Show MAY BE USEFUL YET Cleaning of Afghan Names for tic Student of Asiatic Locations While Central Asian affairs occupy a good deal of public attention there will be many queer names used in the telegrams tele-grams and letters from Turkestan and Afghanistan Certain prefixes and affixes in the names of towns and rivers have definite meanings more or less descriptive of the places to which they are applied Ab for instance means water as in Punjab that is the five waters referring re-ferring to the five great rivers that traverse the northwestern province ol Hindostan or as in Ilurriab the water of the Huris or as in Surkhab the red water and so on Koh is a mountain as in Safeydkoh the white mountain KohiBaha the mountains of Bahba or Baber or as in Hindoo Koosh the Hindostanee mountain moun-tain Abad as a terminal always denotes de-notes a city as Allahabad the city of Allah Ahmedabad the city of Ahmed I Aurungabad the city of Aurungzbee and so forth Safeyd is white siah black surkh red nil blue etc Then there are the numerals such as panj or punj five char or chahar four etc all of which are descriptive of certain characteristics of the places to the names of which they are attached Panjdeh is an example for as dell means village aud panj five as already explained the names of the place signifies a collection of five Turcoman villages Wherever Kotul occurs it signifies simply a mountain spur For instance the first victory of General Roberts won in Afghanistan was at the Paiwar Kotul the pass of the Paiwar 9000 feet high I or |