379 
1895.] M. A. Stein —Topography of the Pir Pantsal Route. 
(MSS. in my possession). These two compilers who, though of a far 
more modern date, can be shown to have derived their information from 
the same sources, reproduce Kalhana’s anecdote with a remark to the 
effect that the locality was in their days still known by the name of 
Hastivanj and was situated on the Pir Pantsal route. 
The repeated enquiries which I made with reference to these notices 
among my Pandit friends at (Jrlnagar, did not yield any result; neither 
they themselves or any of their acquaintances had ever heard the name 
‘ Hastivanj.’ I accordingly resolved in October 1891 to visit the Pass 
myself. Already at Hor a por I found that the name was known to the 
Kaijimiri cultivators settled there. When subsequently I reached 1 All - 
ahad Sarai I had no difficulty in ascertaining, by a successive cross- 
examination of such travellers as hailed from the valleys on both sides 
of the Pass, that the high mountain-ridge which stretches from the 
south towards the valley of Pir Pantsal stream and ends just opposite 
to the Sarai in a precipitous wall of rocks rising about 2,000 feet above 
the river bed, bears to this day the name of Hastfvavj. 
All the hillmen who passed by, had heard the story that once upon 
a time the elephants of some king had fallen over this precipice down 
into the gorge of the Pir Pantsal stream. Whether this had happened 
by accident or otherwise, they could not tell me ; nor could they name 
the king: 4 it was so long ago since it had happened.’ 
But when I asked the older men, and among them my own guide, 
Pir Bakhsh from Bahramgalla, what reason there could have been for 
bringing elephants to that height, they did not hesitate with their answer : 
it was the old route, they said, which passed over the ridge of Hast l vahj 
and along the south side of the valley, before the Emperor Akbar 
had made his road. 
That this tradition is old, can be shown by reference to another 
passage of Abu-1-fazl ( l . c ., Vol. ii. p. 347) which specifies in the direction 
from Bhimbhar to Ka^mir, besides the route of the Pir Pantsal, two other 
‘good routes’. Of these he names in the first place that of Hastivatar 
(read Hastivanj) , ‘ which was the former route for the march of troops’. 1 
A glance at the configuration of the mountains or at the maps 
published by the Survey of India, 2 * is sufficient to explain fully the 
1 By Abil-l-fazl’s third route, Tangtalah , is meant a mountain track of that 
name which crosses the range about 5 miles to the north of the Pir Pantsal Pass 
and is to this day often resorted to by smugglers.— The explanations of a Kagmlrian 
informant which are quoted in the translator’s note on this passage, are based on 
insufficient local knowledge and hence misleading. 
2 Comp. ; Map of Jammoo, Kashmir and Adjacent Districts,’ 1801, 4 miles to 1 
inch; Map of Kashmir (surveyed 1855-57), 1877, 2 miles to 1 inch; also Sheets 28, 
29 of the ‘ Atlas of India.’ 
