National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

22

MARCO POLO.   VOL. I. BK. I.

OE

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" To revert to an earlier period it is noteworthy that the route

in Marco Polo's account, by which the Mongol partisan leader

Nigūdar, ` with a great body of horsemen, cruel unscrupulous

fellows,' made his way from Badakhshän ` through another

province called PASHAI-DIR, and then through another called

ARIORA-KESHEMUR to India, must have led down the Bashgol

Valley. The name of Pashai clearly refers to the Kāfirs among

whom this tribal designation exists to this day, while the mention

of Dir indicates the direction which this remarkable inroad had

taken. That its further progress must have lain through Swāt

is made probable by the name which, in Marco Polo's account,

precedes that of ` Keshemur ' or Kashmir ; for in the hitherto

unexplained Ariora can be recognized, I believe, the present

Agrör, the name of the well-known hill-tract on the Hazära

border which faces Bunēr from the left bank of the Indus. It is

easy to see from any accurate map of these regions, that for a

mobile column of horsemen forcing its way from Badakhshän to

Kashmir, the route leading through the Bashgol Valley, Dir,

Taläsh, Swat, Buner, Agrör, and up the Jhelam Valley, would

form at the present day, too, the most direct and practicable line

of invasion."

In a paper on Marco Polo's Account of a Mongol inroad into

Kashmir (Geog. four., 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 Chaghatái, 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 " Città 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 Swāt 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