Tbeqeak. — Polyyicsian Knowledge of Cattle. 459 



the habitation was near the Belurtag and Samarcand, on the 

 plateau of Pamir, at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. 

 This is the Pamir — called now Bam-i-duniah, or " Eoof of the 

 World." The Oxus valley runs as far as Issar, where its 

 height is 10,000ft. above the sea. The mountains above the 

 lake on Pamir are 19,000ft. high at the place where the Oxus 

 takes its rise. No wonder, then, that the sacred traditions of 

 the Aryans say that in their birthplace— the "Airanya Vaego" 

 —"there are ten winter months there, two summer months, 

 and those are cold for the waters, cold for the earth, cold for 

 the trees. Winter falls there with the worst of its plagues."* 

 " The Oxus appears in the traditions of the Parsi books under 

 the name of Yeh-Eud, in some form of which originates the 

 classical name which we find it most convenient to use, and 

 also, it may be, preserves that of the names of territories and 

 tribes on the banks of its upper waters, such as Wakh-an, 

 Waksh, and Washjird — names also, no doubt, identical in for- 

 mation, if not in application, with the classical Oxiani, Oxii, 

 and Oxi-petra. [Note. — This latter form, Waksh, seems to 

 have originated 'Oxus,' whilst Wakh seems better represented 

 by 'Ochus.'] " + In an account of a remarkable mission from 

 Constantinople to Transoxiana in A.D. 568, Colonel Yule says, 

 " The Byzantine ambassadors, on their return to Europe, 

 came, we are told, to the Eiver Oech, in which we have pro- 

 bably the latest mention of the Oxus by its name in the 

 primeval form (Veh or Wakh). . . . The old Chinese 

 pilgrims to India, whose route lay this way, speak of princi- 

 palities that must have lain in this region. Such was the 

 State of Uchcha (of which a trace seems to remain in the 

 Uch or Vachcha valley)." We have the authority of Pococke 

 for saying that the Ookshas, the tribe of the Oxus, had wealth 

 of oxen ; that Ookshan seems only the crude form of ooJcsha, 

 " an ox." 



Near this land (bounded to the north by Mount Tau- 

 rus), the names of whose tribes, states, rivers, &c., thus 

 seem to have borne so long the traces of their ancient 

 herdsmen owners, we find described the following scene : j. 



as I can ascertain, the true affinities of the Polynesian speech are less 

 ■with Asiatic tongues than with the dialects of north-west Europe — not 

 because it was probable that the Polynesians were dwellers in north- 

 west Europe, bat because the Celts and Scandinavians were (in my 

 opinion) an earlier and ruder wave of the western- migration than the 

 Greco-Italian peoples, and their short words have remained, like Maori, 

 almost uncorrupted for ages. 



* Vendidad, Fargard i., 4, 



t " Journey to the Source of the River Oxus," Captain John Wood. 

 Preface by Colonel Yule, C.B., from which part above quotation. 



\ On the Indus ; but the Oxus and Indu.s were formerly supposed to be 

 the same river. See Bundahish, xx. 



