[APPENDICES TO THE KĀBUL SECTION.]
E.—Nagarahār, and Nīng-Nahār
Those who consult books and maps about the riverain tract between the Safed-koh (Spīn-ghur) and (Anglicé) the Kābul-river find its name in several forms, the most common being Nangrahār and Nangnahār (with variant vowels). It would be useful to establish a European book-name for the district. As European opinion differs about the origin and meaning of the names now in use, and as a good deal of interesting circumstance gathers round the small problem of a correct form (there may be two), I offer about the matter what has come into the restricted field of my own work, premising that I do this merely as one who drops a casual pebble on the cairn of observation already long rising for scholarly examination.
a. The origin and meaning of the names.
I have met with three opinions about the origin and meaning of the names found now and earlier. To each one of them obvious objection can be made. They are:—
1. That all forms now in use are corruptions of the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra, the name of the Town-of-towns which in the dū-āb of the Bārān-sū and Sūrkh-rūd left the ruins Masson describes in Wilson’s Ariana Antigua. But if this is so, why is the Town-of-towns multiplied into the nine of Na-nagrahār (Nangrahār)?2773
2. That the names found represent Sanscrit nawā vihāra, nine monasteries, an opinion the Gazetteer of India of 1907 has adopted from Bellew. But why precisely nine monasteries? Nine appears an understatement.
3. That Nang (Ning or Nung) -nahār verbally means nine streams, (Bābur’s Tūqūz-rūd,) an interpretation of long standing (Section b infra). But whence nang, ning, nung, for nine? Such forms are not in Persian, Turkī or Pushtu dictionaries, and, as Sir G. A. Grierson assures me, do not come into the Linguistic Survey.
b. On nang, ning, nung for nine.
Spite of their absence from the natural homes of words, however, the above sounds have been heard and recorded as symbols of the number nine by careful men through a long space of time.
The following instances of the use of “Nangnahār” show this, and also show that behind the variant forms there may be not a single word but two of distinct origin and sense.
1. In Chinese annals two names appear as those of the district and town (I am not able to allocate their application with certainty). The first is Na-kie-lo-ho-lo, the second Nang-g-lo-ho-lo and these, I understand to represent Nagara-hāra and Nang-nahār, due allowance being made for Chinese idiosyncrasy.2774
2. Some 900 years later (1527-30 AD.) Bābur also gives two names, Nagarahār (as the book-name of his tūmān) and Nīng-nahār.2775 He says the first is found in several histories (B.N. f. 131b); the second will have been what he heard and also presumably what appeared in revenue accounts; of it he says, “it is nine torrents” (tūqūz-rūd).
3. Some 300 years after Bābur, Elphinstone gives two names for the district, neither of them being Bābur’s book-name, “Nangrahaur2776 or Nungnahaur, from the nine streams which issue from the Safed-koh, nung in Pushtoo signifying nine, and nahaura, a stream” (Caubul, i, 160).
4. In 1881 Colonel H. S. Tanner had heard, in Nūr-valley on the north side of the Kābul-water, that the name of the opposite district was Nīng-nahār and its meaning Nine-streams. He did not get a list of the nine and all he heard named do not flow from Safed-koh.
5. In 1884 Colonel H. G. McGregor gives two names with their explanation, “Ningrahar and Nungnihar; the former is a corruption of the latter word2777 which in the Afghān language signifies nine rivers or rivulets.” He names nine, but of them six only issue from Safed-koh.
6. I have come across the following instances in which the number nine is represented by other words than na (ni or nu); viz. the nenhan of the Chitrālī Kāfir and the noun of the Panjābi, recorded by Leech,—the nyon of the Khowārī and the huncha of the Boorishki, recorded by Colonel Biddulph.
The above instances allow opinion that in the region concerned and through a long period of time, nine has been expressed by nang (ning or nung) and other nasal or high palatal sounds, side by side with na (ni or nu). The whole matter may be one of nasal utterance,2778 but since a large number of tribesmen express nine by a word containing a nasal sound, should that word not find place in lists of recognized symbols of sounds?
c. Are there two names of distinct origin?
1. Certainly it makes a well-connected story of decay in the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra to suppose that tribesmen, prone by their organism to nasal utterance, pronounced that word Nangrahār, and by force of their numbers made this corruption current,—that this was recognized as the name of the town while the Town-of-towns was great or in men’s memory, and that when through the decay of the town its name became a meaningless husk, the wrong meaning of the Nine-streams should enter into possession.
But as another and better one can be put together, this fair-seeming story may be baseless. Its substitute has the advantage of explaining the double sequence of names shown in Section b.
The second story makes all the variant names represent one or other of two distinct originals. It leaves Nagrahār to represent Nagarahāra, the dead town; it makes the nine torrents of Safed-koh the primeval sponsors of Nīng-nahār, the name of the riverain tract. Both names, it makes contemporary in the relatively brief interlude of the life of the town. For the fertilizing streams will have been the dominant factors of settlement and of revenue from the earliest times of population and government. They arrest the eye where they and their ribbons of cultivation space the riverain waste; they are obvious units for grouping into a sub-government. Their name has a counterpart in adjacent Panj-āb; the two may have been given by one dominant power, how long ago, in what tongue matters not. The riverain tract, by virtue of its place on a highway of transit, must have been inhabited long before the town Nagarahāra was built, and must have been known by a name. What better one than Nine-streams can be thought of?
2. Bellew is quoted by the Gazetteer of India (ed. 1907) as saying, in his argument in favour of nawā vihāra, that no nine streams are found to stand sponsor, but modern maps shew nine outflows from Safed-koh to the Kābul-river between the Sūrkh-rūd and Daka, while if affluents to the former stream be reckoned, more than nine issue from the range.2779
Against Bellew’s view that there are not nine streams, is the long persistence of the number nine in the popular name (Sect. b).
It is also against his view that he supposes there were nine monasteries, because each of the nine must have had its fertilizing water.
Bābur says there were nine; there must have been nine of significance; he knew his tūmān not only by frequent transit but by his revenue accounts. A supporting point in those accounts is likely to have been that the individual names of the villages on the nine streams would appear, with each its payment of revenue.
3. In this also is some weight of circumstance against taking Nagarahāra to be the parent of Nīng-nahār:—An earlier name of the town is said to be Udyānapūra, Garden town.2780 Of this Bābur’s Adīnapūr is held to be a corruption; the same meaning of garden has survived on approximately the same ground in Bālā-bāgh and Roẓābād.
Nagarahāra is seen, therefore, to be a parenthetical name between others which are all derived from gardens. It may shew the promotion of a “Garden-town” to a “Chief-town”. If it did this, there was relapse of name when the Chief-town lost status. Was it ever applied beyond the delta? If it were, would it, when dead in the delta, persist along the riverain tract? If it were not, cadit quæstio; the suggestion of two names distinct in origin, is upheld.
Certainly the riverain tract would fall naturally under the government of any town flourishing in the delta, the richest and most populous part of the region. But for this very reason it must have had a name older than parenthetical Nagarahāra. That inevitable name would be appropriately Nīng-nahār (or Na-nahār) Nine-streams; and for a period Nagarahāra would be the Chief-town of the district of Na-nahār (Nine-streams).2781
d. Bābur’s statements about the name.
What the cautious Bābur says of his tūmān of Nīng-nahār has weight:—
1. That some histories write it Nagarahār (Ḥaidarābād Codex, f. 131b);
2. That Nīng-nahār is nine torrents, i.e. mountain streams, tūquz-rud;
3. That (the) nine torrents issue from Safed-koh (f. 132b).
Of his first statement can be said, that he will have seen the book-name in histories he read, but will have heard Nīng-nahār, probably also have seen it in current letters and accounts.
Of his second,—that it bears and may be meant to bear two senses, (a) that the tūmān consisted of nine torrents,—their lands implied; just as he says “Asfara is four būlūks” (sub-divisions f. 3b)—(b) that tūqūz rūd translates nīng-nahār.
Of his third,—that in English its sense varies as it is read with or without the definite article Turkī rarely writes, but that either sense helps out his first and second, to mean that verbally and by its constituent units Nīng-nahār is nine-torrents; as verbally and by its constituents Panj-āb is five-waters.
e. Last words.
Detailed work on the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma has stamped two impressions so deeply on me, that they claim mention, not as novel or as special to myself, but as set by the work.
The first is of extreme risk in swift decision on any problem of words arising in North Afghānistān, because of its local concourse of tongues, the varied utterance of its unlettered tribes resident or nomad, and the frequent translation of proper names in obedience to their verbal meanings. Names lie there too in strata, relics of successive occupation—Greek, Turkī, Hindī, Pushtū and tribes galore.
The second is that the region is an exceptionally fruitful field for first-hand observation of speech, the movent ocean of the uttered word, free of the desiccated symbolism of alphabets and books.
The following books, amongst others, have prompted the above note:—
Ghoswāra Inscription, Kittoe, JASB., 1848, and Kielhorn, Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 311.
H. Sastrī’s Rāmacārita, Introduction, p. 7 (ASB. Memoirs).
Cunningham’s Ancient India, vol. i.
Beal’s Buddhist Records, i, xxxiv, and cii, 91.
Leech’s Vocabularies, JASB., 1838.
The writings of Masson (Travels and Ariana Antiqua), Wood, Vigne, etc.
Raverty’s T̤abaqāt-i-nāsirī.
Jarrett’s Āyīn-i-akbarī.
P.R.G.S. for maps, 1879; Macnair on the Kafirs, 1884; Tanner’s On the Chugānī and neighbouring tribes of Kāfiristān, 1881.
Simpson’s Nagarahāra, JASB., xiii.
Biddulph’s Dialects of the Hindū-kush, JRAS.
Gazette of India, 1907, art. Jalalābād.
Bellew’s Races of Afghānistān.