KOPHENE, according to General Cunningham, is Kabul. This district is first mentioned by Ptolemy, who calls the people Kabolitm, and their capital Kabura, which was also named Ortospana. In some copies of ;Pliny the name is written Orthospanum, which with a slight alteration to Orthostana, as suggested by H. H. Wilson, is most probably the Sanskrit Urddhasthana, that is the high place, or lofty city. The same name is also given to the Kabul district by the Chinese pilgrim Hiweu Thsang. But General Cunning ham suspects that there has been some accidental interchange of names between the province and its capital.
The Kophen river is mentioned in the Vendidad under the name of Kubha, and the Kophenes river, named in Alexander's marches, is supposed to be the river of Kabul. Kophes is a name as old as the time of the Vedas, in which the Kubha river is mentioned as an affluent of the Indus ; and as it is not an Aryan word, General Cunning ham infers that the name must have been applied to the Kabul river before the Aryan occupation, or at least as early as B.C. 2500. In the classical
writers we find the Khoes, Kophes, and Khoaspcs rivers to the west of the Indus, and at the present day we have the Kunar, the Kurab, and the Gomal rivers to the west, and the Kunihar river to the east of the Indus, all of which are derived from the Scythian ku, water. Ku is the guttural form of the Assyrian hu in Euphrates and Eulmus, and of the Turki su and the Tibetan chu, all of which mean water or river. The district of Kophene must therefore have received its name from the river which flowed through it, like as Sind from the Sindhu or Indus, Margiana from the Margus, Aria from the Arius, Arachosia from the Arachotus, and others. It is not mentioned by Alexander's historians, although the river Kophes is noticed by all of them.--Cunninghanz's Ancient GeOg. of India, p. 39. See Afghanistan ; Bactria.