Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.101

c10.101

**AFGHÁN**, *n.p.* P.—H.—*Afghān*. The most general name of the predominant portion of the congeries of tribes beyond the N.W. frontier of India, whose country is called from them *Afghānistān*. In England one often hears the country called *Afgunist-un*, which is a mispronunciation painful to an Anglo-Indian ear, and even *Afgann*, which is a still more excruciating solecism. [The common local pronunciation of the name is *Aoghān*, which accounts for some of the forms below. Bellew insists on the distinction between the Afghān and the Pathān (PUTTAN). “The Afghan is a Pathan merely because he inhabits a Pathan country, and has to a great extent mixed with its people and adopted their language” (*Races of Af.*, p. 25). The name represents Skt. *asvaka* in the sense of a ‘cavalier,’ and this reappears scarcely modified in the Assakani or Assakeni of the historians of the expedition of Alexander.]