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DECEMBER, 1884.]
PTOLEMY'S GEOG. BK. VI, CH. 12.-SOGDIANA.
397
Tokharoi and Sakarauloi." These Sakai yielded in their turn to barbarians of their own kindred or at least of their own type, the Skythians, who gave their name to the Indus valley and the regions adjoining the Gulf of Khambhật. Among the most notable Indo-Skythian kings were Kadphises and Kanerkes who reigned at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century of our æra and, therefore, not very long before the time of Ptolemy. Between the Indo. Skythian and Muhammadan periods was interposed the predominancy of Persia in the regions of which we have been speaking.
Ptolemy mentions five rivers which fall into the Oxos: the Okhos, Dargamenes, Zariaspis, Artamis, and Dargoidos, of which the Zariaspes and Artamis unite before reaching the Oxos. Ptolemy's account cannot he reconciled with the existing hydrography of the country. The Dargamenês is called by Ammianus (lib. XXIII, c. vi) the Orgamenes. The Art amis, Wilson thinks, may be the river now called the Dakash (Ariana Antiqua, p. 162) and the Dargamenes, the present river of Ghori or Kunduz which is a tributary of the Okhos and not of the Oxos as in Ptolemy. The Okhos itself has not been identified with certainty. According to Kinneir it is the Tezen or Tejend which, rising in Sarakhs, and receiving many confluents, falls into the Kaspian in N. L. 38° 41'. According to Elphinstone it is the river of Herat, either now lost in the sand or going to the Oxos (Ariana Antiqua, p. 146). Bunbury (vol. II, p. 284) points out that in Strabo the Ökhos is an independent river, emptying into the Kaspian. The Okhos of Artemidoros, he says, may be certainly identified with the Attrek, whose course, till lately, was very imperfectly known.
Ptolemy gives a list of thirteen tribes which inhabited Baktrianê. Their names are obscure, and are scarcely mentioned elsewhere."
In the list of towns few known nanies occur. The most notable are Baktra, Marakanda, Eukratidia and Zariaspa. Baktra, as has been already stated, is the modern Balkh. Heeren Asiatic Nations, 2nd edit., vol. I, p. 424), writes of it in these terms: “The city of Baktra must be regarded as the commercial entrepôt of Eastern Asia: its name belongs to a people who never cease to afford matter for historical details, from the time they are first mentioned. Not only does Baktra constantly appear as a city of wealth and importance
in every age of the Persian empire, but it is continually interwoven in the traditions of the East with the accounts of Semiramis and other conquerors. It stood on the borders of the gold country, in the road of the confluence of nations,' according to an expression of the Zend. avesta; and the conjecture that in this part of the world the human race made its first advance in civilisation, seems highly probable." The name of Balkh is from the Sanskrit name of the people of Baktra, the Bahlikas. Marakanda is Samarkand. It was the capital of Sogdiana, but Ptolemy places it in Baktriang, and considerably to the south of Baktra, although its actual latitude is almost 3 degrees to the north. It was one of the cities of Sogdiana which Alexander destroyed. Its circumference was estimated at 64 stadia, or about 7 miles. The name has been interpreted to mean "warlike province." Eukratidia received its name from the Graeko-Baktrian king, Eukratides, by whom it was founded. Its site cannot be identified. Pliny makes Zariaspa the same as Baktra, but this must be a mistake. No satisfactory site has been as yet assigned to it.
CAP. 12. POSITION OF THE SOGDIANOI. The Sogdia noi are bounded on the west by that part of Skythia which extends from the section of the Öxos which is towards Baktriand and Margianê through the Oxeian mountains as far as the section of the river Iaxartes, which lies in 110° E. 49o N.; on the north likewise by a part of Skythia along the section of the laxartes extended thence as far as the limit where its course bends, which lies in 120° E. 48° 30' N. On the east by the Sakai along the (bending) of the laxartes as far as the sources of the bending which lie in 125° E. 43° N., and by the line prolonged from the Sakai to an extremo point which lies in 125° E. 38° 30' N., and on the east and the south and again on the west by Baktriand along the section of the Oxos already mentioned and by the Kaukasian mountains especially so-called, and the adjoining line and the limits as stated, and the sources of the ΟΣΟ9.
2. The mountains called the Sogdian extend between the two rivers, and have their
» The Wu-sun (of Chinese history) are apparently to be identified with the Asii or Asiani, who, according to Strabo occupied the upper waters of the Jaxartes, and who are classed as nomades with the TochAri and Sacarauli (Sara-Kauli, i.e., Sarikulia).-Kingsmill, J. R. 4. 8., N. S., vol. XIV, p. 79.
37 Prof. Beal (J. R. A. S., N. S., Vol. XVI, p. 253), connects the name of the Tokharoi with Tu-ho-lo the name of a country or kingdom Tukhara, frequently men. tioned by Hiuen Tsiang. The middle symbol ho, he says, represents the rough aspirate, and we should thus get Tahrs or Turra, from which would come the Greek Tocharoi.
