In the former story we have bands under Nigudar going off by Ghazni, and conquering country on the Indian frontier.  In the latter we have Nigudar, a descendant of Chaghatai, trying to escape from his camp on the frontier of Great Armenia.  Supposing the Persian historians to be correct, it looks as if Marco had rolled two stories into one.

Some other passages may be cited before quitting this part of the subject.  A chronicle of Herat, translated by Barbier de Meynard, says, under 1298:  “The King Fakhruddin (of Herat) had the imprudence to authorise the Amir Nigudar to establish himself in a quarter of the city, with 300 adventurers from ’Irak.  This little troop made frequent raids in Kuhistan, Sijistan, Farrah, etc., spreading terror.  Khodabanda, at the request of his brother Ghazan Khan, came from Mazanderan to demand the immediate surrender of these brigands,” etc.  And in the account of the tremendous foray of the Chaghataian Prince Kotlogh Shah, on the east and south of Persia in 1299, we find one of his captains called Nigudar Bahadur. (Gold.  Horde, 146, 157, 164; D’Ohsson, IV. 378 seqq., 433 seqq., 513 seqq.; Ilch. I. 216, 261, 284; II. 104; J.  A. ser.  V. tom. xvii. 455-456, 507; Khan.  Notice, 31.)

As regards the route taken by Prince Nogodar in his incursion into India, we have no difficulty with BADAKHSHAN.  PASHAI-DIR is a copulate name; the former part, as we shall see reason to believe hereafter, representing the country between the Hindu Kush and the Kabul River (see infra, ch. xxx.); the latter (as Pauthier already has pointed out), DIR, the chief town of Panjkora, in the hill country north of Peshawar.  In Ariora-Keshemur the first portion only is perplexing.  I will mention the most probable of the solutions that have occurred to me, and a second, due to that eminent archaeologist, General A. Cunningham. (1) Ariora may be some corrupt or Mongol form of Aryavartta, a sacred name applied to the Holy Lands of Indian Buddhism, of which Kashmir was eminently one to the Northern Buddhists. Oron, in Mongol, is a Region or Realm, and may have taken the place of Vartta, giving Aryoron or Ariora. (2) “Ariora,” General Cunningham writes, “I take to be the Harhaura of Sanscrit—­i.e. the Western Panjab.  Harhaura was the North-Western Division of the Nava-Khanda, or Nine Divisions of Ancient India.  It is mentioned between Sindhu-Sauvira in the west (i.e.  Sind), and Madra in the north (i.e. the Eastern Panjab, which is still called Madar-Des).  The name of Harhaura is, I think, preserved in the Haro River.  Now, the Sind-Sagor Doab formed a portion of the kingdom of Kashmir, and the joint names, like those of Sindhu-Sauvira, describe only one State.”  The names of the Nine Divisions in question are given by the celebrated astronomer, Varaha Mihira, who lived in the beginning of the 6th century, and are repeated by Al Biruni. (See Reinaud, Mem. sur l’Inde, p. 116.) The only objection to this happy solution seems to lie in Al Biruni’s remark, that the names in question were in general no longer used even in his time (A.D. 1030).