* Arahvaiti, the Harauvatish of the Achsemenian inscriptions, is the Greek Arachosia, and Haetumant the basin of their Etymander, the modern Helmend; in other words, the present province of Seistan.  Hapta-Hindu is the western part of the Indian continent, i.e. the Punjaub.

** The Pehlevi commentators identify Urva with Mesone, mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps the plain around Ispahan which bore the name of Masan in the Sassanid period.  Fr. Lenormant had connected it with the name Urivzan, which is applied in the Assyrian inscriptions to a district of Media in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.

[Illustration:  274.jpg MAP OF THE LANDS CREATED BY AHURA-MAZDA]

The Pehlevi commentators identify Vaekereta with Kabulistan, and also volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies the name:  “The shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or as some say, the shadow of the mountains,” and it produces fever there.  Arguing from passages of similar construction, Lassen was led to recognise in the epithet duzhako-shayanem a place-name, “inhabitant of Duzhako,” which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood called Dushak; Haug believed he had found a confirmation of this hypothesis in the fact that the Pairika Khnathaiti created there by Angro-mainyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people Parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions.  Khnenta-Vehrkana,* Bhaga,** and Chakhra,*** as far as the districts of Varena**** and the basin of the Upper Tigris.^ This legend was composed long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the relationship between the two great families into which the Oriental Aryans were divided, viz. the Indian and Iranian, and in the second to account for the peopling by the Iranians of a certain number of provinces between the Indus and the Euphrates.  As a matter of fact, it is more likely that the Iranians came originally from Europe, and that they migrated from the steppes of Southern Russia into the plains of the Kur and the Araxes by way of Mount Caucasus.^^

* The name Khnenta seems to have been Hellenised into that of Kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier between Hyrcania and Media; according to the Pehlevi version it was really a river of Hyrcania, the Djordjan.  The epithet Vehrkana, which qualifies the name Khnenta, has been identified by Burnouf with the Hyrcania of classical geographers.

     ** Ragha is identified with Azerbaijan in the Pehlevi
     version of the Vendidad, but is, more probably, the Rhago of
     classical geographers, the capital of Eastern Media.

     *** Chakhra seems to be identical with the country of Karkh,
     at the northwestern extremity of Khorassan.

     **** Varena is identified by the Pehlevi commentators with
     Patishkhvargar, i.e. probably the Patusharra of the Assyrian
     inscriptions.