> If there was a secondary Indo-Aryan formative region in southern
Afghanistan, the entry of most Indo-Aryan groups into what is now
Pakistan and India was more likely via the Gumal Pass, some 280 km
south of Kabul and the Khyber Pass.
>
> Piotr
I misspelled Afghanistan. I looked and looked, 'cause it looked funny,
but not funny enough to look it up, or even to look hard at the NatGeo
Atlas map I was open to.
The same atlas shows the city of Gowmal Kalay at about 280 km south of
Kabul. It seems to be a hill town above a tributary of the Indus.
Gumal = Gowmal?
What reading I have done suggests the Indic staging area was in the
BMAC (Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex), a.k.a. the Oxus
culture, late bronze age, 2200-1700 BCE (so EIEC). This looks to be
the back end of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
There has been mention of the Helmand as the protoype of the
Sarasvati. This river really does look like it's landlocked. There is
a salt pan on my atlas named "Hamun-e-Puzak" that looks like the
river's end; a lake named "Hamun-e-Saberi" is just beyond, but the
blue line of the Helmand does not seem to extend to it. I would guess
'Hamun' means 'lake' or the such.
I also note what looks like a desert named 'Rigestan'. This looks a
lot like a cognate of 'Rajasthan', both meaning 'stan of the king'.
What does the suffix '-stan' mean? Land? Nation?