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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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I 6o MA1O ~0+4• : BOOK I.
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` very positions.8 They r• t ; and in ve y stron g p are excellent archers,
. , and much given to the chase ; indeed, most of them are
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t*.•.*4 dependent for clothing on the skins of beasts, for stuffs
*OE~'. ' are very dear among them. The great ladies, however,
are arrayed in stuffs, and I will tell you the style of their
dress ! They all wear drawers made of cotton cloth, and
into the making of these some will put 6o, 8o, or even
J i oo ells of stuff. This they do to make themselves look
large in the hips, for the men of those parts think that to
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be a great beauty in a woman.°
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NOTE I.—" The population of Badakhshan Proper is composed of Tajiks, Turks, and Arabs, who are all Sunnis, following the orthodox doctrines of the Mahomedan law, and speak Persian and Turki, whilst the people of the more mountainous tracts
.. • . are Tajiks of the Shiá creed, having separate provincial dialects or languages of their
own, the inhabitants of the principal places combining therewith a knowledge of
Persian. Thus, the Shighnáni [sometimes called Shighni] is spoken in Shignán and Roshán, the Ishkáshami in Ishkásham, the Wakhi in Wakhán, the Sand liclzi in Sanglich and Zebák, and the Minjdni in Minján. All these dialects materially differ from each other." (Pared. Manphul.) It may be considered almost certain that Badakhshan Proper also had a peculiar dialect in Polo's time. Mr. Shaw speaks of the
,a A strong resemblance to . ashmírís of the Badakhshán people whom he had seen.
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~ The Legend of the Alexandrian pedigree of the Kings of Badakhshan is spoken of
'•.R' by Baber, and by earlier Eastern authors. This pedigree is, or was, claimed also by
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the chiefs of Karátegín, Darwáz, Roshán, Shighnán, Wakhán, Chitrál, Gilgít, Swát,
and Khapolor in Bálti. Some samples of those genealogies may be seen in that strange
Bi document called " Gardiner's Travels."
404 In Badakhshan Proper the story seems now to have died out. Indeed, though
Wood mentions one of the modern family of Mírs as vaunting this descent, these are in fact Sáhibzadahs of Samarkand, who were invited to the country about the middle of the i 7th century, and were in no way connected with the old kings.
The traditional claims to Alexandrian descent were probably due to a genuine memory of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, and might have had an origin analogous to the Sultan's claim to be "Caesar of Rome " ; for the real ancestry of the oldest dynasties on the Oxus was to be sought rather among the Tochari and Ephthalites than among the Greeks whom they superseded.
The cut on p. i 59 presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent. This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mírs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838. It is now in the India Museum. On the bottom is punched a word or two in Pehlvi, and there is also a word incised in Syriac or Uighúr. It is curious that a pair of paterae were acquired by Dr. Lord under the circumstances stated. The other, similar in material and form, but apparently somewhat larger, is distinctly Sassanian, representing a king spearing a lion.
Zu-'lkarnain, " the Two-Horned," is an Arabic epithet of Alexander, with which legends have been connected, but which probably arose from the horned portraits on his coins. [Capus, l.c. p. 121, says, " Iskandr Zoulcarneïn or Alexander le Corizu,
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