The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative — John Shaqi
The Gates of India: Being an Historical NarrativeHoldich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
History
The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative
Holdich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
Afghanistan -- Description and travel; Balochistan (Pakistan) -- Description and travel
section of the Rajput clan of Lumris, a proud race holding themselves
aloof from other clans and never intermarrying with them. There could
be no mistake about the Rajput origin of the red-skinned Gadur. He was
a Kshatrya of the lunar race, but he might very possibly represent the
ancient Gadrosii, even though he is no descendant of Kush. The other
Rajput tribes with whom the Gadurs coalesce have apparently held their
own in Las from a period quite remote, and must have been there when
Alexander passed that way.
Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them fresh importations from
Africa, others bred in the slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as
they have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny, well-developed
race of people, and some of the best of them are to be found as
stokers in the P. & O. service; but they do not represent the Asiatic
Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could hardly compile a gazetteer for the
Greeks which should include all the ethnographical information known
to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence Department could
compile a complete gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the
maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance of the huge
Empire which overshadowed them must have created the same feeling of
anxious suspicion that the unwieldy size of Russia presents to us, and
it is not very likely that military intelligence of a really practical
nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the Persian geographers and
military leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did
not know all that existed on the far Persian frontier. There are
tribes and peoples about Southern Baluchistan who are as ancient as
Herodotus but who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling tribe in
Makran until quite recently (when they were ousted by certain Sikh or
Rajput interlopers called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country
was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi valley is one of the
loveliest in a country which is apt to enhance the loveliness of its
narrow bands of luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It is
a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea, and must always have
been an object of envy to dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller
water-supply, more widely spread, turned many a valley green which is
now deep drifted with sand. Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they
can well boast the traditional respectability of age-long ancestry.
The Boledis are said to have dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks,
who ruled Makran in the seventeenth century, when they headed what is
known as the Baluch Confederation. This may be veritable history, but
their pride of race and origin, on whatever record it is based, has
come to an end now; it has been left to the present generation to see
the last of them. A few years ago there was living but one
representative of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady named
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