PACTYICE
PACTYICE (
Πακτϋική), a district of North-Western India, which, there is every reason to suppose, must have been nearly the same as the modern
Kashmir, but probably extended westward across the Indus.
It is mentioned by Herodotus with that amount of uncertainty which attaches to almost all that he relates of the far East. Thus in the catalogue of the produce of the different satrapies of the Persian empire, Pactyice is reckoned after Bactriana, and is connected with the Armenians, which gives it an extent too far to the W. (3.93). Again, in his account of the army of Xerxes, Herodotus mentions the Pactyes in connexion with the Sagartii, and places them under the command of a Persian (7.67). And in the subsequent description of the former people, he states that. their dress is the same as that of the Pactyes (7.85). Evidently, therefore, he here imagines the country and the people to have occupied a district to the N. and NE. of Persia. Again, Herodotus states (3.102) that the bravest of the Indian tribes are those who are in the immediate neighbourhood of the city of Caspatyrus and Pactyice; and he connects the same two places together where he states (4.100.44) that the celebrated voyage of Scylax of Caryanda, which was promoted by Dareius, the son of Hystaspes, commenced from the same localities. Now we know that Hecataeus (ap.
Steph. B. sub voce placed Caspatyrus in the country of the Gandarii (
Fragm. p. 94, ed. Klausen): hence the strong inference that Pactyice was part of Gandarica, if not, as Larcher has supposed, actually the same.
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