desperate brigands and man-stealers, and | men, though wearing arms as regularly as are the terror of the northern valleys. other men wear clothes, seldom or never The Shiná, again, or language of the venture from their own lands, unless south-western Dards, is evidently a dialect of Sanskrit kin.* disguised as priests or beggars. On the Peshawar plain, previous to the British occupation, men ploughed with rifle slung and sword girt; growing crops and grazing cattle were watched by armed pickets. All this is changed now within the red great part was dreary waste, is becoming rapidly covered with cultivation. But the plain alone is within our boundary, and the old characteristics prevail beyond it. Most, if not all, of the Dard tribes now profess Mahommedanism, but, like others of the rude converts round Pamir, they have not abandoned their love of the grape-juice, which abounds in these pur-line; and the Yusufzai plain, of which lieus of the Nysæan Mount. And Islam having but recently penetrated those regions, there is naturally a lack of those venerable shrines of ancient saints in which Mahommedan devotees rejoice. Hence, it is alleged, the Dardu Moslem, when they catch a promising saint, are apt to make a martyr of him, in order to have a holy shrine at hand, as an aid in "making their souls." In that unknown tract of the Indus valley to the south, the Dard comes in contact with tribes of Afghan race, or, at least, of tribes Afghanized by long contact and subjection, and these extend down to our own Afghan province of Peshawar. The name of Yaghistán, applied to the tract, exactly describes the malandrinesco character which the people have borne ever since the region was colonized by the turbulent Afghan. A large part of the country derives a more courteous name from the great Afghan clan of Yusufzai, who are its predominant occupants, and who also inhabit the northern half of our Peshawar plain. But the less complimentary name is thoroughly deserved. Their polity is, probably, the nearest approach to the realization of the French Commune, in its most modern sense, that exists on earth. Each petty tribe forms an independent commonwealth, and each such community is the rival, if not the foe, of every other. When undisturbed by a common external enemy, the several tribes are always opposed; feuds, estrangements, and affrays are of constant occurrence; the public roads and private property are alike insecure. The traveller invariably conceals and misrepresents the time and direction of his journey. Vendetta, unsurpassed by anything in Corsican story, is a law imbibed by children with the mother's milk; and the women are often the first to urge their men to deeds of blood. The * A work now being published by Dr. Leitner, of Lahore, may be expected to give information of high interest on Dardistan. Nothing seems clear as to the position of that city and Mount of Bacchus, which was visited by Alexander, except that it was somewhere in the angle between the Kábul river and the Indus. Of our Peshawar valley itself some parts have an aspect of savage sterility; but from the slight elevation on which the British camp stands, the impression, especially in spring, is very different. A vast sheet of luxuriant wheat is at your feet, broken by groves of fruit-trees rich in blossom; the clear bold outline of the mountains encircles you on all sides; snowy peaks, the outliers of Hindu Kúsh, rise to the north-west; to the south-west open the dark jaws of Khyber, breathing painful memories; far to the north-east you almost certainly behold Aornos, if you but knew which of those heights it crowned! Yonder cairn of tumbled stones on the plain was once a great Buddhist dagoba, rising in golden splendour to a height of 700 feet (so say the Chinese travellers), the work of the great Scythian conqueror Kanishka. The valley was studded with the cities and temples of an Indian people. But after the Mahommedan invasions began, and Mongol raids that followed them, year after year, the fertile and prosperous plain became desolate; man almost disappeared, and the rhinoceros haunted the marshy thickets of the valley. Then came the Afghan immigration. The marshy thickets exist no longer, and the very memory of the rhinoceros, which Sultan Baber hunted here little more than 350 years ago, has perished as utterly as the mammoth's on the banks of Dordogne; nor does the animal exist within a thousand miles of Peshawar. In the Yusufzai country, near our border, there has existed for many years the seat of a fanatical Mahommedan zealotry, founded originally some fifty years ago, and which has long derived recruits and remittances from the bigoted and malcontent in India. The troubles stirred by this nest of sedition and fanaticism led to the somewhat serious operations of 1863 known as the Sitána or Ambeyla Campaign. A name often mentioned in 66 connection with those troubles was that through their own cemeteries, prefacing of the Akhund of Swát. This personage, the operation merely by an apostrophe to Abdul Ghafúr, was originally a herdsman, their dead kith and kin, Look out! whose austerities and hermit life grad- tuck up your legs! the plough is comually won him an immense reputation for ing." * The men are dark and lean, havsanctity and miraculous power. His his- ing little resemblance to the typical tory is singularly like that of some of the Afghan, and it is probable that a strong ascetic saints in the Roman Calendar. mixture of aboriginal blood, as well as Though not a man of literary or theologi- seclusion, has tended to fashion their cal education, he became a potent author- peculiarities. ity in all religious questions, and issued Near Jalálábád - - a name still heard his rescripts to the surrounding regions. with pride by an Englishman, -the KáIt was commonly believed that he daily bul river is joined by a large tributary, entertained hundreds of visitors, cured descending from the lofty mountain counthem of all diseases, granted their diver- try to the north, and generally called in sity of desires, and fed them as his guests, our maps by the local names of Kúner or without the aid of visible means. Prob- Káma. It is the Choaspes, and perhaps ably the Akhund was by no means himself the active and indefatigable intriguer that the Anglo-Indian press conceived, but he and his name were used as tools by the Sitána gang. the Malamantus, of the ancients. As far as the first lofty chain of heights through which the river breaks, the country is inhabited by Afghanized tribes; after a rugged ascent the upper valley is reached, extending, it is said, in comparatively easy slope to the borders of Pamir, and forming the kingdom called Chitrál, or as often Káshkár. Klaproth, whose knowledge was large, but not the omniscience which he supposed, decided that the mention of a Kashkar in this quarter was a blunder of Elphinstone's; but he was rash and wrong.t Swát is the greatest of the Yúsufzai valleys. In old times, when yet an Indian country, it was known as Udyána, or "The Garden." Its river, Suvastú, appears by that name (Soastus) in the Greek writers, and the remains of old Indian cities and Buddhist temples still exist in the valley. It has never been entered by any European, nor is that easy for any stranger, even a Mahommedan. The valOur knowledge of this country is ley, 70 miles in length, is crowded with scanty. The people make an ignorant villages, hidden among groves of plane profession of Shiah Mahommedanism. and other stately trees; the cultivation Their language, from the vocabularies runs in an almost unbroken chain of ter- that have been published, is evidently of races beside the noisy and sparkling Sanskrit affinity. A telegram from Rusriver; and the mountains above are sia recently announced that the Mír of crowned with forests of the edible pine, Badakhshán had "concluded an offensive the Deodar cedar, and the wild olive. and defensive treaty with the Badshah of But this secluded paradise has its draw- Chitral." The chief of Káshkár does in backs. It is frightfully unhealthy; the fact give himself the high-sounding title filth and vermin of the dwellings are even of Badshah, but it is about as appropribeyond other Afghan wont; and feuds ate as that of the quondam Emperor Souare at such a pitch in the upper valley louque. The country is said to be fertile that hardly any intercourse takes place and well peopled; but at heights varying between village and village. Some from 6,000 to 12,000 feet, these are relaof the Swát customs are very peculiar. tive terms; and probably 80,000 souls Among others is that of a periodical re- would be a liberal guess-estimate at the distribution of lands by lot, after intervals population of his territory. The country varying from ten to thirty years. Another is said to produce some silk and shawlis that when two proprietors fall out, both wool, with abundance of fruit, including are expelled from the community (like fine grapes, from which wine is made, the "rogue elephants" of Ceylon) with and used freely. Man-selling is very rife the loss of all civil and domestic rights, until they can make it up again. The women have great freedom, and go out on visiting excursions 30 or 40 miles from home, in bevies of fifteen or twenty together, with no male escort. The Swátis also, strange in Mahommedans, are said, after a few years, to drive the plough * Captain_Raverty, in B. A. S. Journal, xxxi. p. 265. Un amas d'absurdités reçues à bras ouverts par les compilateurs, et entre lesquelles le double Kachghar occupe le premier rang. Le voyageur anglais, M. Elphinstone, ayant entendu parler de la ville de Kachet du pays du même nom... n'a pas su ghar.. combiner ces notions, que de supposer deux Kachghar. Il est cependant bien clair," &c.- Mémoires relatifs à' Asie, ii. 293. in Chitrál. The usual victims are the | utary to the Emperor of China." This is neighbouring Kafir tribes; but, failing a very curious circumstance, and, comthem, the King is said to seize on slight bined with other information collected by pretence and sell his own subjects. Ba- our eminent traveller, Mr. Shaw, identidakhshán is the usual mart. The Chief fies Chitrál with that Bolor of the modern of Upper Káshkar, which recently formed Chinese Tables which has been rendered, a separate State, is alleged to have sent by a combination of accidents, such a an annual tribute of slaves to the Prince Will-o'-the-Wisp in geography. of Badakhshán.* first collected particulars_regarding the people, untrodden by any European foot. The best chance that has ever occurred of exploring this country presented itself during the British occupation of Kábul, and was, in a melancholy manner, despised and neglected. The story is thus told by Captain Raverty, in the words of an officer who witnessed the circumstances : — The people of Káshkár are said to be The road by Chitrál to Wakhan and very handsome, like their immediate Pamir (and so to Yarkand or Kashgar) is neighbours to the westward, the Kafirs or said to present less natural difficulty than Pagans; indeed, they are in all probabilany other from India; but this is not say-ity merely a converted section of the ing a great deal. The usual route leads same race. from Peshawar to Dír, in the north-west The land of the independent Kafirs — part of the Yusufzai hill-country, through a land of lofty mountains, dizzy paths, the Bajaur highlands, between the Kúner and narrow bridges swinging over roaring and the Panjkora rivers, that is to say the torrents, of narrow, terraced valleys, of tract between the Choaspes and the Gu-umbrageous forest trees, of wine and milk raus, which Alexander traversed, and in and honey, remains, as when Elphinstone which he captured the city Arigaum. Dír is mentioned by Marco Polo as on the route taken by Mongol banditti in an inroad on Kashmir and the Panjáb, from the side of Badakhshán. From Dír the road northward crosses the mountains which form the western wall of the Chitrál Valley, by a pass having a probable height of 12,000 or 13,000 feet. In winter this pass is impracticable on account of the snow, and in summer it is beset by In the end of 1839... when the Shah Kafir robbers, who keep up an incessant (Shújáh) and Sir W. Macnaghten had gone fire upon travellers. Many are killed in down to Jelalabad for winter quarters, a deputhe pass, and the graves of those who tation of the Siahposh Kafirs came in from have fallen are marked by cairns and Nurgil to pay their respects, and, as it ap flags, and designated, "The tombs of the peared, to welcome us as their relatives. martyrs." Hundreds of these dismal recollect right there were some thirty or forty memorials line the road and damp the lines with bagpipes playing. An Afghan Peon, of them, and they made their entry into our traveller's spirits on the way between Dír sitting outside Edward Conolly's tent, on seeand Chitrál. Besides the pass at the heading these savages rushed into his master's of the Chitral Valley, leading to Pamir, presence, exclaiming, "Here they are, Sir! there are more direct but more difficult They are all come! Here are all your relapasses from Chitrál direct across the Hin- tions!" Conolly, amazed, looked up from his du Kúsh to Badakhshán. On that called writing, and asked what on earth he meant; Nuksán, glaciers and large beds of snow when the Peon, with a very innocent face, are passed. In descending towards Chi-pointed out the skin-clad men of the mountrál the traveller is girt with a leatherntains, saying, "There! don't you see them? kilt, and slides down the snow slope. Ponies have their feet tied together and are rolled down. "By these processes," says the native authority, "both men and beasts generally reach the base of the pass safely." If I Your relatives the Kafirs?".. The Kafirs themselves certainly claimed relationship; but I fear their reception by poor Sir William was not such as pleased them; and they returned to the hills regarding us as a set of purseproud people, ashamed to own our country cousins. During the remainder of our sojourn The learned but errant Wilford, in the in Afghanistan nothing more was seen or latter part of last century, sent one Mo- heard of this singular race. . . and I cannot ghul Beg, a forerunner of Major Mont- but regard it as most unfortunate that when gomerie's Pundits," to explore these so favourable an opportunity presented itself regions, and was informed by him that the country they inhabit, they should have of becoming acquainted with these tribes, and Chitrál was then "in great measure trib-been allowed to depart unconciliated, and no advantage have been taken of their visit.* 66 The same charge of selling his subjects was formerly alleged against the Mír of Badakhshan. See Timkowski's "Travels," i. 423. * "Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal," vol. xxviii. P. 345. The narrator himself does not say what of wine (which they boil, says Sultan manner of men our supposed cousins Baber, a connoisseur in that matter), they were, except that they were "skin-clad." always sit on chairs or stools, and find it But unless they were fair, we scarcely as difficult as we do to adopt the cramped see how the story of their kinship to us postures usual among Asiatics; they use should have arisen. Burnes, Atkinson, slips of pine for candles; they employ Wood, and Masson, all speak of their with dexterity leaping poles for crossing blue eyes, nearly all of their brown hair. the smaller streams; the dead are placed Bellew describes Faramorz Khan, an in coffins, and, after much waking, are officer of Kafir birth in Afghan service, carried to some lofty spot, and there deas of fair, almost florid complexion, and posited, but not buried. Their winter is light brown hair, hardly to be distin- severe, and arable land scanty; hence guished from an Englishman. Elphin- they depend much on dairy produce. stone, who saw so accurately through Their houses are lofty, at least on the a telescope what others have missed downward side of the hill, and much emwith the objects under their eyes,* says bellished with wood-carving. that the Kafirs are remarkable for the Surrounded by people professing Mafairness and beauty of their complexions. hommedanism they are natural objects of All these indications point to European kidnapping forays, and these they retort complexion at least, but we are called to on their neighbours by sallies from their abandon this as delusion by Dr. Trumpp, mountain fastnesses to plunder and kill. a learned German missionary, who made Wood, in 1838, found the valley of the acquaintance with three Kafirs at Peshá- Upper Kokcha in Badakhshan deserted on war. He declares them to have been in account of the Kafir incursions. Raverty all respects like natives of the Upper mentions a savage invasion of Kafiristan, Provinces of India, of swarthy colour, made twenty years ago from the southwith dark hair and dark eyes; only with east side by the chief of Bajaur, in which a ruddiness due to wine. Further, Dr. villages were sacked and burned, and the Trumpp asserts that the Kafir words people carried off and sold. Faiz Bakhsh given by Burnes "are not Kafir words at speaks of a like invasion from the north all, but belong to one of the numerous in 1870 by the reigning Mír of Badakhdialects which are spoken in the Kohistan shán, which penetrated through the Doof Kábul." But, in fact, all the scanty zakh Darah, or Hell-glen, to Kalar, which vocabularies professing to represent the he calls "the capital of Kafiristan," languages of the Kafirs, Kohistánis, Pa- bringing back a large number of captives shais, and others pre-Afghan tribes of that whom he saw at Fyzabad. Whatever difmountain country, show a good deal in ficulty from within the Kafir country common with a good deal of divergence. exists as to its exploration is due appaAfter all, Kafir is as vague a term as lib-rently to this atrocious treatment at the eral theologian; and even among the hands of their Mahommedan neighbours. Kafirs of that ilk the Kafirs of Kafiri- It is pretty certain that the Afghans stan, whose typical fairness we cannot doubt there are eighteen tribes, and, may be, varieties of dialect. Hear again the accurate Elphinstone:- "There are several languages [dialects?] among the Kafirs, but they have all many words in common, and all have a near connection with the Shanskrit. They have all one peculiarity, which is, that they count by scores instead of hundreds, and that their thousand (which they call by the Persian or Pushtoo name) consists of 400, or 20 score." The reckoning by scores instead of hundreds appears in the grammar of a Kafir dialect collected by Dr. Trumpp. Among the notable customs of the people, besides their large and constant use The Afghans believed that he had a telescope with which he could see what passed on the other side of a mountain. As a parable it was true. were not wrong in calling them our cousins, though more than "once removed.” Perhaps when we come really to know them we shall find in them the nearest existing type of what the Aryan Hindu was when he first entered that sacred land of the Haptu Hendu, or Seven Rivers, from which he has acquired a name, and when blue-eyed Brahmans drove their white oxen a-field in the forests of Gandhara. The Kamoz tribe of Kafirs are fairly supposed to be the surviving representatives of the Kambojas of primeval Indian literature, a name with which scholars have connected that of Cambyses, and from which was borrowed, by a practice frequent among Buddhist colonists or converts, the name of that region in the far East in whose forest depths such 'weird and stupendous masses of architec Passing westward from Kafiristan we find the valleys of Tagao, Nijrao, and Panjshir, scarcely better known, and largely inhabited by a people-the Pashais who appear to be of kindred race to the Kafirs. It is much to be desired that the improvement of our maps of northern Afghanistan should be seriously taken in hand by our official Indian geographers. It is not merely north of Hindu Kúsh, where our rulers have been discussing the limits of Afghan dominion, that we need additional light; it is even more seriously wanted on the south of the mountains. Our maps agree in presenting blanks greatly to be lamented, and they disagree in other respects to a startling extent; especially in that important field that intervenes between Kábul and the passes of the Hindu Kúsh. The most diligent surveyor during our occupation of Kábul was the gallant Sturt, of the Bengal Engineers, the son-in-law of Sir Robert and Lady Sale, and whose name is worthy to be remembered with their own. It seems proba- | ble that his work perished with him in the fatal passes, for no trace of it has been found by recent search, either at Calcutta or at Westminster; and the only professed record of all his precious labours that is known to survive is a meagre map in a very poor book, stated therein to have been "chiefly derived" from a map by Sturt, who was the author's companion on a journey into the Oxus valley. * of his leader (1747), hastened to snatch the government of his native province. This he shortly afterwards converted into kingly authority, assuming the style of Dur-i-Dúrán "The Pearl of the Age" - and bestowing that of Duráni upon his tribe, the Abdalis. During the twentysix restless years that he survived he carried his victorious expeditions far and wide. Westward they extended nearly to the shore of the Caspian; eastward he repeatedly entered Delhi as a conqueror ; and at his death he bequeathed to his son Timour an empire which embraced, not only Afghanistan to its utmost limits, but Sind, the Panjáb, Kashmir, and the territory north of Hindu Kúsh to the Oxus. This, we apprehend, is the original foundation of the Afghan claim to the provinces north of the mountains. Badakhshán also was overrun by the arms of Ahmed Shah about the year 1765. The pretext of that invasion was to obtain possession of a certain holy relic,the Shirt of the Prophet. It was carried off in triumph, and sent by Ahmed Shah to Kandahar. We know not if it be there still, but if so Kandahar may make the unique boast of possessing the Shirt of Mahommed and the Begging-pot of Sakya Muni.* It is needless to enter into the barbarous dissensions among the grandsons of Ahmed Shah, which brought to the ground the short-lived Duráni empire, and ended (1818-1826) in the division of all Afghanistan, except Herat, among the many brothers of the ambitious and able Fatteh Khan Barakzai, who had been the Vazir of one of the rivals, and whom his master, Mahmúd Shah, with odious cruelty, treachery, and ingratitude, had first We can dwell no longer on the tracts blinded and then murdered. Dost Masouth of Hindu Kúsh, but before passing hommed was one of those Barakzai brothbeyond it to the ground dealt with in ers, and to him Kabul fell. We need Lord Granville's late correspondence with not dwell upon the history of our dealPrince Gortchakoff, it may be well to re-ings with him, our re-establishment of call the chief facts regarding the dominion of the Afghans north of the Indian Caucasus. The Russian Minister speaks of Dost Mahommed as the founder of the Afghan State; but this is not accurate. The modern Afghan State was formed from a fragment of the Empire of Nadir Shah, that last specimen of the typical Asiatic conqueror on a great scale. Among the many Afghans in his army was a young soldier of distinction, Ahmed Khan Abdali, who, on the assassination Burslem's "Peep into Turkestan," 1846. the Duranis in the person of Shah_Shújáh, and the dark days of 1841. Those of us who had then come to man's estate, or near it, cannot forget; the later generation, it is to be hoped, read the tragic story in Sir John Kaye's book, once justly characterized in striking words by Lord Strangford in the pages of this Review.† During their fratricide wars the Duránis lost all their external conquests, and See Sir H. Rawlinson's remark in the "Jour. Roy. As. Soc." vol. xi. p. 127. "A Work as awful, as simply artistic, and as clear and lofty in its moral as an Eschylean trilogy." |