Kurmi

“ Here the Kurmis do not object to eating cooked food which has been carried from the house to the fields. This is called rengai roti, and castes which will eat it are considered inferior to those who always take their food in the chauka or purified place in the house. They say ‘Rām, Rām’ to each other in greeting, and the Raipur Kurmis swear by a dog or a pig. Generally they do not plough on the new or full moon days. Their women are tattooed after marriage with dots on the cheeks, marks of flies on the fingers, scorpions on the arms, and other devices on the legs. [98] ”

“ The Kurmis of the northern Districts do not as a rule eat meat and also abstain from alcohol, but in Chhattīsgarh they eat the flesh of clean animals and fish, and also of fowls, and drink country liquor. Old men often give up flesh and wine as a mark of piety, when they are known as Bhagat or holy. They will take food cooked with water only from Brāhmans, and that cooked without water from Rājpūts, Banias and Kāyasths as well. Brāhmans and Rājpūts will take water from Kurmis in the northern Districts though not in Chhattīsgarh. ”

“ The Kurram Valley.—The Kurram Valley, which is drained by the Kurram river and its affluents, lies to the south of the lofty Safed Koh range, and reaches from Thal in Kohát to the Peiwar Kotal on the borders of Afghán Khost. It has an area of nearly 1300 square miles and in 1911 the population was estimated at 60,941 souls. Though under British administration, it does not form a part of any British district. The people are Patháns of various clans, the predominant element being the Turís, who are Shias by religion and probably of Turkish origin. ”

“ Kurho was aware of the new weapon; it made his own people uneasy and restless; such a thing at loose in the valley could only spell threat to all peoples! But, if it was to be, then what the tribe of Gor-wah devised Kurho's tribe would also devise. They would devise more and better!
Otah listened, growled in anger. "Kurho says this? Kurho, who has boasted that he will take the whole valley?" Then he paused and considered sensibly. "Mai-ak, take answer. You will say that we go in peace. Say that never do we intend to cross the river. ”

“ During the frontier risings of 1897 the inhabitants of the Kurram valley, chiefly the Massozai section of the Orakzais, were infected by the general excitement, and attacked the British camp at Sadda and other posts. A force of 14,230 British troops traversed the country, and the tribesmen were severely punished. In Lord Curzon’s reorganization of the frontier in 1900–1901, the British troops were withdrawn from the forts in the Kurram valley, and were replaced by the Kurram militia, reorganized in two battalions, and chiefly drawn from the Turi tribe. ”

“ Kurram I am! Kurram Khan is my name henceforward! Kurram Khan the dakitar!”
“But where is the sahib who came from the fort to talk?” asked the man whose stomach ached yet from Ismail and Darya Khan's attentions to it.
“Gone!” announced King. “He went with the other one!”
“Went whither? Did any see him go?”
“Is that thy affair?” asked King, and the man collapsed. It is not considered wise to the north of Jamrud to argue with a wizard, or even with a man who only claims to be one. This was a man who had changed his very nature almost under their eyes. ”

“ Gray Wolf, his wild mate, lay near him, flat on her belly, her forepaws reaching out, her eyes and nostrils as keen and alert as the smell of man could make them. For there was that smell of man, as well as of balsam and spruce, in the warm spring air. She gazed anxiously and sometimes steadily, at Kazan as he slept. Her own gray spine stiffened when she saw the tawny hair along Kazan's back bristle at some dream vision. She whined softly as his upper lip snarled back, showing his long white fangs. ”

“ At Kurma we put up in the house of a doctor, an acquaintance of Phurchung, who had brought him a quantity of medicines the amchi had the year past commissioned him to buy at Darjiling. Our supply of meat being exhausted, Ugyen bought a sheep’s carcass (pagra) . When the sheep get very fat, the people, for fear of losing any of the fat by skinning them, roast the whole as they would a pig.71 [43]
December 7.—Leaving Kurma early in the morning, we arrived at Iago72 by 6 p.m., where we got accommodations in the house of a rich farmer, paying him a tanka as room-rent (nala) . ”

“ Time passed on its course even in those times, when the sun did not shine upon the earth, and when the season came round when it was usual for the animals of the earth to add to their several kinds, the Kurwie had nearly forgotten that she had ever been other than a terrestrial bird, and the scene of her transformation had almost faded from her memory. ”

“ The second, or Thull-Kuram-Kabul, route, was taken by General Roberts in 1878-9. It extends from Thull, one of the frontier posts already mentioned, some forty miles into the Kuram valley, and then inclining towards the west leads to the Kuram fort (Mohammed Azim's) , a walled quadrangular fortress with flanking towers at an elevation of 6,000 feet. The Kuram valley is, up to this point, well cultivated and productive; wood, water, and forage abound. Winter only lasts with any severity for six weeks, and the Spring and Autumn are delightful. ”

“ The language of the Yezidis, in common with the Kurds, is Kurdish, which belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic stock. This Kurmanji possesses a number of dialects not differing much from one another, except the zaza dialect, which is spoken in eastern Mesopotamia by the Kurds, called Ali Alla. The main characteristic of the Kurmangi are the great brevity of its words and the simplicity of its grammatical forms. It is fairly rich in vowels, and richer in deep guttural sounds. ”

“ Now this was the army of Jamrkan who, espying the host of the Kafirs and seeing them as a surging sea, called a halt; so his troops pitched the tents and set up the standards, calling upon the name of the All-wise One, the Creator of light and gloom, Lord of all creatures, Who seeth while Him none see, the High to infinity, extolled and exalted be He! There is no God but He! The Miscreants also halted and pitched their tents, and Kurajan said to them “Keep on your arms, and in armour sleep, for during the last watch of the night we will mount and trample yonder handful under feet!” ”

“ But for the most part Kazan lay quiet, save for the muscular twitchings of legs, shoulders and muzzle, which always tell when a dog is dreaming; and as he dreamed there came to the door of the cabin out on the plain a blue-eyed girl-woman, with a big brown braid over her shoulder, who called through the cup of her hands, "Kazan, Kazan, Kazan!"
The voice reached faintly to the top of the Sun Rock, and Gray Wolf flattened her ears. Kazan stirred, and in another instant he was awake and on his feet. ”

“ He is rarely a muleteer or camel-man, and does not take kindly to handicrafts. The Kūrds generally bear a very indifferent reputation, a worse reputation perhaps, than they really deserve. Being aliens to the Turks in language and to the Persians in religion, they are everywhere treated with mistrust, and live as it were in a state of chronic warfare with the powers that be. Such a condition is not of course favourable to the development of the better qualities of human nature. The Kūrds are thus wild and lawless ”

“ The most flourishing period of Kūrdish power was probably during the 12th century of our era, when the great Saladin, who belonged to the Rawendi branch of the Hadabāni tribe, founded the Ayyubite dynasty of Syria, and Kūrdish chiefships were established, not only to the east and west of the Kūrdistān mountains, but as far as Khorāsān upon one side and Egypt and Yemen on the other. During the Mongol and Tatar domination of western Asia the Kūrds in the mountains remained for the most part passive, yielding a reluctant obedience to the provincial governors of the plains. ”

“ In the spring I went to Kurama Temple. It was a soft spring day, with mist trailing over the mountain-side. The mountain people brought tokoro [a kind of root] as the only food and I found it good. When I left there flowers were already gone.
In Gods-absent month I went again, and the mountain views along the way were more beautiful than before, the mountain-side brocaded with the autumn colours. The stream, rushing headlong, boiled up like molten metal and then shattered into crystals.
When I reached the monastery the maple leaves, wet with a shower, were brilliant beyond compare. ”

“ She was young and strong and beautiful, but Kazan did not look at her. Where the fight had been he was looking, at what little remained of the old leader. The pack had returned to the feast. He heard again the cracking of bones and the rending of flesh, and something told him that hereafter all the wilderness would hear and recognize his voice, and that when he sat back on his haunches and called to the moon and the stars, those swift-footed hunters of the big plain would respond to it. ”

“ Tsuwalkai Marimi listened, said nothing, made no answer. Tsawandi Kamshu went out the next morning at daybreak, stayed out all that day. At dusk the bow fell with the quiver.
The old woman began to cry. She cried bitterly. “All our people are dead,” said she. “All our people are gone, and I am alone.”
She went around crying; went along the four sides of the house; went to where the bows, arrows, and otter-skin quivers were hanging; cried all that night, cried all the next day.
The Tennas watched for the old woman, watched closely. ”

“ Nature had told him the one thing to do to save himself. Most of that day he spent in gnawing at wood and crunching mouthfuls of earth and mold between his jaws. In this way the barb-toothed points of the quills were dulled and broken as they came through. At dusk he crawled under the windfall, and Gray Wolf gently licked his muzzle with her soft cool tongue. Frequently during the night Kazan went to the creek and found relief in its ice-cold water. ”

“ Having lost all in this world that was dear to him, Michael returned to the ashes of Chernigoff, accompanied by only one faithful person, Feodor, his intimate boyar. Each now took an oath to the other that he would give an example of how men will die if there is Christian faith in them. This was at the time when Batu had declared to all Russia that he considered its subjection accomplished, and invited the princes and common men who had fled and were then in concealment to come back to their places, and live as was proper for subjects. ”

“ Kuridai mounted and rode away swiftly. On the road he was captured by a sentry, but that sentry, a Kurulat also, was devoted soul and body in secret to Temudjin, so not only did he free Kuridai when he heard of his errand, but he gave him his own splendid stallion. “On this horse,” said the Kurulat, “thou canst overtake any man, but no man on another beast could overtake thee.”
Kuridai hurried off. On the way he saw warriors bearing a splendid white tent for Jamuka. Some attendants of these men [46] pursued him, but soon he was swept out of sight by the stallion. ”

“ The hair had now grown over Gray Wolf's sightless eyes. She had ceased to grieve, to rub her eyes with her paws, to whine for the sunlight, the golden moon and the stars. Slowly she began to forget that she had ever seen those things. She could now run more swiftly at Kazan's flank. Scent and hearing had become wonderfully keen. She could wind a caribou two miles distant, and the presence of man she could pick up at an even greater distance. ”

“ Cummins saw the change in his people, and understood what it meant. He saw the surrounding cordon become thinner as man crushed closer to man, and he saw strained faces turned from the player to where the dogs sat full-throated upon their haunches, with their heads pointed straight to the stars in the sky.
Suddenly he burst into a volume of wild song, and made his way through the crouching Eskimos to Jan.
"For the love of Heaven, play no more of that!" he cried in the boy's ear. "Play something fast!" ”

“ The rocky parapets and gloomy valleys appear to extend from basin to basin, at right angles to the axis of the chain. West of the crags about us, and isolated from them, rose a shapely mass with black but snow-streaked sides. Darkness was falling when we descended from this lofty position into one of the valleys of the southern slopes. In its recesses we came upon a little Kurdish settlement, which seemed to promise shelter during the night.
Kurtler—Kurds! No sooner have we crossed the frontier than we find ourselves in their midst. The mountains of Kurdistan are more than 100 miles distant ”

“ He sat suddenly back on his haunches and refused to budge.
"Come, Kazan," coaxed the man. "Come on, boy."
He hung back and showed his white fangs. He expected the lash of a whip or the blow of a club, but neither came. His master laughed and took him back to the house. When they left it again, the girl was with them and walked with her hand touching his head. It was she who persuaded him to leap up through a big dark hole into the still darker interior of a car, and it was she who lured him to the darkest corner of all, where his master fastened his chain. ”

“ At God's Lake, at Lac Seul, and over on the Mackenzie—and never have I seen hair on a woman like that."
"And Bram has never been out of the northland, never farther south than Fort Chippewyan that we know of," said Philip. "It makes one shiver, eh, Pierre? It makes one think of—WHAT? Can't you answer? Isn't it in your mind?"
French and Cree were mixed half and half in Pierre's blood. The pupils of his eyes dilated as he met Philip's steady gaze.
"It makes one think," he replied uneasily, "of the chasse-galere and the loup-garou, and—and—almost makes one believe. ”