Dardanians

“ The events since 1872 need only to be indicated here in rough outline, and, unfortunately, confirm my worst anticipations as to the destruction of the independence of the Dardu tribes, of their legendary lore, and, above all, of the purity of their languages, including the prehistoric Khajuná or “Burishki” spoken in Hunza-Nagyr, and a part of Yasin. What are the admitted encroachments of our Ally, the Maharaja of Kashmir, have been utilized in our supposed interests, and we have stepped in to profit, as we foolishly think, by his sins, whilst he is tricked out of their reward. ”

“ There is no modern race called Dards, and no country so named by its inhabitants, but the inhabitants of the right bank of the Indus, from the Kandia river to Batera, apply it to the dwellers on the left bank. In the scientific use of the appellation, Dardistan comprises the whole of Chitral, Yasin, Panyal, the Gilgit valley, Hunza and Nagar, the Astor valley, the Indus valley from Bunji to Batera, the Kohistan-Malazai, i.e. ”

“ The Dardis are divided into four castes or tribes (Biddulph) ; that of the Chins, forming the majority of the people, is distinguished by its short stature and its dark complexion, and recalls the Hindus of the north-west provinces (Ujfalvy) ; while another tribe, called Yeshkhun, speaks a language which, according to Biddulph, has affinities with the Turkish languages, and, according to Leitner, is a [Pg 415] non-Aryan agglutinative language presenting analogies with Dravidian dialects. The Yeshkhuns inhabit Dardistan. ”

“ Many leaders of thought in England, whose convictions should certainly carry weight, are of the opinion that the expedition to the Dardanelles was in itself unsound, and should never have been undertaken. Now the views of well-known practical common-sense men should not be lightly thrust aside, but perhaps as one who has travelled and read much, and knows the East and the questions bound up with it fairly well, I hope I may not appear too presumptuous if I venture to disagree with those who condemn the Dardanelles policy. ”

“ Seduction and adultery are punished with death in Chilâs and the neighbouring independent Districts. Morality is, perhaps, not quite so stern at Gilgit, whilst in Yasin, Hunza, and even in Nagyr before 1886, great laxity is said to prevail.
[67] Since writing the above I have discovered that the people of Kandiá—an unsuspected race and country lying between Swat and the Indus—are Dards and speak a Dialect of Shiná, of which specimens are given elsewhere in the “Races of the Hindukush.” (See Appendix IV.) The tribe living on the left bank of the Kandiá river is called by its neighbours “Dard.” ”

“ The ground produces much white maize (from which bread is made) , wheat, barley, grapes growing to a gigantic size, nuts, etc. There is excellent water, but it is very cold. The people are Sunnis, and speak Shiná (the dialect of Chilás) . [The Shins appear to have been a Hindu tribe expelled from Kashmir territory and converted to a sort of Muhammadanism, both Shiah and Sunni. They are the highest caste in Dardistan; but, instead of the Brahminical veneration for the cow, they abhor everything connected with it—its flesh and milk—and only touch its calf at the end of a prong.] ”

“ If the Dards—the races living between the Hindu-Kush and Kaghán—have preserved many Aryan customs and traditions, it is partly because they have lived in almost perfect seclusion from other Muhammadans. In Chilâs, where the Sunni form of that faith prevails, there is little to relieve the austerity of that creed. The rest of the Muhammadan Dards are Shiahs, and that belief is more elastic and seems to be more suited to a quick-witted race, than the orthodox form of Islam. Sunniism, however, is [50] advancing in Dardistan and will, no doubt, sweep away many of the existing traditions. ”

“ It must, however, not be imagined that the sexes are secluded from each other in Dardistan. Young people have continual opportunities of meeting each other in the fields at their work or at festive gatherings. Love declarations often take place on these occasions, but if any evil intention is perceived the seducer of a girl is punished by this savage, but virtuous, race with death. The Dards know and speak of the existence of “pure love,” “pâk âshiqi.” Their love songs show sufficiently that they are capable of a deeper, than mere sexual, feeling. ”

“ Why should “the only other exit from Gilgit by way of the Indus Valley be through territories held by tribes hostile to the British”? Have the Gilgit doings already alienated the poor, but puritanical Chilásis, tributaries of Kashmîr, who adjoin our settled British district of Kaghan? Are we to dread the Republic of Muhammadan learning, Kandiá, that has not a single fort; pastoral Dareyl; the Koli-Palus traders; agricultural Tangir, and other little Republics—one only of eleven houses? ”

“ Mention the word “Blighty” or “Tickler's plum-and-apple,” “Kangaroo Beach” or “Jhill-o! Johnnie!” or “Up yer go—an' the best o' luck!” to any man of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and in each case you will have touched upon a vividly imprinted impresssion of the Dardanelles.
There was adventure wild and queer enough in the Dardanelles campaign to fill a volume of Turkish Nights' Entertainments, but the people at home know nothing of it.
This is the very type of adventure and incident which would have aroused a war-sickened people ”

“ In Dardistan bolts, etc., show the prevailing insecurity. I have seen houses which had a courtyard, round which the rooms were built, but generally all buildings in [58] Dardistan are of the meanest description—the mosque of Gilgit, in which I slept one night whilst the Sepoys were burying two or three yards away from me, those who were killed by the so-called rebels, being almost as miserable a construction as the rest. The inner part of the house is generally divided from the outer by a beam which goes right across. ”

“ But the ethnography of “Dardistan,” or the Gilgit agency (for the two are, roughly speaking, synonymous) , requires further investigation, and it would be premature to attempt to frame anything like an ethnographical history of these regions until the neighbouring provinces of Tangir and Darel have been more fully examined. The wazarat of Gilgit contains a population (1901) of 60,885, all Mahommedans, mostly of the Shiah sect, but not fanatical. The dominant race is that of the Shins, whose language is universally spoken. ”

“ How the Dravidian people could influence the speakers of the Aryan speeches in dim past, should be a subject of special research. Many ethnological problems, relating to the Dravidians, have not yet been solved. The ethnologists of our time agree in the main, that the Dravidians have been autochthonous in India; even though this proposition is not free from doubts and difficulties, the situation of the Dravidians in India as neighbours of the Aryans, since the earliest time of Aryan activities, cannot be denied. ”

“ The proper study of mankind is Oneself. And what was I doing there, anyway?
Yes, it was extraordinary—not a doubt of it. Doctors and nurses said they never saw anything like it in the world. Those soldiers back from the Dardanelles, many of them sorely wounded, were laughing and joking all day, chatting cheerfully about their terrible experiences, and itching to get back again and "do for the dirty Turks"! ”

“ You may imagine that, even as regards the Druses, there must be something higher than their “Lord of the Universe;” but, such as he is, it is with him that this covenant is made. Reverting to his living colleague, the Indian “Lord,” it may be stated that there are men scattered throughout India of whose influence we have only the faintest conception. I pointed out in 1866 that if anyone wanted to follow successfully my footsteps is Dardistan, he would have to get recommendations from His Highness Aga Khan of Bombay, and I am glad to say that Col. ”

“ The well-known Sayad residing at Bombay, Agha Khan, has adherents even in Dardistan, and any command that may reach them from him [generally a demand for money] is obeyed implicitly. Indeed, throughout India and Central Asia there are men, some of whom lead an apparently obscure life, whose importance for good or evil should not be underrated by the authorities. [See my “Hunza and Nagyr Handbook, 1893.”]
What we know about the religion of the Siah-Posh [53] Kafirs [whom I include in the term “Dards”] is very little. ”

“ When I sent a man round with a drum inviting all the Dards that were to be found at Gilgit to a festival, a large number of men appeared, much to the surprise of the invading Dogras, who thought that they had all run to the hills. A few sheep were roasted for their benefit ”

“ Most Labches who come to Darjeeling now-a-days are of the superior tribe of the two. Some people of the inferior tribe sometimes come up to the city, but they are too timid to mingle with others, and unless the utmost care be taken they run back to their old home. But both of these tribes have the finest countenance in the Himālayas, and, sad to say, many of their women at Darjeeling are slaves of soldiers, who are so numerous as to include many of the women of the place in this infamous employment. ”

“ I have already told you that the forts at the Narrows are the real defence of the Dardanelles. We had already failed to capture them by a naval attack. If, however, we could reach the Kilid Bahr plateau by land, we could attack the forts from the rear—the side on which they are least capable of resistance. But, as you notice, nature has made this plateau very difficult of access. An invader from the south must first carry the Achi Baba ridge before he can reach it, and if he lands south of Suvla Point he must fight his way across the Sari Bair. ”

“ Again, it is not Islam that tells them of the regeneration of their country by fairies—that places these lovely beings on the top of the Himalayas and makes them visit, and ally themselves to, mankind. The fairies too are not all good, as the Yatsh are not all bad. They destroy the man who seeks to surprise their secrets, although, perhaps, they condone the offence by making him live for ever after in fairy-land. Indeed, the more we look into the national life of the Dards the less do we find it tinctured by Muhammadan distaste of compromise. ”

“ Torwál has 200 houses. They are not so rich as the people of Kandiá and Jalkôt.
From Torwál to Branihál, the frontier of Torwál, 12 to 13 kôs, a bad stony road, 600 houses and a Bazár in which there are 5 or 6 Hindu merchants. [The Hindu traders are not molested in Yaghistán (“the wild land” as Dardistán, the country between Kabul and Kashmir is often called) , because no one is afraid of them; whereas if a Sahib (English man) came, people would be afraid.] There are many wealthy people in Branihál, which may be considered to be the capital of Torwál. ”

“ Almost every third man I met had, at some time or other, been kidnapped and dragged off either to Chilás, Chitrál, Badakhshán or Bukhárá. The surveillance, however, which is exercised over prisoners, as they are being moved by goat-paths over mountains, cannot be a very effective one and, therefore, many of them escape. Some of the Kashmir Maharajah’s Sepoys, who had invaded Dardistan, had been captured and had escaped. They narrated many stories of the ferocity of these mountaineers ”

“ The Gilgitis, who are a little more settled than their neighbours to the West, North and South, and who possess the most refined Dardu dialect and traditions, were constantly exposed to marauding parties, and the late ruler of Yasin, Gouhar-Amán, who had conquered Gilgit, made it a practice to sell them into slavery on the pretext that they were Shiahs and infidels. Yasin was lately ruled by Mir Wali, the supposed murderer of Mr. Hayward, and is a dependency of Chitrál, a country which is ruled by Amán-ul-mulk. ”

“ As many tribes have lost their original speeches and speak one form or another of the Aryan speech, it is difficult to get to the origin of these words. It is not the place where I can discuss the ethnological problems but I can say on the strength of some known facts of Southern India, that the word Dravidian does not cover the whole ground, when we take even those tribes into consideration, who speak uniformly one Dravidian speech. ”

“ The people are of the same family and religion with those over the border, their foes, although perhaps less hated by them than their nominal compatriots the Kashmiris and Dográs. The Dards are an active and proud people, fond of independence, with features distinctly Caucasian.
Continuing our exploration of the upper benches of the amphitheatre, we turn to the right and skirt the upper Indus, which runs for several hundred miles from south-east to north-west close along the southern foot of the Karakoram, or rather upon a "hip" of the Roof of the World. ”

“ The Chilâsis were originally four tribes; viz.:
The Bagoté of Buner. The Kané of Takk. The Boté of the Chilâs fort. The Matshuké of the Matshukó fort.
The Boté and the Matshuké fought. The latter were defeated, and are said to have fled into Astor and Little Tibet territory.
A Foreigner is called “ósho.”
Fellow-countrymen are called “malêki.”
The stature of the Dards is generally slender and wiry and well suited to the life of a mountaineer. ”

“ DARDANUS, in Greek legend, son of Zeus and Electra, the mythical founder of Dardanus on the Hellespont and ancestor of the Dardans of the Troad and, through Aeneas, of the Romans. His original home was supposed to have been Arcadia, where he married Chryse, who brought him as dowry the Palladium or image of Pallas, presented to her by the goddess herself. ”