Hiuen-Tsiang tells us that he found India divided into 70 Kingdoms. Nine centuries before his time Megasthenes the Greek Ambassador, found twice as many. In spite of the many political settlements which have had their day and vanished, some of the territories described by Hiuen-Tsiang are divisions corresponding to natural features, race, language, and religious customs, and remain distinct districts, each of them with its idiosyncrasies to-day. Consolidation by successive conquests has taken place, it is true, but the village persists. The village-settlements were there before the Aryan conquest; they have survived the long passage of time; they carry on their ancient tradition, and have maintained provincial characteristics against the pressure of the Mohammedan, the Mahrattan, and all other attempts at organic Empire.
CHAPTER VI.
THE JOURNEY HOME BY A NEW AND PERILOUS ROUTE.
We left our hero on the Kâbul river, beyond the boundaries of India: a royal reception awaited him at Kapiśa, and a hundred experienced men were chosen to conduct and protect him in the passage across the Hindû Kûsh. The shortest, but most difficult of the passes—probably the Khawak, which reaches 13,000 feet, was selected. Seven days of travel brought the party to those snow-mountains of which Hiuen-Tsiang always speaks with mingled wonder, fear and dislike. Born and brought up in a mild climate, and having now spent many years in a hot one, he describes the discomforts and dangers of every high pass at length. He tells us how wild and perilous are the precipices; how fearsome, contorted, and difficult the path. Of the Hindû Kûsh he writes: “Now the traveller is in a profound valley; now aloft on a high peak, with its burthen of ice in full summertide. One gets along by cutting steps in the ice, and, in three days one reaches the summit of the pass. There, a furious icy blast, cold beyond measure, sweeps on; the valleys are laden with accumulated snow. The traveller pushes on; for he dares not pause. Soaring birds must needs alight; it is impossible for them to fly; and they have to cross afoot. One gazes down on mountains that look like hillocks.” The whole cavalcade had to dismount and clamber up with the aid of mountain-staves. One wonders how the guides got the elephant over such ridges; but they did. “Great men lived before Agamemnon”; Hannibal solved the same problem two hundred years before Christ.
At the end of the second week a large village of a hundred families was reached, the inhabitants of which lived by rearing a very big variety of sheep, which is said still to be found in this district. Here the “Master of the Law” secured the services of a local guide, and took a whole day’s rest. His escort now returned; and he set forth in the middle of the night, mounted on a camel accustomed to the hills, and attended by seven priests, twenty servants, the elephant which Sîlâditya had given him, six asses, and four horses. Next morning the bottom of the pass was reached; but there still lay before them what, in the distance, looked like a snow-peak. But when they had ascended a long zig-zag path and come up to it, it turned out to be mere white rock. None the less, it towered far above the clouds, and the icy wind there blew so hard and cutting that headway could hardly be made.
The descent of the range occupied five or six days. The route now lay north westward to the Upper Oxus. Hiuen-Tsiang rested a month in the camp of a petty Khân,—and then joined a caravan of traders who were eastward bound. The caravan took a meandering course through several little Khânates; and in one of them the Master of the Law was struck by the singular head-gear of the women. They wore caps three feet high, topped by two peaks of unequal length, if both father-in-law and mother-in-law were living. The higher and lower respectively represented these relatives. But, when one of them died, the corresponding peak was removed; should both of them be dead, no peaks were worn. This region was mountainous, and its inhabitants were remarkable for their surpassing ugliness. They differed from all other peoples in the peculiar blue-green of the iris. They were innocent of all manners, and knew no law of justice; the horse was their study and care, and they reared a breed of sturdy little ponies.
The caravan now followed the narrowing stream of Oxus, and, after a time, ascended to the great plateau of the Pamirs, no less lofty than the topmost Pyrenees. “There even in summer” says the Pilgrim “one suffers from squalls and eddies of snowstorm. Just a few wretched plants manage to root in ground that is almost always frozen. No grain will sprout and no trace of man is to be found in all this vast solitude.” But he came across a species of ostrich, a bird “ten feet high,” of which he had previously been shown the eggs which were “as big as small pitchers.”
The central valley of the Pamirs along which the caravan advanced, led to difficult snow-passes of the Kizil Yart range, the highest peak of which soars to 26,000 feet. Having forced a way over ice and through snow, the long descent of the Eastern slopes was nearly at an end when a band of brigands was observed to be on the look out for prey. The traders fled, helter skelter, up the hill-side; and the robbers charged furiously at their laden elephants, several of which they killed, while others were drowned in trying to get across the torrents from the mountains. It was probably at this time that Hiuen-Tsiang lost his elephant. The thieves were soon fully occupied with their booty; the traders seized the opportunity, drew together again, and proceeded, with what goods they had been able to save, towards Kâshgar.
At Kâshgar the same custom obtained as at Kutchê: “When a child is born the head is compressed by a wooden board.” The people are “fierce and impetuous and most of them are deceitful and indifferent to polite manners and learning. They paint their bodies and eyelids.” But they show real skill in the making of hair-cloth and finely woven carpets. More than six hundred years later, Marco Polo travelled along the caravan route through Kâshgar and by Lob-Nor to China.