384; _Ind. Antiquary_, I. 22; _Wood_,
174, 220; _J. R. A. S._ XIX. 2.)

NOTE 4.--Marsden was right in identifying _Scassem_ or _Casem_ with the
_Kechem_ of D'Anville's Map, but wrong in confounding the latter with the
_Kishmabad_ of Elphinstone--properly, I believe, _Kishnabad_--in the
Anderab Valley. Kashm, or Keshm, found its way into maps through Petis de
la Croix, from whom probably D'Anville adopted it; but as it was ignored
by Elphinstone (or by Macartney, who constructed his map), and by Burnes,
it dropped out of our geography. Indeed, Wood does not notice it except as
giving name to a high hill called the Hill of Kishm, and the position even
of that he omits to indicate. The frequent mention of Kishm in the
histories of Timur and Humayun (e.g. _P. de la Croix_, I. 167; _N. et E._
XIV. 223, 491; _Erskine's Baber and Humayun_, II. 330, 355, etc.) had
enabled me to determine its position within tolerably narrow limits; but
desiring to fix it definitely, application was made through Colonel
Maclagan to Pandit Manphul, C.S.I., a very intelligent Hindu gentleman,
who resided for some time in Badakhshan as agent of the Panjab Government,
and from him arrived a special note and sketch, and afterwards a MS. copy
of a Report,[1] which set the position of Kishm at rest.

KISHM is the _Kilissemo_, i.e. Karisma or Krishma, of Hinen Tsang; and Sir
H. Rawlinson has identified the Hill of Kishm with the Mount Kharesem of
the Zend-Avesta, on which Jamshid placed the most sacred of all the fires.
It is now a small town or large village on the right bank of the Varsach
river, a tributary of the Kokcha. It was in 1866 the seat of a district
ruler under the Mir of Badakhshan, who was styled the Mir of Kishm, and is
the modern counterpart of Marco's _Quens_ or Count. The modern
caravan-road between Kunduz and Badakhshan does not pass through Kishm,
which is left some five miles to the right, but through the town of
Mashhad, which stands on the same river. Kishm is the warmest district of
Badakhshan. Its fruits are abundant, and ripen a month earlier than those
at Faizabad, the capital of that country. The Varsach or Mashhad river is
Marco's "_Flum auques grant_." Wood (247) calls it "the largest stream we
had yet forded in Badakhshan."

It is very notable that in Ramusio, in Pipino, and in one passage of the
G. Text, the name is written _Scasem_, which has led some to suppose the
_Ish-Kashm_ of Wood to be meant. That place is much