1S51.] Indo-Scythian Princes. 139 



on record. The next step is to have the deduction critically examined, 

 and tested by local investigation : if it still then hold good, we may 

 either accept it as material for history, or at any rate allow it to pass 

 current pending the appearance of further light. There is a world of 

 work to be done along the simple frontier of Peshawur (v. Court's con- 

 jectures on the march of Alexander, Journal Asiatic Society, Bengal, 

 July, 1836), while the whole Punjab is a rich and almost untried 

 field for the antiquarian and numismatologist. The idea must never 

 be entertained that where there is the darkness of apparent mystery, 

 discovery is hopeless. 



I make these few remarks, partly in the hope that they may per- 

 chance animate some able investigator to exertion, partly as not out 

 of place with reference to the very subject of this brief paper. 



It will be in the recollection of some of the readers of the Journal 

 that much interest was excited by the appearance, on certain of the 

 coins of Arian dynasties subsequent to the Greeks, of pure Greek 

 words, and sometimes of Greek barbarized even to unintelligibility, in 

 conjunction with the title of a Parthian or a Scythian prince. The 

 immediate query in the mind of a philologist was, does this indicate 

 the existence of a Grseco-Barbaric vernacular language 1 Aristophanes 

 introduces in " The Birds" a specimen of such a dialect which no 

 doubt, like the Carthaginian of Plautus's slaves, amused a classic au- 

 dience as much as Pat or Sawny do an English one. The few words 

 the barbarian of Aristophanes utters are chiefly bad Greek, which, if 

 the conclusion be worth any thing based on so small a fact, would 

 lead one to infer that Greek in these dialects was predominant ; and 

 that, putting the case we come across an instance of one, the more 

 Greek we can detect in it, the greater the likelihood that it constituted, 

 not a sort of royal, or medal language, but the actual vernacular of 

 the particular people who made use of it. The thoughts involuntarily 

 wander to the mountains of Kafiristan, that mysterious country, the 

 Opprobrium Geographies Anglicce, with its peculiar inhabitants, the 

 self-declared descendants of Alexander's soldiers, who speak, say all 

 informants, a peculiar and unintelligible language. This race of men, be 

 they what they may, have certainly taken refuge from the overflowing 

 tide of immigration in inaccessible haunts, where to this hour they 

 exist, rarely, if ever, quitting their own limits. The Parthian, the 



t 2 



