Sindh

“ And what took me here also became a fiasco; neither could I go to Sindh. It is the Lord's will. Now, I have an idea of proceeding to Calcutta through Rajputana, Kathiawar, and Sindh. But some difficulty may crop up on the way. If all goes well, I am certainly coming to Sindh. You must have undergone a lot of difficulty in coming to Hyderabad by arranging for leave etc. Any least trouble undergone, is bound to produce its excellent results. ”

“ The Deputy Commissioner of Dera Ghází Khán and the Commissioner of Multán spend part of the hot weather at Fort Munro. The wide Indus valley is known as the Sindh. The tract between it and the Hills is the Pachádh. It is seamed by hill torrents, three of which, the Vehoa, the Sangarh, and the Kahá, have a thread of water even in the cold season. The heat in summer is extreme, and the luh, a moving current of hot air, claims its human victims from time to time. The cultivation in the Sindh depends on the river floods and inundation canals, helped by wells. ”

“ The principal tribes of Sindh are the Beluchis and the Jâts, or Sindhis, once Hindoos, but converted to Islam under the Khalifs [39] of the house Ommayyah. The Sindhis are taller, stronger, more robust, and muscular than the natives of India; they belong chiefly to the Hanifah sect of Mohammedans. Their language is a strange mixture of Arabic and Sanskrit words, the noun being borrowed from the Sanskrit, and the verb from the Persian or Arabic grammar. The Beluchis are a mountain-tribe ”

“ The Sindhi hates everybody I've mentioned. Very good, we'll take less warlike races. The cultivator of Northern India domineers over the man in the next province, and the Behari of the Northwest ridicules the Bengali. They are all at one on that point. I'm giving you merely the roughest possible outlines of the facts, of course.”
Bishen Singh, his clean cut nostrils still quivering, watched the large sweep of the whip as it traveled from the frontier, through Sindh, the Punjab and Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of the Jumna. ”

“ Sind, Sindh, or Scinde (2,903) , a province of North-West India, in the Presidency of Bombay; extends from Beluchistan and Punjab (N.) to the Indian Ocean and Runn of Cutch (S.) ; traversed by the Indus, whose delta it includes, and whose broad alluvial valley-tracts yield abundant crops of wheat, barley, hemp, rice, cotton, etc., which are exported, and give employment to the majority of the people; N. and E. are wide stretches of desert-land, and in the S. are the Hala Mountains; was annexed to the British possessions after the victories of Sir Charles Napier in 1843 ”

“ According to the Táríkh-i-Maâsúmi126 when (a.d. 1069) the sovereignty of Sindh passed from the descendants of Mahmúd of Ghazni to the Sumras, Singhar, the grandson of Sumra (a.d. 1069) 127 extended his sway from Kachh to Nasarpúr128 near Sindh Haidarábád and Khafíf the son of Singhar consolidated his power and made Kachh a Sumra dependency.129 Dúda the grandson of Khafíf quelled a threatened Sumra rising by proceeding to Kachh and chastising the Sammas.130 On the fall of the Sumras the Chauras became masters of Kachh from whose hands the country passed to those of the Sammas. ”

“ Fámhal Kámhal and Kámuhal, and Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) Mámhul. That these are perversions of one name and that this town stood on the border of ‘Hind’ or Gujarát (in contradistinction to Sindh) the position given to each by the Arab geographers56 places beyond question. Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) alone calls the place by the name of Ámhal which he mentions57 as one of the chief cities of ‘Hind.’ Later he gives the name of Fámhal to a place forming the northern border of “Hind”, as all beyond it as far as Makrán belongs to Sindh. ”

“ The work in question purports to be a life of Dost Mohammed Khan, the well-known Amir of Kabul. It is what it professes to be, but it is also a great deal more; the whole has been named from a part. A history of the affairs of Sindh occupies nearly half a volume, and consists chiefly of copious extracts from works already published—such as Pottinger's Bilochistan, Dr Burnes' Visit to the Court of Sindh, Sir A. Burnes' Travels in Bokhara, Thornton's British India—from which sources the unscrupulous Lal helps himself unsparingly, and with scarce a word of apology either to reader or writer. ”

“ The road is excellent, and is bordered by an avenue of large trees nearly the whole way, and is crossed by several irrigation canals. Jacobabad is the headquarters of the Sindh Irregular Force, and is a flourishing frontier station, luxuriant in the vigour of youth. It was laid out, planted, and watered, not a score of years ago, by the talented officer whose name it commemorates, on a bare and desert tract, near the little hamlet of Khangarh, on the very verge of the desert. It affords a striking example of what the energy and judgment of a determined will can effect. ”

“ The aspirated and Persianised form Hind, as applied to the great country beyond the Indus, passed to the Arabs. But when they invaded the valley of the Indus and found it called Sindhu, they adopted that name in the form Sind, and thenceforward 'Hind and Sind' were habitually distinguished, though generally coupled, and conceived as two parts of a great whole.
Of the application of India to an Ethiopian region, an application of which indications extend over 1500 years, we have not space to speak here. ”

“ One of the peculiarities of the Hindoos of Sindh is that they have no outcast tribes among them, like the Parwaris, or Pariahs, Pasis, and Khandalas of Hindostan; [Pg 152] and many of the Musulmans of Sindh are followers of Nanak [40] and Govind his disciple.
Farther north, in the Afghan districts, numerous warlike tribes are found. Afghans, properly so called, distinguish themselves from the aboriginal populations. The chief clans or tribes of the Afghans are the Duranis, south-west of the Afghan plateau ”

“ The arrangements on board the Sindh for the comfort of passengers were simply perfect—a [13] roomy cabin (cool even during the severe heat in the Red Sea) , good bath-rooms, and, above all, civility from every one connected with the ship, was the order of the day on board. The food and cooking were excellent, fresh meat and fish, and a good French salad, being provided for dinner daily—even during the run from Point de Galle (Ceylon) to Singapore, in which no land is touched at for nine days—and a good sound claret, iced, supplied at every meal free of charge. ”

“ The "Pankhas," or weavers, are also deists of a very high order; they are the followers of a religious reformer named Kahbir, who flourished about the fifteenth century. There is very little difference between the Kahbir-Pankhas and the Satmanes-Chamars in their worship and religion. The province of Sindh derives its name from the Sanskrit word "Sindhu," "ocean or flood," which name the Aryans of the Vèdic period who were settled about the sixth century B. C. in the Panjaub and along the Indus gave to that river. ”

“ They are rare in Central India east of the Arávali range. They are not uncommon in Rájputána or Gujarát and were once so plentiful in Sindh, that in a.d. 725 the Sindh treasury had eighteen million Tatariya dirhams. (See Dowson in Elliot’s History, I. 3.) They are the rude silver pieces generally known as Indo-Sassanian because they combine Indian letters with Sassanian types. A worn fire temple is the supposed Ass-head which has given rise to the name Gadiya Paisa or Ass money. ”

“ We had wandered twenty-five miles out of the right road, and were still distant fifteen to sixteen from the first mail station. For the use of the floor, flies, and permission to boil water, we paid our taciturn Mormon $2, and at noon, a little before the bursting of the dusty storm-gusts, which reproduced the horrors of Sindh, we found ourselves once more in the saddle and the ambulance. We passed by a cattle track on rolling ground dotted with sage and greasewood, which sheltered hosts of jackass-rabbits, and the sego with its beautiful lily-like flowers. ”

“ H. 95) Muhammad the son of Kásim the Arab conqueror of Sindh, is said to have made peace with the inhabitants of Surast or Káthiáváḍ with whom he states the people of Bátia7 that is Bet to the north of Dwárka were then at war. Al Biláduri describes the Bátia men as Meds seafarers and pirates. In the reign of Hishám (a.d. 724) Junnaid, son of Abdur Rahmán Al Murri, who was appointed to the frontier of Sindh is stated to have conquered Jurz (Gujarát) and Bárús (Broach) .8 A more permanent result followed a great expedition from Mansúrah in Sindh. ”

“ Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. (Chewal) . Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968) mentions (the Kachh) Sindán among the cities of Hind, which have a large Musalmán population and a Jámá Masjid158 or assembly mosque. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) 159 in his itinerary from Debal in Sindh places the Kokan 200 miles (50 farsakhs) from that port and between Broach and Supára. At the end of the eleventh century probably the Kachh Sindán was a large commercial town rich both in exports and imports with an intelligent and warlike, industrious, and rich population. ”

“ There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwālior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his tent. ”

“ The invasion of Abraha the Abyssinia took place during the year of Mohammed’s birth; and yet in an early chapter of the Koran (No. cv.) written perhaps forty-five years afterwards, the small-pox is turned into a puerile and extravagant miracle. I myself became the subject of a miracle in Sind which is duly chronicled in the family-annals of a certain Pir or religious teacher. See History of Sindh (p. 230) and Sind Revisited (i. 156) .
537. In the texts, “Sixth.”
538. Arab. “Najis” = ceremonially impure especially the dog’s mouth like the cow’s mouth amongst the Hindus ”

“ Though entirely unconnected with the subjects of Meccah and El Medinah, the account of the Sherif's Court where these gentlemen were received with distinction, and of the almost unknown regions about Jebel Kora, will doubtless be welcomed by the Orientalists and Geographers of Europe.
Mr. Burton is already known by his "History of Sindh." And as if to mark their sense of the spirit of observation and daring evinced by him when in that country, and still more during his late journeyings in Arabia and East Africa, the Geographical Society, through their learned Secretary, Dr. ”

“ While Sindhia bore no love for the Foreigners, he experienced less for the Peshwa as the supreme head of the Marathas, and less still, if not actual hatred, for the ruling Mohammedan family of Delhi.
"If," argued Dinkar Rao, "the Foreigners are driven out of India, who will grasp the great scepter? Surely either the Peshwa or the Emperor of Delhi. What then will become of Maharaja Sindhia? He will be, as of old, a feudatory of an avaricious Native monarch. Better is it to submit to the lesser evil, the comparatively light yoke of the Foreigners." ”

“ The Bhonsla raja of Nagpur died without lineal heirs in 1853, and his territory was likewise annexed. The house of Holkar remained faithful to its engagements with the British government, and its position as a feudatory of the empire was maintained. In Sindhia’s territory, by reason of internal feuds, the British had to undertake measures which were successfully terminated after the battles of Maharajpur and Panniar in 1843. But on the whole the house of Sindhia remained faithful. Sindhia himself was actively loyal during the Mutiny. ”

“ In Sindhi the preparation of the base for reception of the case particles assumes great importance, there being in nearly every case three separate base-forms in the singular, one for the nominative, a second for the oblique, and a third for the vocative; and three in the plural, the plural forms being in addition various and numerous for the oblique and vocative. That these forms result from a partial retention or half-effaced recollection of the Sanskrit inflectional system is apparent, and this fact places Sindhi in an inferior stage of development to that of the fore-named languages. ”

“ Overnight, Sindhia had been informed that the Rani's forces, so far from obeying his injunction to retire from his state, were advancing upon the city. It left him no alternative but to give battle.
Sindhia had occupied a strategic position on rising ground, his flanks protected by squadrons of cavalry, his center formed by artillery. ”

“ It is the Gibraltar of India, [333] and, standing out of the plain instead of out of the sea, was called, before modern cannon brought the fort within range of neighbouring heights, the key of Hindustan. It is a grand rampart of nature, and the range of fortress walls which crown the summit well become the site. They frown down upon the palace of Sindhia himself, lying immediately underneath, in mockery guarding his territory, for though the maharajah's standard floats from the flagstaff, British soldiers occupy the stronghold. ”

“ Before the year 1803 was out, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla raja were glad to sue for peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old emperor Shah Alam once more under British protection. The Bhonsla raja forfeited Orissa to the English, who had already occupied it with a flying column, and Berar to the nizam, who gained a fresh addition by every act of complaisance to the British government. The freebooter, Jaswant Rao Holkar, alone remained in the field, supporting his troops by ravages through Malwa and Rajputana. ”