1852.] On the Sites of Nikaia and Boukephaion. 255 



With such license there are few words or names of three syllables 

 that might not be converted into almost any other word or name of 

 four syllables. 



We are distinctly told by Curtius that Taxiles was the family name, 

 Omphis* the personal name of the prince of the country ; that all 

 princes of that house were called Taxiles ; and that the capital was 

 Taxila, the largest city between the Indus and the Hydaspes. Now, 

 in this country people never take their names from towns or villages, 

 but ordinarily the villages are called after the name of the founders. 

 Here then our etymologists would present us with an ancient gentle- 

 man named Raja Rockingstone, or Raja Touchstone, for the mere pur- 

 pose of bequeathing his queer name to his capital. If the capital was 

 Tukshasila the Raja was undoubtedly Tukshasili. 



There is nothing whatever in the appearance of traditions of Tukht- 

 purri to justify an assumption of its antiquity, or the belief that it 

 ever could have been the chief town of the Sind Sagur Doaba. The 

 sole monument of which any record remains, is part of a comparative- 

 ly modern brick wall of a Gukka palace, attributed to the Gukka 

 princess Tukht Bami ; to whom, according to some, the village owes its 

 name and its origin ; excepting this poor memorial, the village appears 

 never to have possessed any buildings but huts of mud or of un- 

 wrought stone, mud cemented : and what consequence it ever possessed 

 seems to have been due to the accident of having formed the capital 

 of one of the petty sovereignties of the Gukkas, when that kingdom 

 had been subdivided. As already mentioned, it is more than a mile off 

 the high road and so entangled among ravines, to which indeed it 

 owes its existence, in the water they supply, as to be difficult of access. 

 Its position is not at the junction of any important thoroughfares, and 

 the traveller knows of its existence only through maps. The soil on 

 which it stands is not raised by the decay of edifices as in all Indian 

 sites of antiquity. 



Purri, signifying a stone, or, stone slab, is a common terminal to 

 Tillages in this Doaba, as for instance " Bulbulpurri." The terminal 



* Omphis, permittente Alexandro, et regium insigne sumpsit, et more gentis suae 

 nomen, quod patris fuerat. Taxilen appellavere populares, sequente nomine impe- 

 rium in quemcumque transiret. Q. Cur. viii. 12. 



