The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.217

v1.c24.217

Herodotus (III, 91–93) mentions in his list of peoples that were subject to Darius—corresponding in a general way to the satrapies of the empire—four or five more which may be identified as having occupied districts in or near the present Afghānistān, in some cases adjoining the Indian frontier. The Sattagydai and Gandarioi (cf. OP. Thatagu and Ga(n)dāra), for example, have the Dadikai and the Aparytai linked with them in the same enumeration. Of these latter tribes, the Dadikai may be identified with the Dards of the Upper Indus valley, somewhere between the Chitrāl district and Kashmīr; and the Aparytai are to be connected with the inhabitants of the mountainous regions of the Hindu Kush, north of Kābul¹. The Kaspioi, who, according to Herodotus (III, 93, cf. also VII, 67, 86) constituted together with the Sakai the fifteenth division of the empire (and who are to be distinguished from the Kaspioi of the eleventh division (III, 92), by the Caspian Sea), must likewise have been an easterly people, and they are perhaps to be located in the wild tract of Kāfiristān, to the north of the Kābul River². The Thamanaioi, whom Herodotus (III, 93, 117) mentions as forming a part of the fourteenth division of the tributary nations, occupied a section of Afghānistān not easy to define precisely, but presumably in the western or west-central region, as noted above (p. 328, n. 2). The territory of Paktyike in the thirteenth division (Hdt. III, 93; cf. III, 102; IV, 44) and its people, the Paktyes (Hdt. VII, 67), are to be located within the borders of the land now called Afghānistān; but whether the name is to be regarded as a tribal designation of the Afghāns in general, and as surviving in the term Pakhtu or Pashtu applied to their language, is extremely doubtful³.