The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative — John Shaqi
The Gates of India: Being an Historical NarrativeHoldich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
History
The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative
Holdich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
Afghanistan -- Description and travel; Balochistan (Pakistan) -- Description and travel
The detailed list of peoples included in the satrapies of the Persian
Empire, whilst it is more ethnographical than geographical in its
character, is sufficient proof in itself of the existence of constant
movement between Persia and the borderland of Afghanistan, which
assuredly included commercial traffic. This enumeration has been
compared with a catalogue of tribal contingents which swelled the
great army of Xerxes, an independent statement, and therefore a
valuable test to the general accuracy of Herodotus; and it is still
further confirmed by the list of nations subject to the Persian king
found in the inscriptions of Darius at Behistan and Persepolis. We are
not immediately concerned with the satrapies included in Western Asia
and Egypt, but when Herodotus makes a sudden departure from his rule
of geographical sequence and introduces a satrapy on the remotest east
of the Persian Empire, we immediately recognize that he touches the
Indian frontier.
The second satrapy most probably corresponds with that part of Central
Afghanistan south of the Kabul River, which lies west of the Suliman
Hills and north of the Kwaja Amran or Khojak. Every name mentioned by
Herodotus certainly has its counterpart in one or other of the tribes
to be found there to this day, excepting the Lydoi (whose history as
Ludi is fairly well known) and the Lasonoi, who have emigrated, the
former into India and the latter to Baluchistan.
The seventh satrapy, again, comprised the Sattagydai, the Gandarioi,
the Dadikai, and the Aparytai ("joined together"), an association of
names too remarkable to be mistaken. The Sattag or Khattak, the
Gandhari, the Dadi, and the Afridi are all trans-Indus people, and
without insisting too strongly on the exact habitat of each,
originally there can be little doubt that the seventh satrapy included
a great part of the Indus valley.
The eleventh satrapy is also probably a district of the Indian
trans-frontier, although Bunbury associates the name Kaspioi with the
Caspian Sea. It is far more likely that the Kaspioi of Herodotus are
to be recognized as the people of the ancient Kaspira or Kasmira, and
the Daritæ as the Daraddesa (Dards) of the contiguous mountains. All
Kashmir, even to the borders of Tibet (whence came the story of the
gold-digging ants), was well enough known to the Persians and through
them to Herodotus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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