Hunza

“ I do not, for instance, palliate the old Hunza practice of lending one’s wife to a guest, or of kidnapping good-looking strangers in order to improve the race, though the latter course may be preferred by a physiologist to a careless marriage, but I do find a reproach on European or Indian morality in the fact that not a single Hunza woman showed herself to the British or Kashmîri invaders, although the men, once conquered, freely joined them in sport and drinking bouts. ”

“ These are the strange sect of the Muláis about whom more in my “Handbook of Hunza, Nagyr and a part of Yasín.”
[48] This is said to be no longer the case, except in those Dard republics, where foreigners have not yet interfered. In monarchical Yasin, and, above all, in Hunza, sexual laxity has ever been great. Where Sunni rulers have substituted dancing-boys for the dancing of men (formerly both men and women danced together) , a worse evil has been introduced. A most sacred relationship is the one created by the foster-mother. ”

“ The Hunza people are under Ghazan Khan, the son of Ghazanfar, [59] and seem to delight in plundering their Kirghiz neighbours, although all travellers through that inhospitable region, with the exception of Badakhshan merchants, are impartially attacked by these robbers, whose depredations have caused the nearest pass from Central Asia to India to be almost entirely deserted (1866) . At Gilgit I saw the young Raja of Nagyr, with a servant, also a Nagyri. ”

“ The Tibet game, however, does not reach the perfection of the Nagyr game, although it seems to be superior to that of Manipur. Nor is Polo the only game in Hunza-Nagyr. “Shooting whilst galloping” at a gourd filled with ashes over a wooden scaffold rivals the wonderful performances of “archery on horseback,” in which the people of Hunza and Nagyr (not “Nagar,” or the common Hindi word for “town,” as the telegram has it) are so proficient. Nor are European accompaniments wanting to these Central Asian games ”

“ This is the plausible Gilgit story, which will, perhaps, be adopted in Hunza when it becomes truly Muhammadan. In the meanwhile, my endeavour in 1866 to find traces of Alexander the Great’s invasion in Dardistan, has led to the adoption of the myth of descent from that Conqueror by the Chinese Governor or the ancient hereditary “Thàm” of Hunza, who really is “ayeshó,” or “heaven-born,” owing to the miraculous conception of a female ancestor. “Mogholot” is the direct ancestor of the kindred Nagyr line, “Girkis,” his twin-brother and deadly foe, being the ancestor of the Hunza dynasty. ”

“ They carry on goldwashing which is constantly interrupted by kidnapping parties from [36] the opposite Hunza. The language of Nagyr and Hunza is the Non-Aryan Khajuná and no affinity between that language and any other has yet been traced. The Nagyris are mostly Shiahs. They are short and stout and fairer than the people of Hunza [the Kunjûtis] who are described [43] as “tall skeletons” and who are desperate robbers. The Nagyris understand Tibetan, Persian and Hindustani. Badakhshan merchants were the only ones who could travel with perfect safety through Yassen, Chitral and Hunza. ”

“ Pakhtu and Shuthun, a dialect of Shiná, by the Gabriáli. The people of Hunza are dreaded robbers and kidnappers; they, together with the people of Nagyr, speak a language, Khajuná, which philologists have not yet been able to classify, but which I believe to be a remnant of a pre-historic language. They are great wine-drinkers and most licentious. They are nominally Muláis, a heresy within the Shiah schism from the orthodox Sunni Muhammadan faith, but they really only worship their Chief or Raja, commonly called “Thàm.” The present ruler’s name is Mohammad Khan. ”

“ Morals in Hunza are not of the strictest even now, so that few questions were asked, and the good people generally contented themselves with beating their drums, dancing, and the usual festivities proper on the occasion of the birth of the Prince Chiliss Khan. ”

“ Gabriál has only 40 houses, but the country of Gabriál generally is studded with habitations. The famous Mullah Habîbulla, a relative of Raja Khushwaqtia, is a most influential man among Kohistanis. His tribe is Mullakheyl, and all the Gujars of Kandiá are obedient to him. The Mullakheyl are Shîns, but Yashkuns also live there. Yashkuns are the peasantry of Dardistan, including Hunza, and supposed to be aborigines, though some derive the Yashkuns of Hunza from the white Yuechi, or Huns, and others give them a Western origin. They have always been Sunnis. (The Dareylis were formerly Shiahs.) ”

“ There will be an evil day of reckoning when the “meddling and muddling,” which has created the Russian Frankenstein, will be followed by the exasperation of princes and people, within and beyond our legitimate frontier. To revert to Hunza and Nagyr, Mr. F. Drew, an Assistant Master of Eton College, who was in the service of the Maharaja of Kashmir, wrote in 1877 in his “Northern Barrier of India”—which, alas! our practical annexation of Kashmir, and our interference with the Hindukush tribes are breaking down—as follows: “Hunza and Nagyr are two small independent rajaships. ”

“ Farther north, where Himalayas and Hindu Kush meet, terrace agriculture is combined with irrigation in the high Gilgit valleys, and farther still along that mere gash running down from the Pamir dome, called the Hunza Valley. Here live the once lawless robber tribes of the Hunzas and Nagaris, whose conquest cost the British a dangerous and expensive campaign in 1892, but whose extensive terraces of irrigated fields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country an appearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarous character of its inhabitants.1274
In Tibet and China. ”

“ Abdulla returned to Astor, whilst Mulk Aman summoned the Darêl and Tangîr tribes, saying that unless they fought now they would lose their country. He also sent a messenger to Ghazanfar, Raja of Hunza and one to Shah Murad, Wazir of Nagyr (?) telling them to forget their enmity with him in the advance of a [92] common foe to their country and religion (although the people of Hunza and Nagyr are Shiahs, necessity made Mulk Aman, a Sunni, call them Mussulmans) and asking them to meet him with their young men at Gilgit. ”

“ Even the odious signification that attaches to the term “Assassin” has been a calumny against those misguided Ismailians who sought to rid the world of tyrants [4] who had ordered the general massacre of the sect or who sacrificed one man in order to save a whole people.
In 1866 I discovered the languages and races of “Dardistan” and gave that name to the countries between Kashmir and Kabul, including Hunza in them. In 1886 I was again on a special mission regarding the language of Hunza-Nagyr and a part of Yasin. ”

“ About 50 years ago the Takk men were stirred into so-called rebellion by Kashmir agents in order to justify annexation. It is to be hoped that history will not repeat itself, or that, at any rate, the next 50 years will see the Indus tribes as independent and peaceful as they have been since 1856, especially in Chilás (before 1892) , and as mysterious as Hunza ought to have remained till our unnecessary attack on that country caused practically unknown Russia to be looked upon as the Saviour of Nations “rightly struggling to be free” (see Baron Vrevsky’s reply to the Hunza deputation) . ”

“ Indeed, it is China alone that has a grievance—against Russia for the occupation of the Alichur Pamir—against Afghanistan for expelling her troops from Somatash (of subsequent Yanoff fame) —and against England for encroaching on her ancient feudatory of Hunza, whose services in suppressing the Khoja rebellion in 1847 are commemorated in a tablet on one of the gates of Yarkand.
H. H. Mihtar Nizam-ul-Mulk and his late Yasin Council. ”

“ It is not impossible that the tribes may again combine in 1892 as they did in 1866 to turn out the Kashmîr troops from Gilgit. The want of wisdom shown in forcing on the construction of a road from Chalt to Aliabad, in the centre of Hunza, as announced in to-day’s Times, must bring on, if not a confederation of the tribes against us, at any rate their awakened distrust. ”

“ Left as a huge happy hunting-ground for sportsmen, or as pasturage for nomads from whatever quarter, the Pamirs form the most perfect “neutral zone” conceivable. That the wanderings of these nomads should be accompanied by territorial or political claims, whether by Russia, China, Affghanistan, Kashmir, or ourselves, is the height of absurdity. As for Hunza-Nagyr, the sooner they are left to themselves the better for us, who are not bound to help Kashmîr in encroaching on them. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Colonel Biddulph adds: “They are settled agricultural communities, proud of the independence they have always maintained for fourteen centuries, hemmed in by lofty mountains, and living under rulers who boast of long, unbroken descent from princes of native blood.” He also bears testimony to the fact that “the Nagyr people were never concerned in these raids, and slavery does not exist among them.” At the same time Dr. Leitner fully admitted that the Hunza people were not a model race, since they used to be desperate raiders and kidnappers, and very immoral and impious. ”

“ The wealthier gives the larger present; the bigger is considered the superior in a general sort of way, and so two horses, two dogs, and a handful of gold dust are yearly sent by Hunza to Kashmîr or to Yarkand as a cloak for much more substantial exactions in return. Nagyr sends a basket of apricots instead of the horses and dogs. In 1871 Chitrál still paid a tribute to Badakhshan in slaves, but it would be absurd to infer from this fact that Chitrál ever acknowledged the suzerainty of Jehandar Shah, or of the Affghan faction that dispossessed him. ”

“ Twenty-five days after entering the Tsungling mountains would enable him to reach the valley of Kashmir by the Karakoram Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the Sind valley. It is not a matter of much consequence for our purposes which route he took, as it is quite clear that all these northern routes were open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest times. The alternative route would be to the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over the Killik Pass, and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunza 181 country (Kunjut) has always had an attraction for the Chinese. ”

“ As a matter of fact, however, the vast number of tribes that inhabit the many countries between the Indus and the Kuner own no master except their own tribal head or the tribal council. From kidnapping Hunza, where the right to plunder is monarchical, hereditary, and “ayeshó” = “heaven-born,” to the peace and learning of republican Kandiá or [19] Gabriál, all want to be left alone. If a neighbour becomes troublesome, he is raided on till an interchange of presents restores harmony. It is impossible to say that either side is tributary to the other. ”

“ Leitner gives the fullest and clearest information, not only as regards Hunza-Nagyr, where all the places where fighting has occurred are marked, but also as regards the various Pamirs, thus anticipating in 1866 on linguistic grounds and native itineraries the different Pamirs that have recently been settled geographically. It shows that the ethnographical frontier of the Pamirs to the north are the Turki-speaking nomads of the trans-Altaic range (now Russian) ; to the west the Persian, or Tajiks (now Afghan) ; to the south the Aryan Hindu Kush [British] ”

“ Wine is largely drunk in Hunza, and like the Druses of the Lebanon, the “initiated” Muláis [10] may consider nothing a crime that is not found out. Indeed, an interesting connection can be established between the doctrines of the so-called “Assassins” of the Crusaders, which have been handed down to the Druses, and those of the Muláis in various parts of the Hindukush. Their spiritual chief gave me a few pages of their hitherto mysterious Bible, the “Kelám-i-Pir,” in 1886, which I have translated, and shortly intend to publish. ”

“ The Nagyris are musical and were fond of dances, polo, ibex battue-hunting, archery and shooting from horseback, and other manly exercises; but the growing piety of the race has latterly proscribed music and dancing. The accompanying drawing of a Nagyri dance in the neighbouring Gilgit gives a good idea of similar performances at Nagyr.
The country is full of legendary lore, but less so than Hunza, where Grimm’s fairy tales appear to be translated into actual life. No war is undertaken except at the supposed command of an unseen fairy, whose drum is on such occasions sounded in the mountains. ”

“ History, however, does not bear out his statement; and the defeat inflicted on the Kashmîr troops under Nathu Shah in 1848 is a lesson even for the arrogance of a civilized invader armed with the latest rifle. The Nagyris are certainly not without culture; in music they were proficient before the Muhammadan piety of the Shiah sect somewhat tabooed the art. At all events, they are different in character from the Hunzas with whom they share the same language, and their chiefs the same ancestry. The Hunzas, in whom a remnant of the Huns may be found, were great kidnappers ”