1849.] Notes on the Geography of Western Afghanistan. 589 



venerable antiquity, comprising 121 pages, was published at St. 

 Petersburgh in 1840, by that distinguished and elegant orientalist and 

 Armenian scholar, M. Brosset, who undertook and completed the work 

 under the auspices of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia. 

 (Vide Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. CXXV., old series, 

 page 415 — 16.) 



Fursukh is also an Armenian word, <fruipou,[u 9 or ^m^Jb^.^ or ^pmutufu 

 (Pharasanga, Latin) ; ((papavdyyns, Greek) signifies a distance of three 

 miles or a league. 



Major Anderson has certainly taken a great deal of pains in consult- 

 ing several Arabic writers. It would undoubtedly be very desirable to 

 give the dates in which these writers did respectively flourish. There 

 is no knowing, for instance, in what year Hamdallah Kuznevee wrote 

 his book, or in what century did he flourish. 



A somewhat similar story of the fabulous qualities of the soil of the 

 country is mentioned in the history of Armenia, in connection with the 

 circumstances of the imprisonment of the Armenian king Arsaces by 

 the Persian king Sapor. (See Avdall's paper, Journal Asiatic Society, 

 Vol. VI. page 81.) 



It is not only customary, but a very common practice with the Ar- 

 menian nation to indicate the respective value of numbers by a 

 numerical scale of the alphabet of their language ; fir, for instance is 

 1, g, 2, *, 3, *, 4, £ 5, £, 6, V, 7, c., 8, P, 9, <t, 10, 

 and so on. The numerical scale of Major Anderson's valuable paper 

 will, perhaps, be deemed more interesting by the addition of another 

 column, exhibiting the characters of the Armenian alphabet, corres- 

 pondent in their numerical value with those of the other three lan- 

 guages alluded to in the paper. The following is a hurried specimen : — 



