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CHAP. XXX. p. 164.   BADAKHSHAN.

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had traversed, about 1260 A.D., on an adventurous incursion

from Badakhshän towards Kashmir and the Punjäb. In Chapter

XVIII., where the Venetian relates that exploit (see Yule, Marco

Folo, I., p. 98, with note, p. 104), the name of Pashai is linked

with Dīr, the territory on the Upper Pan j kōra river, which an

invader, wishing to make his way from Badakhshän into Kashmir

by the most direct route, would necessarily have to pass through.

"The name Fashai 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 kush 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 via Chiträl 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

Badakhshän towards Kashmir, he may very well have made

his way over the Hindu kúsh by the more direct line that

passes to Dir through the eastern part of Käfiristān. 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 clue share of attention." [See supra, pp. 4, 22-24.]