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.'

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 chap. 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 Kashmir. 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 And these countries are in my belief both regions famous in the legends of the Northern Buddhists, viz. UDYÁNA and KÁSHMIR.

source.

Udyána lay to the north of Peshawar on the Swat River, but from the extent assigned to it by Hwen Thsang, the name probably covered a large part of the whole hill-region south of the Hindu Kush from Chitral 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 Udyana 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.

Hwen Thsang 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

They

formulae is become a regular professional business with them. 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 Udyana when approached from Badakhshan. For it would be quite practicable for a party to reach the town of Chitral in ten days from the position assigned to the old Capital of Badakhshan. And from Chitral the road towards Kashmir 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. 131-2.)

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 7th 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 Prof. Max Müller's class Indic, but not very close to one another.*

Ibn Batuta, after crossing the Hindu Kush 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 segg., XXXIII. 271-2; 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 Kush into Chitral, and so to Dir, as already noticed. The difficulty remains as to

The Kafir dialect of which Mr. Trumpp collected some particulars, shows in the present tense of the substantive verb these remarkable forms:-Ei sum, Tri sis, siga se; Ima simis, Wi sik, Sigě sin.

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 Kush.* 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 Kashmir. 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 Chitral, 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 Paresin, 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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

OF THE PROVINCE OF KESHIMUR.

KESHIMUR also is a Province inhabited by a people who are Idolaters and have a language of their own.' They have an astonishing acquaintance with the devilries of enchantment; insomuch that they make their idols to speak. They can also by their sorceries bring on changes of weather and produce darkness, and do a number of things so extraordinary that no one without seeing them would believe them." Indeed, this country is the very original source from which Idolatry has spread abroad.3

In the Tabakat-i-Násiri (Elliot, II. 317) we find mention of the Highlands of Pasha-Afroz, but nothing to define their position.

In this direction you can proceed further till you come to the Sea of India.

The men are brown and lean, but the women, taking them as brunettes, are very beautiful. The food of the people is flesh, and milk, and rice. The clime is finely tempered, being neither very hot nor very cold. There are numbers of towns and villages in the country, but also forests and desert tracts, and strong passes, so that the

Ancient Buddhist Temple at Pandrethan in Kashmir.

people have no fear of anybody, and keep their independence, with a king of their own to rule and do justice.*

There are in this country Eremites (after the fashion of those parts), who dwell in seclusion and practise great abstinence in eating and drinking. They observe strict chastity, and keep from all sins forbidden in their law, so that they are regarded by their own folk as very holy persons. They live to a very great age.s

There are also a number of idolatrous abbeys and monasteries. [The people of the province do not kill

animals nor spill blood; so if they want to eat meat they get the Saracens who dwell among them to play the butcher.] The coral which is carried from our parts of the world has a better sale there than in any other country.?

Now we will quit this country, and not go any further in the same direction; for if we did so we should enter India; and that I do not wish to do at present. For, on our return journey, I mean to tell you about India: all in regular order. Let us go back therefore to Badashan, for we cannot otherwise proceed on our journey.

NOTE 1.-I apprehend that in this chapter Marco represents Buddhism (which is to be understood by his expression Idolatry, not always, but usually) as in a position of greater life and prosperity than we can believe it to have enjoyed in Kashmir at the end of the 13th century, and I suppose that his knowledge of it was derived in great part from tales of the Mongol and Tibetan Buddhists about its past glories.

I know not if the spelling Kesciemur represents any peculiar Mongol pronunciation of the name. Plano Carpini, probably the first modern European to mention this celebrated region, calls it Casmir (p. 708).

"The Cashmeerians," says Abul Fazl, "have a language of their own, but their books are written in the Shanskrit tongue, although the character is sometimes Cashmeerian. They write chiefly upon Tooz [birch-bark], which is the bark of a tree; it easily divides into leaves, and remains perfect for many years." (Ayeen Akbery, II. 147.) A sketch of Kashmiri Grammar by Mr. Edgeworth will be found in Vol. X. of the J. A. S. B., and a fuller one by Major Leech in Vol. XIII. Other contributions on the language are in Vol. XXXV. Pt. I. p. 233 (GodwinAusten); in Vol. XXXIX. Pt. I. p. 95 (Dr. Elmslie); and in Proceedings for 1866, p. 62, seqq. (Sir G. Campbell and Bábú Rájendra Lál Mitra). The language though in large measure of Sanskrit origin has words and forms that cannot be traced in any other Indian vernacular (Campbell, pp. 67, 68). The character is a modification of the Panjáb Nagari.

NOTE 2. The Kashmirian conjurors had made a great impression on Marco, who had seen them at the Court of the Great Kaan, and he recurs in a later chapter to their weather-sorceries and other enchantments, when we shall make some remarks. Meanwhile let us cite a passage from Bernier, already quoted by M. Pauthier. When crossing the Pír Panjál (the mountain crossed on entering Kashmir from Lahore) with the camp of Aurangzíb, he met with "an old Hermit who had dwelt upon the summit of the Pass since the days of Jehangir, and whose religion nobody knew, although it was said that he could work

VOL. I.

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