As a matter of fact, we have now a scramble for the regions surrounding and extending into the Pamirs by three Powers, acting either directly or through States of Straw. The claims of Bokhara to Karategin and Darwáz—if not to Shignán, Raushan, and Wakhan are as little founded as are those of Afghanistan on the latter three districts. Indeed, even the Afghan right to Badakhshan is very weak. The Russian claims through Khokand on the pasturages of the Kirghiz in two-thirds of the Pamirs are also as fanciful as those of Kashmir or China on Hunza. As in the scramble for Africa, the natives themselves are not consulted, and their indigenous dynasties have been either destroyed, or dispossessed, or ignored.
In an Indian paper, received by to-day’s mail (29 Nov., 1891), I find the following paragraph: “Col. A. G. Durand, British Agent at Gilgit, has received definite orders to bring the robber tribes of Hunza and Nagar under control. These tribes are the pirates of Central Asia, whose chief occupation is plundering caravans on the Yarkand and Kashgar. Any prisoners they take on these expeditions are sold into slavery. Colonel Durand has established an outpost at Chalt, about thirty miles beyond Gilgit, on the Hunza river, and intends making a road to Aliabad, the capital of the Hunza chief, at once. That he will meet with armed opposition in doing so is not improbable.”
For some months past the mot d’ordre appears to have been given to the Anglo-Indian Press, to excite public feeling against Hunza and Nagyr, two States which have been independent for fourteen centuries. The cause of offence is not stated, nor, as far as I know, does one exist of sufficient validity to justify invasion. In the Pioneer and the Civil and Military Gazette I find vague allusions to the disloyalty or recalcitrance of the above-mentioned tribes, and to the necessity of punishing them. As Nagyr is extremely well-disposed towards the British, and is only driven into making common cause with its hereditary foe and rival of Hunza by fear of a common danger,—the loss of their independence,—I venture to point out the impolicy and injustice of interfering with these principalities.
I have already referred to a letter from the venerable chief of Nagyr, in which he strongly commends to my care one of his sons, Raja Habibulla, as a well-wisher of the English Government. Indeed, he has absolutely done nothing to justify any attack on the integrity of his country; and before we invade it other means to secure peace should be tried. I have no doubt that I, for one, could induce him to comply with everything in reason, if reason, and not an excuse for taking his country, is desired. Nagyr has never joined Hunza in kidnapping expeditions, as is alleged in the above-quoted paragraph. Indeed, slavery is an abomination to the pious and peaceful agriculturist of that interesting country. The Nagyris are musical and were fond of dances, polo, ibex battue-hunting, archery and shooting from horseback, and other manly exercises; but the growing piety of the race has latterly proscribed music and dancing. The accompanying drawing of a Nagyri dance in the neighbouring Gilgit gives a good idea of similar performances at Nagyr.
The country is full of legendary lore, but less so than Hunza, where Grimm’s fairy tales appear to be translated into actual life. No war is undertaken except at the supposed command of an unseen fairy, whose drum is on such occasions sounded in the mountains. Ecstatic women, inhaling the smoke of a cedar-branch, announce the future, tell the past, and describe the state of things in neighbouring valleys. They are thus alike the prophets, the historians, and the journalists of the tribe. They probably now tell their indignant hearers how, under the pretext of shooting or of commerce, Europeans have visited their country, which they now threaten to destroy with strange and murderous weapons; but Hunza is “ayeshó,” or “heaven-born,” and the fairies, if not the inaccessible nature of the country, will continue to protect it.
The folly of invading Hunza and Nagyr is even greater than the physical obstacles to which I have already referred. Here, between the Russian and the British spheres of influence in Central Asia, we have not only the series of Pamirs, or plateaux and high valleys, which I first brought to notice on linguistic grounds, in the map accompanying my tour in Dardistan in 1866 (the country between Kashmir and Kabul), and which have been recently confirmed topographically; but we have also a large series of mountainous countries, which, if left alone, or only assured of our help against a foreign invader, would guarantee for ever the peace alike of the Russian, the British, and the Chinese frontiers. Unfortunately, we have allowed Afghanistan to annex Badakhshan, Raushan, Shignan, and Wakhan, at much loss of life to their inhabitants; and Russia has similarly endorsed the shadowy and recent claims of Bokhara on neighbouring provinces, like Darwáz and Karategin.
It is untrue that Hunza and Nagyr were ever tributaries of Kashmîr, except in the sense that they occasionally sent a handful of gold dust to its Maharaja, and received substantial presents in return. It is to China or Kitái that Hunza considers itself bound by an ancient, but vague, allegiance. Hunza and Nagyr, that will only unite against a foreign common foe, have more than once punished Kashmîr when attempting invasion; but they are not hostile to Kashmîr, and Nagyr even sends one of the princes to Srinagar as a guarantee of its peaceful intentions. At the same time, it is not very many months ago that they gave us trouble at Chalt, when we sought to establish an outpost, threatening the road to Hunza and the independence alike of Hunza and Nagyr.
Just as Nagyr is pious, so Hunza is impious. Its religion is a perversion even of the heterodox Mulái faith, which is Shiah Muhammadan only in name, but pantheistic in substance. It prevails in Punyál, Zebak, Darwáz, etc. The Tham, or Raja, of Hunza used to dance in a Mosque and hold revels in it. Wine is largely drunk in Hunza, and like the Druses of the Lebanon, the “initiated” Muláis may consider nothing a crime that is not found out. Indeed, an interesting connection can be established between the doctrines of the so-called “Assassins” of the Crusaders, which have been handed down to the Druses, and those of the Muláis in various parts of the Hindukush. Their spiritual chief gave me a few pages of their hitherto mysterious Bible, the “Kelám-i-Pir,” in 1886, which I have translated, and shortly intend to publish. All I can now say is, that, whatever the theory of their faith, the practice depends, as elsewhere, on circumstances and the character of the race.
The language of Hunza and Nagyr solves many philological puzzles. It is a prehistoric remnant, in which a series of simple consonantal or vowel sounds stands for various groups of ideas, relationships, etc. It establishes the great fact, that customs and the historical and other associations of a race are the basis of the so-called rules of grammar. The cradle, therefore, of human thought as expressed in language, whether of the Aryan, the Turanian, or the Shemitic groups, is to be found in the speech of Hunza-Nagyr; and to destroy this by foreign intervention, which has already brought new diseases into the Hindukush, as also a general linguistic deterioration, would be a greater act of barbarism than to permit the continuance of Hunza raiding on the Yarkand road. Besides, that raiding can be stopped again, by closing the slave-markets of Badakhshan, Bokhara, and Yarkand, or by paying a subsidy, say of £1,000 per annum, to the Hunza chief.