The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.211

v1.c24.211

At this point it may not be out of place to refer briefly to the information that is afforded by the Inscriptions and by Herodotus regarding the sway exercised by Darius over the peoples of the Indian borderland. Of the twenty-three tributary provinces the names of which appear on the Bahistān Rock (Bh. 1, 14–17) and are repeated with some slight variations in the Platform and the Tomb Inscriptions (Dar. Pers. e. 10–18; NR. a. 22–30), three provinces, namely Bākhtrī (Bactria), Haraiva (Herāt), and Z(a)ra(n)ka (Drangiāna, or a portion of Seistān) as noted above (pp. 327–8), form a part of the present Afghānistān lying more remote from the Indian frontier. The five that are directly connected with the region of the Indus itself are, as partly indicated earlier in the chapter (*ibid.*), Ga(n)dāra (the region of the Kābul valley as far as Peshāwar)¹, Thatagu (either the Ghilzai territory to the south-west of Ghazni or the Hazāra country further to the west and north-west), Hara(h)uvatī (the district about Kandahār in the broadest sense), Saka, and Maka². The term Saka may possibly allude to Sakastāna (Seistān) and the dwellers around the region of the Hāmūn Lake³; but the distinction made in the Tomb Inscription of Darius (NR. a. 25–26) between the Sakā Haumavargā, answering to the Amyrgioi Sakai of Herodotus (VII, 64), and the Sakā Tigrakhaudā, 'wearing pointed caps,' an attribute corresponding to the term Orthokorybantioi of Herodotus (III, 92), may indicate a special division of the Çakas, or Scythians, living between the extreme northern sources of the Indus and the headwaters of the Oxus⁴. The district Maka is believed to be identified with Makrān, once occupied by the Mykans of Herodotus (III, 93; VII, 68) and now a part of Baluchistān⁵.