I. 104; _J. A._ ser. V. tom. xvii.
455-456, 507; _Khan. Notice_, 31.)

As regards the route taken by Prince Nogodar in his incursion into India,
we have no difficulty with BADAKHSHAN. PASHAI-DIR is a copulate name; the
former part, as we shall see reason to believe hereafter, representing the
country between the Hindu Kush and the Kabul River (see infra, ch. xxx.);
the latter (as Pauthier already has pointed out), DIR, the chief town of
Panjkora, in the hill country north of Peshawar. In _Ariora-Keshemur_ the
first portion only is perplexing. I will mention the most probable of the
solutions that have occurred to me, and a second, due to that eminent
archaeologist, General A. Cunningham. (1) _Ariora_ may be some corrupt or
Mongol form of _Aryavartta_, a sacred name applied to the Holy Lands of
Indian Buddhism, of which Kashmir was eminently one to the Northern
Buddhists. _Oron_, in Mongol, is a Region or Realm, and may have taken the
place of _Vartta_, giving _Aryoron_ or Ariora. (2) "_Ariora_," General
Cunningham writes, "I take to be the _Harhaura_ of Sanscrit--i.e. the
Western Panjab. Harhaura was the North-Western Division of the _Nava-
Khanda_, or Nine Divisions of Ancient India. It is mentioned between
_Sindhu-Sauvira_ in the west (i.e. Sind), and _Madra_ in the north (i.e.
the Eastern Panjab, which is still called _Madar-Des_). The name of
Harhaura is, I think, preserved in the Haro River. Now, the Sind-Sagor
Doab formed a portion of the kingdom of Kashmir, and the joint names, like
those of Sindhu-Sauvira, describe only one State." The names of the Nine
Divisions in question are given by the celebrated astronomer, Varaha
Mihira, who lived in the beginning of the 6th century, and are repeated by
Al Biruni. (See _Reinaud, Mem. sur l'Inde_, p. 116.) The only objection to
this happy solution seems to lie in Al Biruni's remark, that the names in
question were in general no longer used even in his time (A.D. 1030).

There can be no doubt that _Asidin Soldan_ is, as Khanikoff has said,
Ghaiassuddin Balban, Sultan of Delhi from 1266 to 1286, and for years
before that a man of great power in India, and especially in the Panjab,
of which he had in the reign of Ruknuddin (1236) held independent
possession.

Firishta records several inroads of Mongols in the Panjab during the reign
of Ghaiassuddin, in withstanding one of which that King's eldest son was
slain; and there are constant indications of their presence in Sind ti