The ruins of old Hála, or Hála-kandi, on the Indus, thirty miles above Haidarábád, lie to the south-east of the present site. Had its name appeared in the Chach-náma, we might have ascribed its foundation to the Rájá Hál, mentioned in p. 106. Tod names a later prince of the Samma family as the founder.*
It is probable that the designation of the Hála range of mountains has a similar origin, for we nowhere find them mentioned in any early work; but such a very modern attribution would scarcely satisfy a late writer, who sees in them the cradle of the great Hellenic race:—
“The land of Hellas, a name so dear to civilization and the arts, was so called from the magnificent range of heights situated in Beloochistan, styled the ‘Hela’ mountains. * * * The chiefs of this country were called ‘Helaines,’ or the ‘chiefs of the Hela.’”*
He gives as a motto to this fanciful chapter on the Hellenes, the following lines from the fragments of Hesiod:—
<greek>.
Chiefs of the war-car, guards of holy Right,
Dorus and Æolus, and Zuthus' might
From HELLEN sprang.
As he conceives Æolus to represent the Haiya tribe of Rájpúts, it is surprising that he disregards the more obvious resemblance of Dorus and Zuthus to the mighty Dors and the energetic Zats;—the former now nearly extinct, the latter now better known as the wide-spread Jats.
Another mountain range in the same neighbourhood is even still more unduly exalted, in a mode which sets all true relations of time, space, position, and language, at complete defiance.
“I would now direct the reader's attention to the most salient feature in the land of Hellas. The mountain chain of PINDUS, traversing a considerable portion of Greece, and forming the boundary between Thessaly and Epirus, takes its name from the PIND. Its present name is Pind Dadun Khan * * * * whence the Pind or “Salt Range” of Afghanistan was naturally transferred to a corresponding remarkable feature in Greece. It is not a little remarkable, that in the latter country the true Pindus * * * should give nearly the corresponding length of the Pind in Afghanistan, viz., a distance of about sixty miles.”*
This elaborate super-structure is based on an utterly false assumption. The salt range is not, and never was, called the Pind. Pind is a common word in the Upper Panjáb, signifying simply “a village,” and recurs a hundred times over in that locality—as Pind Bhattiyán, Pind Malik Aulyá, Pindí Ghaib, Ráwal Pindi, etc., etc.— and so, Pind Dádan Khán merely means the “village of Dádan Khán,” and one, moreover, of modern erection. The word “Pind,” indeed, has only lately been introduced into the Panjáb—long even after the name of the celebrated Grecian mountain was itself converted into the modern Agrapha.
The whole of this arrogant and dogmatical work is replete with similar absurdities; and yet the only notices it has received from our Reviewers are of a laudatory character. It is to be feared that no English publication of late years will go so far as this to damage our literary reputation in the eyes of continental scholars; and it is therefore to be regretted that it has not yet received the castigation due to its ignorance and presumption.*