rome”; for the real ancestry of the oldest dynasties on the Oxus was to be sought rather among the Tochari and Ephthalites than among the Greeks whom they superseded.
The cut on [p. 159] presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent. This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mírs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838. It is now in the India Museum. On the bottom is punched a word or two in Pehlvi, and there is also a word incised in Syriac or Uighúr. It is curious that a pair of paterae were acquired by Dr. Lord under the circumstances stated. The other, similar in material and form, but apparently somewhat larger, is distinctly Sassanian, representing a king spearing a lion.
Zu-’lḳarnain, “the Two-Horned,” is an Arabic epithet of Alexander, with which legends have been connected, but which probably arose from the horned portraits on his coins. [Capus, l.c. p. 121, says, “Iskandr Zoulcarneïn or Alexander le Cornu, horns being the emblem of strength.”—H. C.] The term appears in Chaucer (Troil. and Cress. III. 931) in the sense of non plus:—
“I am, till God me better minde send,
At dulcarnon, right at my wittes end.”
And it is said to have still colloquial existence in that sense in some corners of England. This use is said to have arisen from the Arabic application of the term (Bicorne) to the 47th Proposition of Euclid. (Baber, 13; N. et E. XIV. 490; N. An. des V. xxvi. 296; Burnes, III. 186 seqq.; Wood, 155, 244; J. A. S. B. XXII. 300; Ayeen Akbery, II. 185; see N. and Q. 1st Series, vol. v.)
[Note 2.]—I have adopted in the text for the name of the country that one of the several forms in the G. Text which comes nearest to the correct name, viz. Badascian. But Balacian also appears both in that and in Pauthier’s text. This represents Balakhshán, a form also sometimes used in the East. Hayton has Balaxcen, Clavijo Balaxia, the Catalan Map Baldassia. From the form Balakhsh the Balas Ruby got its name. As Ibn Batuta says: “The Mountains of Badakhshan have given their name to the Badakhshi Ruby, vulgarly called Al Balaksh.” Albertus Magnus says the Balagius is the female of the Carbuncle or Ruby Proper, “and some say it is his house, and hath thereby got the name, quasi Palatium Carbunculi!” The Balais or Balas Ruby is, like the Spinel, a kind inferior to the real Ruby of Ava. The author of the Masálak al Absár says the finest Balas ever seen in the Arab countries was one presented to Malek ’Adil Ketboga, at Damascus; it was of a triangular form and weighed 50 drachms. The prices of Balasci in Europe in that age may be found in Pegolotti, but the needful problems are hard to solve.
“No sapphire in Inde, no Rubie rich of price,
There lacked than, nor Emeraud so grene,
Balès, Turkès, ne thing to my device.”
(Chaucer, ‘Court of Love.’)
“L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota,
Preclara cosa mi si fece in vista,
Qual fin balascio in che lo Sol percuoto.”
(Paradiso, ix. 67.)
Some account of the Balakhsh from Oriental sources will be found in J. As. sér V. tom. xi. 109.
(I. B. III. 59, 394; Alb. Mag. de Mineralibus; Pegol. p. 307; N. et E. XIII. i. 246.)
[“The Mohammedan authors of the Mongol period mention Badakhshan several times in connection with the political and military events of that period. Guchluk, the ‘gurkhan of Karakhitai,’ was slain in Badakhshan in 1218 (d’Ohsson, I. 272). In 1221, the Mongols invaded the country (l.c. I. 272). On the same page, d’Ohsson translates a short account of Badakhshan by Yakut (✛1229), stating that this mountainous country is famed for its precious stones, and especially rubies, called Balakhsh.” (Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 66.)—H. C.]
The account of the royal monopoly in working the mines, etc., has continued accurate down to our own day. When Murad Beg of Kunduz conquered Badakhshan some forty years ago, in disgust at the small produce of the mines, he abandoned working them, and sold nearly all the population of the place into slavery! They continue still unworked, unless clandestinely. In 1866 the reigning Mír had one of them opened at the request of Pandit Manphul, but without much result.
The locality of the mines is on the right bank of the Oxus, in the district of Ish Káshm and on the borders of Shignan, the Syghinan of the text. (P. Manph.; Wood, 206; N. Ann. des. V. xxvi. 300.)
[The ruby mines are really in the Gháran country, which extends along both banks of the Oxus. Barshar is one of the deserted villages; the boundary between Gháran and Shignán is the Kuguz Parin (in Shighai dialect means “holes in the rock”); the Persian equivalent is “Rafak-i-Somakh.” (Cf. Captain Trotter, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 277.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The mines of Lájwurd (whence l’Azur and Lazuli) have been, like the Ruby mines, celebrated for ages. They lie in the Upper Valley of the Kokcha, called Korán, within the Tract called Yamgán, of which the popular etymology is Hamah-Kán, or “All-Mines,” and were visited by Wood in 1838. The produce now is said to be of very inferior quality, and in quantity from 30 to 60 poods (36 lbs each) annually. The best quality sells at Bokhara at 30 to 60 tillas, or 12l. to 24l. the pood (Manphul). Surely it is ominous when a British agent writing of Badakhshan products finds it natural to express weights in Russian poods!
The Yamgán Tract also contains mines of iron, lead, alum, salammoniac, sulphur, ochre, and copper. The last are not worked. But I do not learn of any silver mines nearer than those of Paryán in the Valley of Panjshir, south of the crest of the Hindu-Kúsh, much worked in the early Middle Ages. (See Cathay, p. 595.)
[Note 4.]—The Kataghan breed of horses from Badakhshan and Kunduz has still a high reputation. They do not often reach India, as the breed is a favourite one among the Afghan chiefs, and the horses are likely to be appropriated in transit. (Lumsden, Mission to Kandahar, p. 20.)
[The Kirghiz between the Yangi Hissar River and Sirikol are the only people using the horse generally in the plough, oxen being employed in the plains, and yaks in Sirikol. (Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon, p. 222, Forsyth’s Mission.)—H. C.]
What Polo heard of the Bucephalid strain was perhaps but another form of a story told by the Chinese, many centuries earlier, when speaking of this same region. A certain cave was frequented by a wonderful stallion of supernatural origin. Hither the people yearly brought their mares, and a famous breed was derived from the foals. (Rém. N. Mél. As. I. 245.)
[Note 5.]—The huskless barley of the text is thus mentioned by Burnes in the vicinity of the Hindu-Kúsh: “They rear a barley in this elevated country which has no husk, and grows like wheat; but it is barley.” It is not properly huskless, but when ripe it bursts the husk and remains so loosely attached as to be dislodged from it by a slight shake. It is grown abundantly in Ladak and the adjoining Hill States. Moorcroft details six varieties of it cultivated there. The kind mentioned by Marco and Burnes is probably that named by Royle Hordeum Ægiceras, and which has been sent to England under the name of Tartarian Wheat, though it is a genuine barley. Naked barley is mentioned by Galen as grown in Cappadocia; and Matthioli speaks of it as grown in France in his day (middle of 16th century). It is also known to the Arabs, for they have a name for it—Sult. (Burnes, III. 205; Moorc. II. 148 seqq.; Galen, de Aliment. Facult. Lat. ed. 13; Matthioli, Ven. 1585, p. 420; Eng. Cyc., art. Hordeum.)
Sesamé is mentioned by P. Manphul as one of the products of Badakhshan; linseed is another, which is also used for oil. Walnut-trees abound, but neither he nor Wood mention the oil. We know that walnut oil is largely manufactured in Kashmir. (Moorcroft, II. 148.)
[See on Saker and Lanner Falcons (F. Sakar, Briss.; F. lanarius, Schlegel) the valuable paper by Edouard Blanc, Sur l’utilisation des Oiseaux de proie en Asie centrale in Rev. des Sciences natur. appliquées, 20th June, 1895.
“Hawking is the favourite sport of Central Asian Lords,” says G. Capus. (A travers le royaume de Tamerlan, p. 132. See pp. 132–134.)
The Mirza says (l.c. p. 157) that the mountains of Wakhán “are only noted for producing a breed of hawks or falcons which the hardy Wâkhânis manage to catch among the cliffs. These hawks are much esteemed by the chiefs of Badakhshan, Bokhara, etc. They are celebrated for their swiftness, and known by their white colour.”—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—These wild sheep are probably the kind called Kachkár, mentioned by Baber, and described by Mr. Blyth in his Monograph of Wild Sheep, under the name of Ovis Vignei. It is extensively diffused over all the ramifications of Hindu-Kúsh, and westward perhaps to the Persian Elburz. “It is gregarious,” says Wood, “congregating in herds of several hundreds.” In a later chapter Polo speaks of a wild sheep apparently different and greater. (See J. A. S. B., X. 858 seqq.)
[Note 7.]—This pleasant passage is only in Ramusio, but it would be heresy to doubt its genuine character. Marco’s recollection of the delight of convalescence in such a climate seems to lend an unusual enthusiasm and felicity to his description of the scenery. Such a region as he speaks of is probably the cool Plateau of Shewá, of which we are told as extending about 25 miles eastward from near Faizabad, and forming one of the finest pastures in Badakhshan. It contains a large lake called by the frequent name Sar-i-Kol. No European traveller in modern times (unless Mr. Gardner) has been on those glorious table-lands. Burnes says that at Kunduz both natives and foreigners spoke rapturously of the vales of Badakhshan, its rivulets, romantic scenes and glens, its fruits, flowers, and nightingales. Wood is reticent on scenery, naturally, since nearly all his journey was made in winter. When approaching Faizabad on his return from the Upper Oxus, however, he says: “On entering the beautiful lawn at the gorge of its valley I was enchanted at the quiet loveliness of the scene. Up to this time, from the day we left Talikan, we had been moving in snow; but now it had nearly vanished from the valley, and the fine sward was enamelled with crocuses, daffodils, and snowdrops.” (P. Manphul; Burnes, III. 176; Wood, 252.)
[Note 8.]—Yet scarcely any country in the world has suffered so terribly and repeatedly from invasion. “Enduring decay probably commenced with the wars of Chinghiz, for many an instance in Eastern history shows the permanent effect of such devastations.... Century after century saw only progress in decay. Even to our own time the progress of depopulation and deterioration has continued.” In 1759, two of the Khojas of Kashgar, escaping from the dominant Chinese, took refuge in Badakhshan; one died of his wounds, the other was treacherously slain by Sultan Shah, who then ruled the country. The holy man is said in his dying moments to have invoked curses on Badakhshan, and prayed that it might be three times depopulated; a malediction which found ample accomplishment. The misery of the country came to a climax about 1830, when the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, Murad Beg Kataghan, swept away the bulk of the inhabitants, and set them down to die in the marshy plains of Kunduz. (Cathay, p. 542; Faiz Bakhsh, etc.)
[Note 9.]—This “bombasticall dissimulation of their garments,” as the author of Anthropometamorphosis calls such a fashion, is no longer affected by the ladies of Badakhshan. But a friend in the Panjab observes that it still survives there. “There are ladies’ trousers here which might almost justify Marco’s very liberal estimate of the quantity of stuff required to make them;” and among the Afghan ladies, Dr. Bellew says, the silken trousers almost surpass crinoline in amplitude. It is curious to find the same characteristic attaching to female figures on coins of ancient kings of these regions, such as Agathocles and Pantaleon. (The last name is appropriate!)
CHAPTER XXX.
Of the Province of Pashai
You must know that ten days’ journey to the south of Badashan there is a Province called Pashai, the people of which have a peculiar language, and are Idolaters, of a brown complexion. They are great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts. The men wear earrings and brooches of gold and silver set with stones and pearls. They are a pestilent people and a crafty; and they live upon flesh and rice. Their country is very hot.[{1}]
Now let us proceed and speak of another country which is seven days’ journey from this one towards the south-east, and the name of which is Keshimur.
[Note 1.]—The name of Pashai has already occurred (see [ch. xviii.]) linked with Dir, as indicating a tract, apparently of very rugged and difficult character, through which the partizan leader Nigúdar passed in making an incursion from Badakhshan towards Káshmir. The difficulty here lies in the name Pashai, which points to the south-west, whilst Dir and all other indications point to the south-east. But Pashai seems to me the reading to which all texts tend, whilst it is clearly expressed in the G. T. (Pasciai), and it is contrary to all my experience of the interpretation of Marco Polo to attempt to torture the name in the way which has been common with commentators professed and occasional. But dropping this name for a moment, let us see to what the other indications do point.
In the meagre statements of this and the next chapter, interposed as they are among chapters of detail unusually ample for Polo, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that the Traveller ever personally visited the countries of which these two chapters treat. I believe we have here merely an amplification of the information already sketched of the country penetrated by the Nigudarian bands whose escapade is related in [chapter xviii.], information which was probably derived from a Mongol source. And these countries are in my belief both regions famous in the legends of the Northern Buddhists, viz. Udyána and Káshmir.
Udyána lay to the north of Pesháwar on the Swát River, but from the extent assigned to it by Hiuen Tsang, the name probably covered a large part of the whole hill-region south of the Hindu-Kúsh from Chitrál to the Indus, as indeed it is represented in the Map of Vivien de St. Martin (Pèlerins Bouddhistes, II.). It is regarded by Fahian as the most northerly Province of India, and in his time the food and clothing of the people were similar to those of Gangetic India. It was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of Lamaism, i.e. of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyána in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft.
Hiuen Tsang says of the inhabitants: “The men are of a soft and pusillanimous character, naturally inclined to craft and trickery. They are fond of study, but pursue it with no ardour. The science of magical formulae is become a regular professional business with them. They generally wear clothes of white cotton, and rarely use any other stuff. Their spoken language, in spite of some differences, has a strong resemblance to that of India.”
These particulars suit well with the slight description in our text, and the Indian atmosphere that it suggests; and the direction and distance ascribed to Pashai suit well with Chitral, which may be taken as representing Udyána when approached from Badakhshan. For it would be quite practicable for a party to reach the town of Chitrál in ten days from the position assigned to the old capital of Badakhshan. And from Chitrál the road towards Káshmir would lie over the high Lahori pass to Dir, which from its mention in [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.