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CHAP. XVIII. p. 98.   PASHAI.   23

reckon in the first place with the plainly stated bearing and

distance. And Sir Henry Yule's difficulty arose just from the

fact that what the information accessible to him seemed to show

about the location of the name Pashai could not be satisfactorily

reconciled with those plain topographical data. Marco's great

commentator, thoroughly familiar as he was with whatever was

known in his time about the geography of the western Hindukush

and the regions between Oxus and Indus, could not fail to

recognize the obvious connection between our Pashai and the

tribal name Pashai borne by Muhammanized Kafirs who are

repeatedly mentioned in mediæval and modern accounts of Kabul

territory. 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 Badakshān, 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, mediæval 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 Mandai Pass into the great Kafir valley of Bashgol

C