The Geography of the Puranas c7.s5.61

c7.s5.61

The plateau of Pāmir, though constantly spoken as such is no more a plateau than the Armenian crown, which it resembles in some essentials; for it is approximately a square segment of the folded belt, running 150 miles both east and west and north and south. But while the mass of the Armenian square is a real crown, from which the land falls in all directions, the Pāmir is really a shallow bowl (cf. the "saucer-shape" of the Purāṇas), overhung by the gable-ends of the Hindūkush, the Tien Shen Kun-lun and the Himālayas. These gable-ends justify its name⁵ (cf. the names: Pa-meer and Meer-u). This Pāmīr bowl (or saucer) is bounded all around by high ranges studded with snow-covered jagged peaks, enveloped in cloud and festooned with glistening glaciers. These ranges are the Alai and the Trans-Alai in the north, the Sarikol and the Kashghar on the east, the Hindūkush on the south and the Khwaja Mohammad range on the west. The peaks which occur round the plateau are, from the north in a clockwise direction, Pk. Stalin (24,623'), Communist Academy Peak (19,239'), Peak Lenīn (23,542'), Peak of Peter I range (above 23,000'), Kungur Peaks (No. 42 and 48, 25,146'), Mustagh Ata (24,388'), the peaks of Wakhan, Shugnan, Rushan and Yazgulem (above 17,000').