But All These Accounts Seemed To Place The Pashais In The Vicinity Of The Great Panjshir Valley, North-East Of Kabul, Through Which Passes One Of The Best-Known Routes From The Afghan Capital To The Hindukush Watershed And Thence To The Middle Oxus.

Panjshir, like Kabul itself, lies to the south-west of Badakshan, and it is just this discrepancy of bearing together with one in the distance reckoned to Kashmir which caused Sir Henry Yule to give expression to doubts when summing up his views about Nogodar's route."

From Sir George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India we learn that to the south of the range of the Hindukush "the languages spoken from Kashmir in the east to Kafiristan in the west are neither of Indian nor of Iranian origin, but form a third branch of the Aryan stock of the great Indo-European language family. Among the languages of this branch, now rightly designated as 'Dardic,' the Kafir group holds a very prominent place. In the Kafir group again we find the Pashai language spoken over a very considerable area. The map accompanying Sir George Grierson's monograph on 'The Pisaca Languages of North-Western India' [Asiatic Society Monographs, VIII., 1906], shows Pashai as the language spoken along the right bank of the Kunar river as far as the Asmar tract as well as in the side valleys which from the north descend towards it and the Kabul river further west. This important fact makes it certain that the tribal designation of Pashai, to which this Kafir language owes its name, has to this day an application extending much further east than was indicated by the references which travellers, mediaeval and modern, along the Panjshir route have made to the Pashais and from which alone this ethnic name was previously known."

Stein comes to the conclusion that "the Mongols' route led across the Mandal Pass into the great Kafir valley of Bashgol and thus down to Arnawai on the Kunar.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 1172 of 1350
Words from 321699 to 322030 of 370046