There are, however, abundant evidences of grass-covered ruins, both near Maruchak and at the junction of the Chaharshamba River with the Murghab some 10 miles above Maruchak. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out the strategic value of this point, as the Chaharshamba route leads nearly straight into the Oxus plains and to Balkh. At the point of the junction of the two rivers the valley of the Murghab hardly affords room enough for a town of such importance as we are led to believe Merv-el-Rud to have been, even after making all due allowance for Oriental exaggeration. It is only about Maruchak that the valley widens out sufficiently to admit of a large town. It seems probable, therefore, that the site of Maruchak must be near the site of Merv-el-Rud, although it does not actually command the entrance to the Chaharshamba valley and the road to Afghan Turkistan.
On this road, some 30 miles from the junction of the rivers, there is to be seen on the slopes which flank the southern hills, the jagged tooth-edged remains of a very old town (long deserted) which goes by the name of Kila Wali. It is here, or close by, that the Tochari planted their capital Talikan, at one time the seat of government of a vast area of the Oxus basin. There is, however, another Talikan[7] in Badakshan to the east of Balkh, and there are symptoms that some confusion existed between the two in the minds of our mediæval geographers. Ibn Haukel writes of Talikan as possessing more wholesome air than Merv-el-Rud, and he refers to the river running between the two. This is evidently in reference to the capital of Tocharistan at Kila Wali. Again when he writes of Talikan as the largest city in Tocharistan, "situated on a plain, near mountains," he is correct enough as applied to Kila Wali, but this has nothing to do with Andarab and Badakshan with which we find it directly associated in the context.
On the other hand the Talikan in Badakshan was one of a group of important cities whose connection with India lay through Andarab and the northern passes of the Hindu Kush. Between Maruchak and Panjdeh, along the banks of the Murghab, are ruins innumerable, the sites of other towns which it is impossible to identify with precision. There can be little doubt, however, that the remains of the bridge which once spanned the river at a point between Maruchak and Panjdeh marked the site of Dizek (or Derak, according to Idrisi), which we know to have been built on both sides of the river, and that Khuzan existed near where Aktapa now is (_i.e._ near Panjdeh). The name Dizek is still to be recognized, but it is applied to a curious sequence of ancient Buddhist caves which have been carved out of the cliffs at Panjdeh, and not to any site on the river banks.