Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 2.djvu/39

1833.] geography) is unknown by that name, and amidst the confusion of such unmeaning designations as Hindu Kush, Caucasus, Sufed Koh (White Mountain), as if snowy mountains should be any other color : to be sure, we have heard of red, to which the map adds blue mountains, white mountains, cloudy mountains, and black mountains (see the map in the octavo edition of Elphinstone's Kabul) ; besides Taghs and Tukhts, innumerable ; and lastly, Parapamisus, which is a fine sounding name, but it unfortunately happens not to exist ; there are also Kara or black mountains, which are also salt. Is not all this too bad ? — In seeking for the continuity of the Himalaya, we must go north of Ladak, and the sources of the Oxus, where a vast tract of lofty summits will be found to trend towards the skirts of Yarkund, and somewhere near the heads of the Oxus and Jaxartes, to define the slope of the country to the north- west; this will bring the high plateaux, north of the Indus, within more precise limits. All this tract, which is by no means very remote, is still unseen by the eye of civilised man.

" The Biits of Bamean represent a man and woman of colossal magnitude, carved in the cliff of the ridge that bounds the valley on the east. On approaching them, I saw from the very look of the hills, that they could only be moulded in some soft calcareous substance ; yet a very intelligent man, aHaji Baba, who was with Moorcroft at the spot, insisted that the figures were in the solid rock, which would indeed have been an anomaly, as the whole of the neighbouring hills and the dell itself is a diluvial, perhaps an alluvial, deposit of mud, clay, and conglomerate. I was certain in my opinion, and took a bet of 100 groats to one, with the old Haji, that they were mud, and so they proved to be. A piece of a toe, or part of the nose of one, will decide their structure : it is not gypsum. Though it is rather a disappointment to find mud instead of granite, still these idols are very curious objects, both with regard to antiquity, and as memorials of an epoch, the history of which eludes our research. The written accounts, if they are not vitiated by mythological figures, assign their formation (creation) to the year 56 before the Christian era, which is far from extravagant, considering the nature of the records (Mahabharat), which give that date ; but without attending to these, it is almost certain, that they existed before the time of Muhammed, and when the country was possessed by the kafirs under the dominion of Zohak, whose reign was antecedent to Christianity. — These august idols were mutilated both by Timur the Great and by Nadir Shah : the former discharged arrows, and the latter fired shots at them. Some faint traditions of Alexander the Great are in the mouths of some of the inhabitants ; bat there are so many Sikan-