Account, precedes that of 'Keshemur' or Kashmir; for in
the hitherto unexplained Ariora can be recognized, I believe, the
present Agror, the name of the well-known hill-tract on the Hazara border
which faces Buner 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 Badakhshan to Kashmir, the route leading through the
Bashgol Valley, Dir, Talash, Swat, Buner, Agror, 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. Jour., 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 Chaghatai, 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 "Citta 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 Swat 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 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 mediaeval 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.
