Badakhshan

“The Chinese name for ‘Badakhshan’ never appears before the Pa-ta-shan of Kúblái’s time.” (E. H. Parker, Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 143.)

XXX., pp. 164–166. “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.”

Sir A. Stein writes (Ancient Khotan, I., pp. 14–15 n.): “Sir Henry Yule was undoubtedly right in assuming that Marco Polo had never personally visited these countries and that his account of them, brief as it is, was derived from hearsay information about the tracts which the Mongol partisan leader Nigūdar had traversed, about 1260 A.D., on an adventurous incursion from Badakhshān towards Kashmīr and the Punjāb. In Chapter XVIII., where the Venetian relates that exploit (see Yule, Marco Polo, I., p. 98, with note, p. 104), the name of Pashai is linked with Dīr, the territory on the Upper Panjkōra river, which an invader, wishing to make his way from Badakhshān into Kashmīr by the most direct route, would necessarily have to pass through.

“The name Pashai is still borne to this day by a Muhamadanized tribe closely akin to the Siāh-pōsh, settled in the Panjshīr Valley and in the hills on the west and south of Kāfiristān. It has been very fully discussed by Sir Henry Yule (Ibid., I., p. 165), who shows ample grounds for the belief that this tribal name must have once been more widely spread over the southern slopes of the Hindu kúsh as far as they are comprised in the limits of Kāfiristān. If the great commentator nevertheless records his inability to account for Marco Polo’s application of ‘the name Pashai to the country south-east of Badakhshan,’ the reason of the difficulty seems to me to lie solely in Sir Henry Yule’s assumption that the route heard of by the traveller, led ‘by the Doráh or the Nuksán Pass, over the watershed of Hindu kúsh into Chitrál and so to Dir.’

“Though such a route viâ Chitrāl would, no doubt, have been available in Marco Polo’s time as much as now, there is no indication whatever forcing us to believe that it was the one really meant by his informants. When Nigūdar ‘with a great body of horsemen, cruel unscrupulous fellows’ went off from Badakhshān towards Kashmīr, he may very well have made his way over the Hindu kúsh by the more direct line that passes to Dīr through the eastern part of Kāfiristān. In fact, the description of the Pashai people and their country, as given by Marco Polo, distinctly points to such a route; for we have in it an unmistakable reflex of characteristic features with which the idolatrous Siāh-pōsh Kāfirs have always been credited by their Muhammadan neighbours.

“It is much to be regretted that the Oriental records of the period, as far as they were accessible to Sir Henry Yule, seemed to have retained only faint traces of the Mongol adventurer’s remarkable inroad. From the point of view of Indian history it was, no doubt, a mere passing episode. But some details regarding it would possess special interest as illustrating an instance of successful invasion by a route that so far has not received its due share of attention.” [See supra, pp. 4, 22–24.]

XXX., p. 164.

“The Chinese Toba Dynasty History mentions, in company with Samarcand, K’a-shī-mih (Cashmeer), and Kapisa, a State called Pan-shê, as sending tribute to North China along with the Persian group of States. This name Pan-shê 半社 does not, to the best of my belief, occur a second time in any Chinese record.” (Parker, Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 135.)

XXX., p. 164. “Now let us proceed and speak of another country which is seven day’s journey from this one [Pashai] towards the south-east, and the name of which is Keshimur.”

This short estimate has perplexed Sir Henry Yule, l.c., p. 166. Sir Aurel Stein remarks in a note, Serindia, I., p. 12: “The route above indicated [Nigudar’s route] permits an explanation. Starting from some point like Arnawal on the Kūnār River which certainly would be well within ‘Pashai,’ lightly equipped horsemen could by that route easily reach the border of Agrōr on the Indus within seven days. Speaking from personal knowledge of almost the whole of the ground I should be prepared to do the ride myself by the following stages: Dīr, Warai, Sado, Chakdara, Kin kargalai, Bājkatta, Kai or Darband on the Indus. It must be borne in mind that, as Yule rightly recognized, Marco Polo is merely reproducing information derived from a Mongol source and based on Nigudar’s raid; and further that Hazāra and the valley of the Jhelam were probably then still dependent on the Kashmīr kingdom, as they were certainly in Kalhana’s time, only a century earlier. As to the rate at which Mongols were accustomed to travel on ‘Dak,’ cf. Yule, Marco Polo, I., pp. 434 seq.”

XXXII., pp. 170, 171. “The people [of Badashan] are Mahommetans, and valiant in war.... They [the people of Vokhan] are gallant soldiers.”

In Afghan Wakhan, Sir Aurel Stein writes:

“On we cantered at the head of quite a respectable cavalcade to where, on the sandy plain opposite to the main hamlet of Sarhad, two companies of foot with a squad of cavalry, close on two hundred men in all, were drawn up as a guard of honour. Hardy and well set up most of them looked, giving the impression of thoroughly serviceable human material, in spite of a manifestly defective drill and the motley appearance of dress and equipment. They belonged, so the Colonel explained to me afterwards, to a sort of militia drafted from the local population of the Badakhshan valleys and Wakhan into the regiments permanently echeloned as frontier guards along the Russian border on the Oxus. Apart from the officers, the proportion of true Pathans among them was slight. Yet I could well believe from all I saw and heard, that, properly led and provided for, these sturdy Iranian hillmen might give a good account of themselves. Did not Marco Polo speak of the people of ‘Badashan’ as ‘valiant in war’ and of the men of ‘Vokhan’ as gallant soldiers?” (Ruins of Desert Cathay, I., p. 66.)

XXXII., pp. 170 seq.

In Chap. III., pp. 64–66, of his Serindia, Sir Aurel Stein has the following on Marco Polo’s account of Wakhan: —

“After Wu-k’ung’s narrative of his journey the Chinese sources of information about the Pāmīrs and the adjoining regions run dry for nearly a thousand years. But that the routes leading across them from Wakhān retained their importance also in Muhammedan times is attested by the greatest of mediæval travellers, Marco Polo. I have already, in Ancient Khotan [pp. 41 seq.], discussed the portion of his itinerary which deals with the journey across the Pāmīrs to ‘the kingdom of Cascar’ or Kāshgar, and it only remains here to note briefly what he tells us of the route by which he approached them from Badakhshan: ‘In leaving Badashan you ride twelve days between east and north-east, ascending a river that runs through land belonging to a brother of the Prince of Badashan, and containing a good many towns and villages and scattered habitations. The people are Mahommetans, and valiant in war. At the end of those twelve days you come to a province of no great size, extending indeed no more than three days’ journey in any direction, and this is called Vokhan. The people worship Mahommet, and they have a peculiar language. They are gallant soldiers, and they have a chief whom they call None, which is as much as to say Count, and they are liegemen to the Prince of Badashan.’ [Polo, I., pp. 170–171.]

“Sir Henry Yule was certainly right in assuming that ‘the river along which Marco travels from Badakhshan is no doubt the upper stream of the Oxus, locally known as the Panja.... It is true that the river is reached from Badakhshan Proper by ascending another river (the Vardoj) and crossing the Pass of Ishkáshm, but in the brief style of our narrative we must expect such condensation.’ [Polo, I., pp. 172–3.] Marco’s great commentator was guided by equally true judgment when he recognized in the indications of this passage the same system of government that prevailed in the Oxus valleys until modern times. Under it the most of the hill tracts dependent from Badakhshan, including Ishkāshim and Wakhān, were ruled not direct by the Mir, but by relations of his or hereditary chiefs who held their districts on a feudal tenure. The twelve days’ journey which Marco records between Badashan and ‘Vokhan’ are, I think, easily accounted for if it is assumed that the distance from capital to capital is meant; for twelve marches are still allowed for as the distance from Bahārak, the old Badakhshan capital on the Vardoj, to Kila Panja.

“That the latter was in Marco’s days, as at present, the chief place of Wakhān is indicated also by his narrative of the next stage of his journey. ‘And when you leave this little country, and ride three days north-east, always among mountains, you get to such a height that ’tis said to be the highest place in the world! And when you have got to this height you find [a great lake between two mountains, and out of it] a fine river running through a plain.... The plain is called Pamier.’ The bearing and descriptive details here given point clearly to the plain of the Great Pāmir and Victoria Lake, its characteristic feature. About sixty-two miles are reckoned from Langar-kisht, the last village on the northern branch of the Āb-i-Panja and some six miles above Kila Panja, to Mazār-tapa where the plain of the Great Pamīr may be said to begin, and this distance agrees remarkably well with the three marches mentioned by Marco.

“His description of Wakhān as ‘a province of no great size, extending indeed no more than three days’ journey in any direction’ suggests that a portion of the valley must then have formed part of the chiefship of Ishkāshim or Zebak over which we may suppose ‘the brother of the Prince of Badashan’ to have ruled. Such fluctuations in the extent of Wakhān territory are remembered also in modern times. Thus Colonel Trotter, who visited Wakhān with a section of the Yarkand Mission in 1874, distinctly notes that ‘Wakhān formerly contained three “sads” or hundreds, i.e., districts, containing 100 houses each’ (viz. Sad-i-Sar-hadd, Sad Sipang, Sad Khandūt). To these Sad Ishtragh, the tract extending from Dīgargand to Ishkāshim, is declared to have been added in recent times, having formerly been an independent principality. It only remains to note that Marco was right, too, in his reference to the peculiar language of Wakhān; for Wakhī—which is spoken not only by the people of Wakhān but also by the numerous Wakhī colonists spread through Mastūj, Hunza Sarikol, and even further east in the mountains—is a separate language belonging to the well-defined group of Galcha tongues which itself forms the chief extant branch of Eastern Iranian.”

XXXII., pp. 171 seq., 175, 182.