1863. | On the Antiquities of the Peshawur District. 17 
I may add the opinion of one of the highest military authorities 
that Mahabun, which Col. Abbott proposed as Aornos, commands 
nothing ; it is so much out of the way that it would hardly ever 
have been a place of refuge for the people of the plains; and if it 
had been, a general like Alexander would not have wasted his time 
and his men on the reduction of an isolated hill which was by no 
means impeding his passage of the Indus. On the other hand he 
says that the hill above Khairabad is not only a most conspicuous 
point for friend and foe, but also one that must be taken before a 
passage of the Indus at Atok would be attempted by an invading 
force. 
T have only one item to add in reference to the tradition about 
Rajah Hody. This tradition still exists on the spot, and in other 
localities of Afghanistan. ‘The topes and altars, for instance, in the 
neighbourhood of Amerakhel near the Surkhab, are attributed by the 
natives to Rajah Hody or Udi. Now Saint-Martin in the treatise 
cited above, finds three regions conterminous with one another, 
which, in Hiouen-Thsang’s time, were called Oudyana, according to 
his French spelling: the first as the capital of Ningrahar (p. 52) ; 
the second, the kingdom of Oudyana, (p. 63), which he identifies as 
the plains and hills of Ashnaghar (Hashtnagar, though inveterate and 
official, is incorrect) and Yusufzai; and the third time he finds the 
name, it is applied to the region about Hasan Abdal, (p. 69). In 
each of these instances he says, the locality was called so, that is 
“a garden,” on account of its fertility. It does not strike him as 
strange that precisely the same name should have been given to three 
adjoining regions, and these names should be entirely independent of 
one another. Moreover, Ningrahar is by no means a garden at all 
times. It is a locality which suffers famine frequently, and one of 
the derivations of its name as given by indigenous Mullahs, is based 
on the meaning “half-hungry,”—a derivation however little worth 
in etymology it may be, gives evidence at least of the native esti- 
mation of the fertility of the place. The plain of Yusufzai is a 
garden about once in three or four years ; the rest of the time it is a 
desert. 
It appears to me far more likely that these regions together were 
called by the one name Udiana, as being the kingdom of this “ Rajah 
Udi.” Namies of this form and thus derived are frequent in the 
c 
