Udyana lay to the north of Peshawar on the Swat River, but from the extent assigned to it by Hiuen Tsang, the name probably covered a large part of the whole hill-region south of the Hindu-Kush from Chitral to the Indus, as indeed it is represented in the Map of Vivien de St. Martin (Pelerins Bouddhistes, II.).  It is regarded by Fahian as the most northerly Province of India, and in his time the food and clothing of the people were similar to those of Gangetic India.  It was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of Lamaism, i.e. of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments.  The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft.

Hiuen Tsang says of the inhabitants:  “The men are of a soft and pusillanimous character, naturally inclined to craft and trickery.  They are fond of study, but pursue it with no ardour. The science of magical formulae is become a regular professional business with them.  They generally wear clothes of white cotton, and rarely use any other stuff.  Their spoken language, in spite of some differences, has a strong resemblance to that of India.”

These particulars suit well with the slight description in our text, and the Indian atmosphere that it suggests; and the direction and distance ascribed to Pashai suit well with Chitral, which may be taken as representing Udyana when approached from Badakhshan.  For it would be quite practicable for a party to reach the town of Chitral in ten days from the position assigned to the old capital of Badakhshan.  And from Chitral the road towards Kashmir would lie over the high Lahori pass to DIR, which from its mention in chapter xviii. we must consider an obligatory point. (Fah-hian, p. 26; Koeppen, I. 70; Pelerins Boud. II. 131-132.)

["Tao-lin (a Buddhist monk like Hiuen Tsang) afterwards left the western regions and changed his road to go to Northern India; he made a pilgrimage to Kia-che-mi-louo (Kashmir), and then entered the country of U-ch’ang-na (Udyana)....” (Ed. Chavannes, I-tsing, p. 105.)—­H.  C.]

We must now turn to the name Pashai.  The Pashai Tribe are now Mahomedan, but are reckoned among the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, which the Afghans are not.  Baber mentions them several times, and counts their language as one of the dozen that were spoken at Kabul in his time.  Burnes says it resembles that of the Kafirs.  A small vocabulary of it was published by Leech, in the seventh volume of the J.  A. S. B., which I have compared with vocabularies of Siah-posh Kafir, published by Raverty in vol. xxxiii. of the same journal, and by Lumsden in his Report of the Mission to Kandahar, in 1837.  Both are Aryan, and seemingly of Professor Max Mueller’s class Indic, but not very close to one another.[1]