There can be no doubt that Asidin Soldan is, as Khanikoff has said, Ghaiassuddin Balban, Sultan of Delhi from 1266 to 1286, and for years before that a man of great power in India, and especially in the Panjab, of which he had in the reign of Ruknuddin (1236) held independent possession.

Firishta records several inroads of Mongols in the Panjab during the reign of Ghaiassuddin, in withstanding one of which that King’s eldest son was slain; and there are constant indications of their presence in Sind till the end of the century.  But we find in that historian no hint of the chief circumstances of this part of the story, viz., the conquest of Kashmir and the occupation of Dalivar or Dilivar (G.  T.), evidently (whatever its identity) in the plains of India.  I do find, however, in the history of Kashmir, as given by Lassen (III. 1138), that in the end of 1259, Lakshamana Deva, King of Kashmir, was killed in a campaign against the Turushka (Turks or Tartars), and that their leader, who is called Kajjala, got hold of the country and held it till 1287.[1] It is difficult not to connect this both with Polo’s story and with the escapade of Nigudar about 1260, noting also that this occupation of Kashmir extended through the whole reign of Ghaiassuddin.

We seem to have a memory of Polo’s story preserved in one of Elliot’s extracts from Wassaf, which states that in 708 (A.D. 1308), after a great defeat of a Mongol inroad which had passed the Ganges, Sultan Ala’uddin Khilji ordered a pillar of Mongol heads to be raised before the Badaun gate, “as was done with the Nigudari Moghuls” (III. 48).

We still have to account for the occupation and locality of Dalivar; Marsden supposed it to be Lahore; Khanikoff considers it to be Dirawal, the ancient desert capital of the Bhattis, properly (according to Tod) Deorawal, but by a transposition common in India, as it is in Italy, sometimes called Dilawar, in the modern State of Bhawalpur.  But General Cunningham suggests a more probable locality in DILAWAR on the west bank of the Jelam, close to Darapur, and opposite to Mung.  These two sites, Dilawar-Darapur on the west bank, and Mung on the east, are identified by General Cunningham (I believe justly) with Alexander’s Bucephala and Nicaea.  The spot, which is just opposite the battlefield of Chilianwala, was visited (15th December, 1868) at my request, by my friend Colonel R. Maclagan, R.E.  He writes:  “The present village of Dilawar stands a little above the town of Darapur (I mean on higher ground), looking down on Darapur and on the river, and on the cultivated and wooded plain along the river bank.  The remains of the Old Dilawar, in the form of quantities of large bricks, cover the low round-backed spurs and knolls of the broken rocky hills around the present village, but principally on the land side.  They cover a large area of very irregular character, and may