________________
398
extremities lying in and ......
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4.7° 46° 30' 3. From these mountains a good many nameless rivers flow in contrary directions to meet these two rivers, and of these nameless rivers one forms the Oxeian Lake, the middle of which lies in 111° E. 45° N., and other two streams descend from the same hilly regions as the laxartes-the regions in question are called the Highlands of the Kômêdai. Each of these streams falls into the Iaxartes; one of them is called Dêm os and its sources lie in............... 124° Its junction with the river Iaxartes occurs in ......... 123° The other is the Baskatis
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Oxeiana....
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
111° 122°
whose sources lie in ...... 123° Its junction with the river
Iaxartes occurs in ......... 121°
Trybaktra......... Alexandreia Oxeianê
Indikomordana
Drepsa (or Rhepsa) the
Metropolis
Alexandreia Eskhatê (i.e.
43°
47° 30' 4. The country towards the Oxeian mountains is possessed by the Paskai, and the parts towards the most northern section of the Iaxartes by the Iatioi, and the Tokharoi, below whom are the Augaloi; then along the Sogdian mountains the Oxydrangkai and the Dry baktai, and the Kandaroi, and below the mountains the Mardyê noi, and along the Oxos the Oxeianoi and the Khôrasmioi, and farther east than these the Drepsia noi, and adjoining both the rivers, and still further east than the above the Anieseis along the Iaxartes, and the Kirrhâdai (or Kirrhodeeis) along the Ôxos, and between the Kaukasos Range and Imaos the country called Ouanda banda.
5. Towns of the Sogdianoi in the highlands along the Iaxartes are these:Kyreskhata.........
124°
43° 40'
Along the Oxos:
44° 20' 43° 40' 43°
117° 30′ 117° 15' 121°
47°
43°
Marouka.......................
Kholbêsina
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6. Between the rivers and higher up
112° 15' 113°
115°
120°
41°
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122° Ultima)....... Sogdiana was divided from Baktriana by the river Oxos and extended northward from
44° 20' 44° 20'
45°
[DECEMBER, 1884.
thence to the river Iaxartes. The Sakai lay along the eastern frontier and Skythic tribes along the western. The name exists to this day, being preserved in Soghd which designates the country lying along the river Kohik from Bokhara eastward to Samarkand. The records of Alexander's expedition give much information regarding this country, for the Makedonian troops were engaged for the better part of three years in effecting its subjugation.
In connexion with Sogdiana, Ptolemy mentions four mountain ranges-the Kaukasian, the Sogdian, the mountain district of the K ô mêdai, and I maos. Kaukasos was the general name applied by the Makedonians to the great chain which extended along the northern frontiers of Afghanistan, and which was regarded as a prolongation of the real Kaukasos. Ptolemy uses it hero in a specific sense to designate that part of the chain which formed the eastern continuation of the Paropanisos towards Imaos. Imaos is the meridian chain which intersects the Kaukasos, and is now called Bolor Tagh. Ptolemy places it about 8 degrees too far eastward. The Sogdian Mountains, placed by Ptolemy between the Iaxartes and Oxos, towards their sources, are the Påmir. The Kômêdai, who gave their name to the third range, were, according to Ptolemy, the inhabitants of the hill-country which lay to the east of Baktriana and up whose valley lay the route of the caravans from Baktra, bound for Sêrika across Imaus or the Thaunglung. Cunningham has identified them with the Kiu-mi-tho (Kumidha) of Hiuen Tsiang. Their mountain district is that called Muz-tågh.
The rivers mentioned in connexion with Sogdiana are the Oxos, and the Iaxartes, with its two tributaries, the Baskatis and the Dêmos. The Iaxartes is now called the Syr-darya or Yellow River. The ancients sometimes called it the Araxes, but, according to D'Anville, this is but an appellative common to it with the Amu or Oxos, the Armenian Aras and the Rha or Volga. The Laxartes was not properly a Greek word but was borrowed from the barbarians by whom, as Arrian states (Anab. lib. III, c. xxx), it was called the Orxantes. It rises in the high plateau south of Lake Issyk-kul in the Thian Shan. Its course is first to westward through the valley of Khokan, where it receives numerous tributaries. It then bifurcates, the more northern branch retaining the name of Syr-darya. This flows towards the north-west, and after a course of 1150 miles from its source enters the Sea of Aral. Ptolemy however, like all the other classical writers, makes it enter the Kaspian sea. Humboldt accounts for this apparent error by adducing facts which
