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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
104 MARCO POLO Binh I.
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tremendous foray of the Chaghataian Prince Kotlogh Shah, on the east and south of Persia in 1299, we find one of his captains called Nigua'ar Bahadur. (Gold. Horde, 146, 157, 164 ; D'Ohsson, IV. 378 sew., 433 sew., 513 segq. ; Ildh. I. 216, 261, 284 ; II. 104 ; .% A. sér. V. torn. xvii. 455-456, 507 ; h Izan. Notice, 31.)
As regards the route taken by Prince Nogodar in his incursion into India, we have no difficulty with BADAKHSHAN. PASHAI-DIR is a copulate name ; the former
part, as we shall see reason to believe hereafter, representing the country between the
Hindu Kush and the Kabul River (see infra, ch. xxx.) ; the latter (as Pauthier already has pointed out), DIR, the chief town of Panjkora, in the hill country north
of Peshawar. In Ariora-Keshemur the first portion only is perplexing. I will mention the most probable of the solutions that have occurred to me, and a second, due to that eminent archaeologist, General A. Cunningham. (I) Ariora may be some corrupt or Mongol form of Aryavartta, a sacred name applied to the Holy Lands of
Indian Buddhism, of which Kashmir was eminently one to the Northern Buddhists. Oron, in Mongol, is a Region or Realm, and may have taken the place of Vartta,
giving Aryoron or Ariora. (2) "Ariora," General Cunningham writes, " I take to be
the Harhaura of Sanscrit—i.e. the Western Panjáb. Harhaura was the North-Western Division of the Nava-Klzanda, or Nine Divisions of Ancient India. It is
mentioned between Sind/zu-Sauvira in the west (i.e. Sind), and Madra in the north
(i.e. the Eastern Panjáb, which is still called 1lladar-Des). The name of Harhaura is, I think, preserved in the Haro River. Now, the Sind-Sagor Doab formed a
portion of the kingdom of Kashmir, and the joint names, like those of Sindhu-Sauvira,
describe only one State." The names of the Nine Divisions in question are given by the celebrated astronomer, Varaha Mihira, who lived in the beginning of the 6th
century, and are repeated by Al Biruni. (See Reinaud, Mém. sur l'Inde, p. 116.) The only objection to this happy solution seems to lie in Al Biruni's remark, that the names in question were in general no longer used even in his time (A. D. 1030).
There can be no doubt that Asidin Soldan is, as Khanikoff has said, Ghaiassuddin Balban, Sultan of Delhi from 1266 to 1286, and for years before that a man of great power in India, and especially in the Panjáb, of which he had in the reign of Ruknuddin (1236) held independent possession.
Firishta records several inroads of Mongols in the Panjáb during the reign of Ghaiassuddin, in withstanding one of which that King's eldest son was slain ; and there are constant indications of their presence in Sind till the end of the century. But we find in that historian no hint of the chief circumstances of this part of the story, viz., the conquest of Kashmir and the occupation of .Dalivar or Dilivar (G. T.),
evidently (whatever its identity) in the plains of India. I do find, however, in the history of Kashmir, as given by Lassen (III. 1138), that in the end of 1259, Laksha-
mana Deva, King of Kashmir, was killed in a campaign against the Turuslzka (Turks or Tartars), and that their leader, who is called Kajjala, got hold of the country and held it till 1287.* It is difficult not to connect this both with Polo's story and with the escapade of Nigudar about 1260, noting also that this occupation of Kashmir extended through the whole reign of Ghaiassuddin.
We seem to have a memory of Polo's story preserved in one of Elliot's extracts from Wassáf, which states that in 708 (A.D. 1308), after a great defeat of a Mongol inroad which had passed the Ganges, Sultan Ala'uddin Khilji ordered a pillar of Mongol heads to be raised before the Badáun gate, " as was done with the Nigudari Moglzuls " (III. 48).
We still have to account for the occupation and locality of Dalivar ; Marsden supposed it to be Lahore ; Khanikoff considers it to be Diráze'al, the ancient desert capital of the Bhattis, properly (according to Tod) Deorawal, but by a transposition common in India, as it is in Italy, sometimes called Diláwar, in the modern State of Bháwalpúr. But General Cunningham suggests a more probable locality in DILÁWAR on the west bank of the jelam, close to Dárápúr, and opposite to Mung. These two
* Khajlak is mentioned as a leader of the Mongol raids in India by the poet Amir Khusrú (A.D. 1289 ; see Elliot, III. 527).
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