Dardistan in 1866, 1886 and 1893 / Being an account of the history, religions, customs, legends, fables, and songs of Gilgit, Chilas, Kandia (Gabrial), Dasin, Chitral, Hunsa, Nagyr, and other parts of the Hindukush, as also a supplement to the second edition of the Hunza and Nagyr handbook and an epitome of part III of the author's "The languages and races of Dardistan"

by G. W. Leitner

Routes to Chilás.

The manners, tribal sub-divisions, and occupations of the Chilásis and the names of the mountains, streams, products, etc., of the country, as also the road from Takk to Kashmir by the Kanagamunn pass, Diúng, Shiril, Koja, Ujatt, etc., are detailed in my “Dardistan,” where a Chilási vocabulary, dialogues, songs, etc., will also be found. There are also roads from Abbottabad to Chilás through Agrôr, of Black Mountain fame, practicable for camels. Another road, fit for ponies, goes by Muzafarabad by Sharidi and the lovely Kishenganga and Sargan Rivers in Kashmir, by the Kamakduri Galli, to Niát in Chilás. As already mentioned, the easiest road to our last conquest is by Kaghan through the Takk valley. There is also the long and dangerous road on the banks of the Indus to Bunji, which skirts, as its occupation would irritate, the Kohistani tribes who are Pathans, not Dards, including the rival traders with Gilgit of Koli-Palus. Thence, on that route, comes Jalkot and the road that branches off into learned Kandiá, which I have described at length in the A.Q.R. of July 1892. The road, such as it is, constantly crosses and recrosses the Indus (by rafts), and at the Lahtar river is reached the boundary between the true Kohistan and the Dard country, which is there called Shináki, because it is inhabited by the ruling Shiná race. We then come to pretty Sazín, from which my Sazîní informant. Opposite to it runs the Tangir valley and country, whence there is a road to Yasin to which Tangîr owed a sort of loose bond. We then continue by the right bank of the Indus opposite Sazín, passing Shatiál and on to the Dareyl stream, which comes from the Dareyl country that eventually joins on to Gilgit. Crossing the Dareyl stream, we pass Harban on the left bank and a few miles further on, the Tor village, and arrive at the Hôdur village, whence we go on to Chilás, after as bad a road of about 200 miles as it is possible to conceive. Besides, if we touch the independence of these various republics en route, we shall constantly be in a hornets’ nest, and provoke the coalition of the Dard with the Pathan or Afghan irreconcilable tribes, whereas, by keeping to the Kashmir route or, at least, confining ourselves to the Kaghan-Chilás road, and prohibiting our men from going to the right or to the left of it, we may yet resume friendly relations with the harmless and religious Chilásis and keep the road open for the eventual advance of Russian troops! In the meanwhile, let us not destroy villages inhabited by hereditary genealogists, who, before our advent, were the living historians of an irrecoverable portion of, perhaps, the earliest Aryan settlements.