174 REPORT — 1870. 



"Kish," was one of the primitive capitals of Babylonia, and it gave its name 

 apparently to the whole country along the river. " Kiisiya " was mentioned in 

 that quarter among the possessions of Darius Ilystaspes. Various other reasons 

 for this identification were adduced. 



The third river oft'ered fewer difSculties, as no one had ever doubted that the 

 Heddekel was the Tigris. The fourth river was Perat, or the Euphrates. In the 

 inscriptions the word is often represented by the sign for " water," in the same 

 way as it is called in Scriptm-e " the great river ;" but usually the upper river has 

 the name of Purat, where we have probably a very ancient root, signifying " to 

 abound" or " fructify," common to both the Aryan and Semitic tongues ; the lower 

 river, below the Pison branch, is called in the inscriptions the river of Sippara, 

 from the town of that name. 



Early Traditions regarding ilie River Oxus. 

 By Major-Gen. Sir H. Eawlinson,^.C.5., LL.D., D.C.L., F.B.8., SfC. \ 



Whether Bournouf was right or not in regarding the term Pamir (the region in 

 which the Oxus takes its rise) as a contraction of Upd Mem, "the country above 

 Mount Meru," and in thus associating the name directly with the holiest spot in 

 the Brahmanical Cosmogony, the author of the paper thought it was certain that 

 the geographical indications of the Puranas all pointed to this quarter of Central 

 Asia as the site of the primaeval Aryan Paradise. We were not, however, limited 

 to Sanscrit authorities in studying this subject ; the Puranas were supplemented 

 by the traditions and travels of the Buddhists, and in these later sources of infor- 

 mation we often find evidence of so direct a nature aa almost to meet the require- 

 ments of modern science. Thus, in regard to the four rivers of the Aryan Paradise, 

 which were named by the Brahmans, 1, the Sita; 2, the Alakananda ; 3, the Vakh- 

 shu ; and 4, the Bhadra, the Buddhists varied both the order and the nomenclature, 

 classing the foiu' rivers as, 1, the Ganges ; 2, the Indus ; 3, the Oxus ; and 4, the 

 Sita ; and, fiu'ther, deriving them from a great central lake, which was named 

 A-neou-ta, and one of the representatives of which was either the Kara-kul or the 

 Sarik-kul Lake of Pamir. The Buddhist traveller Hiouen-thsang in a.d. G44 

 recog-nized in the Tsung-ling, or Pamir chain, the Su-merii. of his national cosmo- 

 graphy. Capt. Wood, in the account of his journey to the som-ces of the Oxus, 

 had furnished us with an explanation of the origin of the old legend of a four- 

 rivered Paradise. He observes that " the hills and mountains which encircle Sir- 

 i-kul, give rise to some of the principal rivers in Asia. From the ridge at its 

 eastern end flows a branch of the Yarkand river, one of the largest streams that 

 waters Chinese Tartary, while fi-om the low hills on the northern side rises the 

 Sirr, or River of Kokan, and from the snowy chain opposite, both forks of the Oxus 

 as well as a branch of the River Kxmer are supplied. ' Although the position of 

 these various streams is now known to be incorrect, we had a right to infer that 

 the many-rivered wealth of Pamir had so impressed the imagination of the primi- 

 tive Aryan colonists that in their subsequent migi'ations towards the south, and 

 with a more extended geographical knowledge, they transferred the physical 

 features of the fatherland to the abode of Brahma and the gods, precisely in the 

 same way as the Semitic Jews, after being transplanted to the coast of Syria, 

 preserved in their delineation of the terrestrial Paradise the memoi-y traditionally 

 handed down of their old habitat in Babylonia between the Tigris and the Euphrates. 

 Another Aryan legend confirmed this presumed connexion between the head- 

 streams of the Oxus and the several rivers of Asia which were fabled to fall from 

 heaven upon Mount Meru, thence to flow to the suiTOunding world. One version of 

 the Purauic legend described the rivers flowing from Mount Meru as seven ; and 

 this had its parallel in the popular geography of Pamir, for the region of the Upper 

 Oxus was known to the Ii-anian division of the Aryan race by the name of the 

 Country of the Seven Rivers. The passage in the Vendidad to this effect was 

 confirmed by Abu Eihan El-Biruni, a very competent authority. The author 

 believed that a critical examination of the geography of the Puranas might lead to 

 some curious results as to the period and track of the various Aryan migrations. 



