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. I had already pointed out in 1867 the importance which our good friend, His Highness Agha Khan of Bombay, the Head of the Khojas in that city, enjoyed in those, then nearly inaccessible, regions, as also in Wakhan, Zebak, Shignán, Raushan, Koláb and Derwáz, where the Muláis predominate and are governed by hereditary Pîrs or ancient sages of their own choice,[130] to whom they yield implicit obedience, as do also the covenanters with “Al-Hákim” among the “initiated” of the Druses. Of these Pîrs, Agha Khan is Chief, and any command by him would be obeyed in some of the most dangerous parts of the Hindukush. Advantage was only taken in 1886 of this hint, when Colonel Lockhart’s mission was supplied with letters of recommendation by His Highness to the Mulais. My identification of their mysterious rites with those of the Druses connects the Lebanon with the Hindukush through the Ismailia sect, which under the name of the “Assassins” enjoyed such an unenviable notoriety during the Crusades and establishes a link among the nations of Richard Cœur de Lion,[131] of Palestine and of the Pamirs. The connection of Hunza with the Huns or Hunas and the relations between the “Old Man of the Mountain” and our own Richard may be the subject of a future article. At present, I will confine myself to translating from the Persian original a Pythian utterance out of the “Kelám-i-Pîr” or “the Word of the ancient Sage,” which takes the place of the Korán among Mauláis, and of which the following is the first extract ever given from that hidden book. It was partly dictated to me and partly written out on the occasion of His Highness, the present Agha Khan, paying me a visit, by the leader of some Muláis, who had fled, first from Russian tyranny, and then from the still heavier Afghan oppression in the border-countries of Central Asia, my own Hunza man also being present on the occasion.[132] The extract was called the Mulái “Mukti” or “Salvation” Cry of the Muláis. It may be incidentally mentioned that Shah Abdurrahim in Zeibak was (and perhaps still is) the greatest Pîr in Central Asia. He controls Hunza, so far as that God-forsaken country can be controlled. In Wakhan, Khwaja Ibrahim Husain was the Mulái leader, and in Sarikul, Shahzada Makin. Sayad Jafar Khan ruled what there is of the sect in Bokhara, Balkh, Kabul and Kunduz. “The Pîr” or “ancient sage,” however, was the historical Shah Nasir Khosrô, who is styled “a missionary of H. H. Aga Khan’s ancestor.” He is said to have had the complete “Kelám-i-Pîr,” a book of which I have for so many years in vain tried to get a copy, although assisted by my friend, the Mihtar Nizám-ul-Mulk of Yasin and Chitrál. The following extract from it, in one and the same breath, affirms and denies the special doctrine of metempsychosis and other notions opposed to the professed Muhammadanism of the Muláis:
The Mukti or “Salvation.”
The Mulái “A’qil” or “intelligent” = “initiated” [the singular of the Druse “U’qalá” or “initiated”] first asks, in inelegant and enigmatical Persian:
“Ala! In what I say, can I remain knowingly an Á’qil?” or “initiated” or “I remain knowingly an Á’qil, although what I say
1. “Come, solve for me a difficult story [or conjecture]