The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s1.t2: Other Cities of Kapisene.
The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s1.t2
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Other Cities of Kapisene.
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I will close this account of Kapisene with some remarks on the few other cities of the same district that are mentioned by ancient authors. Pliny describes one city as "ad Caucasum Cadrusi, oppidum ab Alexandro conditum," which is slightly altered by Solinus to "Cadrusia oppidum ab Alexandro Magno ad Caucasum constitutum est, ubi et Alexandria."* Botn authors place the city close to the Caucasus, to which Solinus adds, that it was also near Alexandria. Following these two distinct indications, I am disposed to identify the city of Cadrusi with the old site of Koratás, which Masson discovered under the hills of Kohistan, 6 miles to the north-east of Begrâm, and on the north bank of the Panjshir river.† There are the usual remains of an old city, consisting of mounds covered with fragments of pottery, amongst which old coins are frequently found. There are also remains of masonry works about the hills, which the people cail Kâfir-kot, or the Kâfir's fort. The commentators have accused Solinus of misunderstanding Pliny, whose Cadrusi, they say, was the name of a people, and whose "oppidum ab Alexandro conditum" was the city of Alexandria.‡ But the passage was differently understood by Philemon Holland, who renders it thus:—"Upon the hill Caucasus standeth the town Cadrusi, built likewise by the said Alexander." As a general rule, the Greeks would seem to have designated the various peoples whom they encountered by the names of their principal towns.
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∗ Plin. Hist. Nat., vi. 25. Solin. lvii.
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† 'Travels,' iii. 166.
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‡ Cellarius, iii. 22, p. 514, "quod Solinus pervertit."
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Thus we have Kabura and the Kabolitæ, Drepsa and the Drepsiani, Taxila and the Taxili, Kaspeira and the Kaspeiræi, from which I would infer, that there was most probably also a town named Cadrusia, whose inhabitants were called Cadrusi. This inference is strengthened by the correspondence, both in name and in position of the ruined mound of Koratâs, with the Cadrusi of Pliny.
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The names of other peoples and towns are recorded by Ptolemy; but few of them can now be identified, as we have nothing to guide us but the bare names. The Parsii, with their towns Parsia and Parsiana, I take to be the Pashais, or people of the Panjhir or Panjshir valley. The true name is probably Panchir, as the Arabs always write *j* for the Indian *ch*. The modern spelling of Panjshir adopted by Burnes, Leech, and others, appears to be only an attempt to give the Afghan pronunciation of *ch* as *ts* in *Pantsir*. A town named Panjhir is mentioned by the early Arab geographers, and a mountain named *Pashái* was crossed by Ibn Batuta, on his way from Kunduz to Parwân.*
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Other tribes are the Aristophyli, a pure Greek name, and the Ambautæ, of whom nothing is known. The towns not already noticed are Artoarta and Barzaura in the north, and Drastoka and Naulibis in the south. The second of these may be Bazârak, a large town in the Panjshir valley, and the last may be Nilâb of Ghorband. The third was most probably a town in one of the *darás* or valleys of the Koh-dâman.