From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

On the plain near the fort are the ruins of two contiguous villages, between which winds a small stream on its way to some corn-fields beyond them. The place has a very dreary look, and the climate at this season is decidedly bleak. The southern portion of the valley is well cultivated and peopled, and during the summer, so we are told, is one sheet of corn-fields. This valley, in fact, with those of Nal, Bághwána, Súráb, and Calát, are the principal corn-growing districts in this country. The elevation of Khozdár is about 3850 feet above the sea, and about 3700 feet above Gandáva on the plain of Kach. The later figure represents the rise in the land between the two places, a distance of ninety-three miles by our route through the Míloh Pass, and gives an ascent of nearly forty feet in the mile.

The Míloh Pass is easy for cattle, is well watered, and has an abundant supply of fuel in the tamarisk jangal throughout its course. Forage for cattle is scarce in winter, but there is a sufficiency of this in summer for caravans and the cattle and flocks of the Brahoe, who find ample space for camping on the shelving banks of the stream, in the succession of basins occupying the course of the pass. Beyond the pass, at Narr, the tamarisk jangal and water supply both cease.

In all our route from Pír Chhatta to Khozdár we observed a series of roadside memorials, emblematic of the national customs of the Brahoe. They are of two kinds, commemorative of very opposite events, and are met with in a very distant ratio of frequency in consequence. The one is called cháp, and commemorates the weddings amongst the migratory Brahoe. The other is called cheda, and serves as a memorial of those who die without issue amongst the clans.

The cháp is a perfect circle, described on the ground by a series of stones set together flat in its surface; the centre is marked by a single stone of from one to two feet in length, set upright on end. The diameters of these circles range from ten to thirty feet, and hundreds of them cover every flat piece of ground on the line of road followed by the Brahoe in their annual migrations from the high to the low lands. Some of the cháps we observed were of a different structure from the figure just described. Instead of a single upright stone in the centre, and a circumference marked by stones laid flat, the whole surface of the figure was closely set with stones laid flat on the ground, forming a circular pavement, from the centre of which projected the single stone set upright. From the circumference of the circle projected a long arm in a straight line running to the north in those we saw. This projection is about thirty feet long, and terminates in a large stone set upright as in the centre; its width is about two feet, and it is formed, like the circle, of stones set close together and flat on the surface of the ground.

Sketch Plan of the Cháp Circles.

A. The highroad across a plain.

B. Cháp circles of different kinds, as described in the text.

C. A mosjid or mosque, marked off on the ground by stones just as are the cháp circles.

These figures, we were told, are made on the actual sites on which have been danced the reels accompanying the festivities that form an important element in the ceremonies attending a Brahoe wedding. The centre stone marks the place of the musician, and the circumference that of the circle of dancers, who pirouette individually and revolve collectively in measured steps, keeping time with the music, to which the while they clap their hands. This clapping of hands is here called cháp, and hence the name of the figures. Sometimes the sword-dance is substituted for the other, and only differs from it in brandishing naked swords in place of clapping hands. The dance resembles the ataur of the Afghans. The sketch on [p. 55] shows the form of the cháp.