Jour., August, 1919), Sir Aurel Stein Reverts Again To The Same Subject.

"These [Mongol] inroads appear to have commenced from about 1260 A.D., and to have continued right through the reign of Ghiasuddin, Sultan of Delhi (1266-1286), whose identity with Marco's Asedin Soldan is certain.

It appears very probable that Marco's story of Nogodar, the nephew of Chaghatai, relates to one of the earliest of these incursions which was recent history when the Poli passed through Persia about 1272-73 A.D."

Stein thinks, with Marsden and Yule, that Dilivar (pp. 99, 105) is really a misunderstanding of "Citta di Livar" for Lahawar or Lahore.

Dir has been dealt with by Yule and Pauthier, and we know that it is "the mountain tract at the head of the western branch of the Panjkora River, through which leads the most frequented route from Peshawar and the lower Swat valley to Chitral" (Stein, l.c.). Now with regard to the situation of Pashai (p. 104):

"It is clear that a safe identification of the territory intended cannot be based upon such characteristics of its people as Marco Polo's account here notes obviously from hearsay, but must reckon in the first place with the plainly stated bearing and distance. And Sir Henry Yule's difficulty arose just from the fact that what the information accessible to him seemed to show about the location of the name Pashai could not be satisfactorily reconciled with those plain topographical data. Marco's great commentator, thoroughly familiar as he was with whatever was known in his time about the geography of the western Hindukush and the regions between Oxus and Indus, could not fail to recognize the obvious connection between our Pashai and the tribal name Pashai borne by Muhammanized Kafirs who are repeatedly mentioned in mediaeval and modern accounts of Kabul territory.

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