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. UDYANA and KASHMIR.
Udyana lay to the north of Peshawar on the Swat 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-Kush from Chitral to the Indus,
as indeed it is represented in the Map of Vivien de St. Martin (Pelerins
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.
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 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; Pelerins 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 (Kashmir), and then entered the country of
U-ch'ang-na (Udyana)...." (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 Mueller's class Indic, but not very close to one another.[1]
Ibn Batuta, after crossing the Hindu-Kush by one of the passes at the head
of the Panjshir Valley, reaches the Mountain BASHAI (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 Zebak, and by the Dorah or the Nuksan
Pass, over the watershed of Hindu-Kush into Chitral, 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-
Kush.[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 Udyana, 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.
