Mississippi River | River Thames | Amazon River | Columbia River | Hudson River | Colorado River | Potomac River | river | Ohio River | Missouri River | Delaware River | Murray River | River Tyne | Madeira River | Volga River | River Nene | River Clyde | River Trent | River Severn | Amur River | River Wear | Allegheny River | Red River | Dnieper River | Yarra River | Paraná River | River Tees | Fraser River | Yangtze River | Tocantins River |
The place the arrow landed is variously identified as 'Mount Khvanvant' in the Avesta (likewise an unknown location); a river in Balkh (Tabari, al-Atir); east of Balkh (Talebi); Bactria/Tokharistan (Maqdesi, Gardizi); the banks of the Oxus River (Balami) or Merv (Mojmal).
"Balas" is derived from Balascia, the ancient name for Badakhshan, a region in central Asia situated in the upper valley of the Kokcha River, one of the principal tributaries of the Oxus River.
Two years later, a Turkmen traveller arrived in Astrakhan and announced to local authorities that the Oxus River, formerly flowing to the Caspian Sea, had been diverted by the Khivans to the Aral Sea in order to extract golden sand from the river waters.
The Oxus river, and Arnold's poem, provide a literary background for the 1930s children's book The Far-Distant Oxus.