Since then, the Dards have made the acquaintance of diseases for which there was not even a name in 1866. I refer chiefly to cholera and syphilis, which Kashmiri and Indian troops have introduced. Simultaneously, the indigenous methods of treatment, which are full of lessons for the impartial learner, are dying out. Industrial handicrafts, historical superstitions or reminiscences, national feasts which existed in 1866 exist no longer, and what exists now will soon vanish before the monotony of orthodox Muhammadanism and the vulgarity of so-called European civilization. “Und der Götter bunt Gewimmel, Hat sogleich das stille Haus geleert.” The fairies and prophetesses of Dardistan are silent, the Tham of Hunza no longer brings down rain, the family axes are broken, the genealogists have been destroyed, and the sacred drum is heard no longer. The quaint computations of age, of months, seasons, years and half-years, and the strange observations of shadows thrown at various times are dying out or are already dead. Worse than all for enquiry into ancient human history, the languages which contain the words of “what once was,” are being flooded by foreign dialects, and what may survive will no longer appeal to the national understanding. This result is most lamentable as regards Hunza, where the oldest human speech still showed elementary processes of development. I fear that my attempt to commit, for the first time, to writing, in an adapted Persian character, the Khajuná language, has only been followed in a document of honour which the venerable Chief of Nagyr sent me some years ago. Already do some European writers call him and his people “ignorant” when their own ignorance is alone deserving of censure. I deeply regret that the friendship of so many Dard Chiefs for me has made them unsuspicious of Europeans, and may have thus indirectly led to the loss of their independence, but I rejoice that for over twenty-five years I have not attracted the European adventurer to Dardistan by saying anything about Pliny’s “fertilissimi sunt auri Dardæ,” except in Khajuná Ethnographical Dialogues in the “Hunza-Nagyr Handbook,” which exploiters were not likely to read. Now others have published the fact, but not the accompanying risks.
As Kandiá is learned, Nagyr pious, Chilás puritanical, and all true Dard tribes essentially peaceful and virtuously republican, so, no doubt, Hunza was the country of free love and of raiding, that had ceased in 1865, which we practically revived ([see Appendix I.]). I doubt, however, whether picturesque vice, which, unfortunately, may form part of indigenous associations, is as reprehensible as the hypocrisy of those hired knights of the pen, who, not practising the virtues which they preach, take away the character of nations and of Chiefs, merely because they are opposed to us, and falsify their history. 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. Europeans have a worse reputation among Orientals than Orientals among Europeans, and, in either case, ignorance, prejudice, want of sympathy and disinclination to learn the truth, are probably among the causes of such regrettable preconceptions. At any rate, it shall not be said that the races which I, so disastrously for them, discovered and named, shall suffer from any misrepresentation so far as I can help it, although the political passions of the moment may deprive my statements of the weight which has hitherto attached to them as authoritative in this speciality. Væ victis et victoribus—for history now marches rapidly towards the common disaster. Finis Dardarum. “It has been decided that Chilás is to be permanently held, and consequently the present strength of the garrison in the Gilgit district will be increased by one native regiment, while the 23rd Pioneers will complete the road through the Kaghan Valley to Chilás, and will then remain for duty on the advanced frontier. This strengthening of the garrison in the sub-Himalayan country will effectually secure British influence over Chitral where an Agent is to be permanently stationed; it will also insure the control of the Indus Valley tribes” (Times telegram of the 8th July, 1893—the italics are mine). Alas that British influence should so destroy both itself and the freedom of ancient races!
Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. Considering the promises of redress of all grievances made by the Great Northern Emancipator of Oppressed Nationalities,[105] whose lightest finger is heavier than our entire yoke, it would be a great mistake on our part to still further reduce the independence of Native States, the troops of which are already at our disposal. Even as regards Kashmir, against the mismanagement of which I have protested for so many years, and the Agents of which made several attempts on my life in order to prevent my exposure of their frontier encroachments in 1866, I am bound to say that our procedure has been a great deal too peremptory, if not altogether illegal. The following Treaty between Kashmir and the British Government shows alike that Kashmir had no right to encroach on Chilás and Gilgit (see preceding pages), and still less on Hunza-Nagyr, and that the Government of India has no right to convert Kashmir into a “semi-independent State” as called by the Times of the 8th July, 1893. Kashmir is an independent State, whose independence has been paid for and must be protected by our honour against our ambition, as long as it is loyal to the British Government:
“Treaty between the British Government on the one part and Maharajah Golab Sing of Jummoo on the other, concluded on the part of the British Government by Frederick Currie, Esquire, and Brevet-Major Henry Montgomery Lawrence, acting under the orders of the Right Honourable Sir Henry Hardinge, G.C.B., one of Her Britannic Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Governor-General, appointed by the Honourable Company to direct and control all their affairs in the East Indies, and by Maharajah Golab Sing in person.
Article I.
The British Government transfers and makes over for ever, in independent possession, to Maharajah Golab Sing and the heirs male of his body, all the hilly or mountainous country, with its dependencies, situated to the eastward of the River Indus and westward of the River Ravee, including Chumba, and excluding Lahul, being part of the territories ceded to the British Government by the Lahore State, according to the provisions of Article IV. of the Treaty of Lahore, dated 9th March, 1846.
Article II.