Some samples of
those genealogies may be seen in that strange document called "Gardiner's
Travels."
In Badakhshan Proper the story seems now to have died out. Indeed, though
Wood mentions one of the modern family of Mirs as vaunting this descent,
these are in fact Sahibzadahs of Samarkand, who were invited to the
country about the middle of the 17th 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superseded.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. 159 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 Mirs,
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 Uighur.
