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Test Bank for Journey Across the Life Span Human Development and Health Promotion, 4th Edition: Polan instant download

The document provides links to various test banks and solution manuals for different editions of 'Journey Across the Life Span: Human Development and Health Promotion' and other related educational materials. It includes sample questions and answers related to health promotion, disease prevention, and nursing practices. The content is aimed at assisting students and professionals in the field of health and nursing education.

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d. Special
____ 7. Mrs. Jackson brings her 6-month-old infant to the clinic for immunization. This action demonstrates which
level of disease prevention?
a. Primary
b. Secondary
c. Tertiary
d. Rehabilitative
____ 8. A future national goal for health care is the:
a. Reduction of services
b. Decrease in managed care
c. Increase in Medicaid contribution
d. Elimination of disparities in health care
____ 9. Inadequate nutrition contributes to diseases such as:
a. Arthritis
b. Lupus
c. Cancer
d. Hearing loss
____ 10. In health promotion, the most important nursing role is:
a. Teaching safe health practices
b. Assessing the individual’s health needs
c. Reducing potential health risk factors
d. Changing established lifestyle
____ 11. A healthy person generally:
a. Lacks stability
b. Lacks energy
c. Is in denial
d. Is in harmony
____ 12. In a health model, the nurse as a collaborator is responsible for:
a. Teaching the patients about their disease process
b. Sharing and exchanging information with other health professionals
c. Demonstrating desired health behavior
d. Performing daily care needs
____ 13. Jennifer Joseph, a 60-year-old, has been instructed to begin a program of exercise by the public health nurse.
You can further explain to Mrs. Joseph that the benefits of exercise are:
a. An increase in blood supply to muscles and nerves
b. An increase in heart rate and rhythm
c. A decrease in the size of the heart muscle
d. A decrease in blood volume and oxygen demands
____ 14. Holistic health:
a. Excludes one’s physical well-being
b. Limits consideration of one’s social standing
c. Excludes environmental impact
d. Considers one’s mental well-being
____ 15. Which of the following is an example of health restoration?
a. Rehabilitation after surgery to replace the knee joint
b. Immunization against hepatitis B virus
c. Surgical excision of a breast cyst
d. Closure of an abdominal stoma
____ 16. A major objective of health promotion is to:
a. Decrease one’s stress level
b. Challenge health practices
c. Attain one’s level of optimal health
d. Provide self-actualization
____ 17. The most important goal in health restoration is to:
a. Regain losses
b. Compensate for losses
c. Attain acceptance
d. Provide sympathy
____ 18. Which of the following forces has no impact on changing one’s health behavior?
a. Family
b. Social pressures
c. Role models
d. Inherited traits
____ 19. The stressor most commonly associated with adolescence is:
a. A search for self-worth
b. A search for identity
c. Separation anxiety
d. Birth of a new sibling
____ 20. Based on the social readjustment rating scale, the most stressful event for an adult is:
a. Changing career
b. Changing residence
c. Divorce
d. Childbirth
____ 21. Virgil Grant, a patient recently diagnosed with AIDS, is having a healthy response to the stress in his life if he
demonstrates which of the following behaviors?
a. Denial
b. Withdrawal
c. Acceptance
d. Aggression
____ 22. Gary Byrd, a 24-year-old college student, tells the nurse he sometimes uses various illegal drugs. The nurse
can characterize Gary as a substance abuser if he:
a. Continues to be active in college affairs
b. Maintains his self-esteem
c. Begins to lose interest in his relationships
d. Has heightened interest in the opposite sex
____ 23. The highest percentage of accidents resulting from alcohol use involve:
a. Homicides
b. Drowning
c. Fires
d. Motor vehicle
____ 24. Sandra Gooden has just been told by the doctor that she is pregnant with her first baby. Which factor will
have a negative impact on Sandra’s ability to maintain good health during her pregnancy?
a. Poor relationship with her in-laws
b. Community recognition
c. Effective stress management
d. Economic well-being
____ 25. The level of health prevention which concentrates on retraining and educating to maximize the use of
remaining capacities is:
a. Primary prevention
b. Secondary prevention
c. Tertiary prevention
d. Disability prevention
____ 26. Preventative care including immunizations and regular yearly physical examinations are classified as what
type of health-care services?
a. Primary
b. Secondary
c. Tertiary
d. Collaborative
____ 27. National health insurance for persons 65 years and older is known as:
a. Medicaid
b. Medicare
c. Socialized medicine
d. Palliative care
____ 28. The nurse recognizes that the physiological responses to emotional stress are the result of:
a. Mental illness
b. Autonomic nervous stimulation
c. Powerlessness
d. Shame
____ 29. The nurse is teaching a community group about disease prevention. She is giving instructions regarding
secondary prevention and correctly includes:
a. Risk factors for heart disease
b. Limiting disability after injury
c. The importance of colorectal screening
d. The use of vitamins and balanced diet

True/False
Indicate whether the statement is true or false.

____ 30. Stress can be defined as anything, psychological or physiological, that upsets our equilibrium.

____ 31. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “A state of complete physical, mental, and social
well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

____ 32. Emotional maturity exists when a person is free of negative emotions.
Multiple Response
Identify one or more choices that best complete the statement or answer the question.

____ 33. Which is an example of a deterring behavior? (Select all that apply.)
a. Poor diet
b. Unsafe sex
c. Smoking and drugs
Ch01
Answer Section

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. ANS: D
In early civilization, illness was attributed to natural and supernatural forces.

PTS: 1
KEY: Client Needs: Physiological Integrity | Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment
2. ANS: B
In the 19th century, the development of bacteriology helped in the understanding of disease processes.

PTS: 1 KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment


3. ANS: B
Tuberculosis is one of several diseases that has recently resurfaced.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
4. ANS: C
Increasing the quality and years of healthy living is one major goal set in Healthy People 2010.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
5. ANS: B
Culture is an external force that can have many influences on an individual, including over health.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
6. ANS: A
Promoting health is an important goal toward optimal wellness.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
7. ANS: A
Primary prevention is aimed at disease prevention.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance
8. ANS: D
The national goal for the next decade is health care for all.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
9. ANS: C
Cancer has been linked to poor nutritional practices.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
10. ANS: A
An important goal for health promotion is helping individuals learn safe health choices.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance
11. ANS: D
Harmony or homeostasis means that the body can balance healthy and unhealthy forces.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
12. ANS: B
The nurse acts as a collaborator with other health professionals to promote positive patient outcomes.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance
13. ANS: A
Exercise helps stimulate increased blood supply, which nourishes the muscle cells.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Physiological Integrity
14. ANS: D
Holistic practices consider the whole person’s well-being.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
15. ANS: A
Health restoration implies rehabilitation to one’s optimal functioning.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
16. ANS: C
The focus of health promotion is individualized to bring the person to his or her best potential.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
17. ANS: B
Health restoration assists the person in learning to cope with losses.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
18. ANS: D
Inherited traits are those transmitted by genes and are out of a person’s control.

PTS: 1
KEY: Client Needs: Physiological Integrity | Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment
19. ANS: B
Adolescents are struggling to find out who they are.
PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
20. ANS: C
Divorce has been identified as one of life’s major stressors in that it breaks up the family unit.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Evaluation | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
21. ANS: C
The stage known as acceptance indicates that the individual has progressed to the final stage of the grieving
process.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Evaluation | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
22. ANS: C
Substance abuse is characterized by a history of personal problems.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Evaluation | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
23. ANS: D
Statistics show that alcohol use is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
24. ANS: A
The nuclear family and extended family have an important role in the well-being of the pregnant woman.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
25. ANS: C
This level of prevention minimizes the effects of long-term disease or disability. With rehabilitation, clients
can reach their highest level of functioning.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance
26. ANS: A
Primary health-care services are aimed at prevention of disease.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance
27. ANS: B
Medicare offers health insurance coverage to seniors 65 years and older.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Planning | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity
28. ANS: B
The brain and autonomic nervous system have a role in the physical changes in an emotional reaction.
PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Physiological Integrity
29. ANS: C
Secondary prevention includes screening for diseases.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Implementation | Client Needs: Health Promotion and
Maintenance

TRUE/FALSE

30. ANS: T
Stress is anything that upsets our equilibrium.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Psychological Integrity
31. ANS: T
WHO defines health as “A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence
of disease or infirmity.”

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Health Promotion
32. ANS: F
Emotional maturity exists when an individual is able to control and express his or her emotional responses in
socially appropriate ways.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

MULTIPLE RESPONSE

33. ANS: A, B, C
There are a number of behaviors that are deterrents to health, including lack of exercise, smoking, drug use,
poor nutrition, and unsafe sexual practices.

PTS: 1
KEY: Integrated Processes: Nursing Process: Assessment | Client Needs: Psychological Integrity
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1886. The latter is a hostage in Kashmîr, to secure the good behaviour of his
tribe, which is really infinitely superior in culture and piety to those around
them. The father, who is over 90, writes in Persian to the following effect,
after the usual compliments:—“The affairs of this place are by your fortune in
a fair way, and I am in good health and constantly ask the same for you from
the Throne which grants requests. Your kind favour with a drawing of the
Mosque has reached me, and has given me much pleasure and satisfaction.
The reason of the delay in its receipt and acknowledgment is due to the
circumstance that, owing to disturbances (fesád) I have not sent agents to
Kashmîr this year. After the restoration of peace, I will send [a letter] with
them. In the meanwhile, I have caught your hem [seek your protection] for
my son Habibullah Khan, a beloved son, about whom I am anxious; the
aforesaid son is a well-wisher to the illustrious English Government.—Za’far
Khan.” [The letter was apparently written in June last, when The Times
reported a “rising,” because the British Agent was at Chalt with 500 men.]
It seems to me that none but a farseeing man could, in the midst of a
misunderstanding, if not a fight, with us, so write to one in the enemy’s camp,
unless he were a true man alike in war and peace, and a ruler whose good-
will was worth acquiring. As for his son, I know him to be indeed well-
disposed to our Government. He was very popular among our officers when I
saw him in Kashmîr, owing to his modesty, amiability, and unsurpassed
excellence at Polo. In fact, my friendship with several of the chiefs since 1866
has aided our good relations with them; and it is a pity if they should be
destroyed for want of a little “savoir,” as also “savoir faire,” on our part.
Between the States of Nagyr and Hunza there exists a perpetual feud. They
are literally rivals, being separated by a swift-flowing river on which, at almost
regulated distances, one Nagyr fort on one bank frowns at the Hunza fort on
the other. The paths along the river sides are very steep, involving at times
springing from one ledge of a rock to another, or dropping on to it from a
height of six feet, when, if the footing is lost, the wild torrent sweeps one
away. Colonel Biddulph does not credit the Nagyris with bravery. History,
however, does not bear out his statement; and the defeat inflicted on the
Kashmîr troops under Nathu Shah in 1848 is a lesson even for the arrogance
of a civilized invader armed with the latest rifle. The Nagyris are certainly not
without culture; in music they were proficient before the Muhammadan piety
of the Shiah sect somewhat tabooed the art. At all events, they are different
in character from the Hunzas with whom they share the same language, and
their chiefs the same ancestry. The Hunzas, in whom a remnant of the Huns
may be found, were great kidnappers; but under Kashmîr influence they
stopped raiding since 1869, till the confusion incidental to our interference
revived their gone occupation. Indeed, it is asserted on good authority, that
even our ally of Chitrál, who had somewhat abandoned the practice of selling
his Shiah or Kalásha Kafir subjects into slavery, and who had so disposed of
the miners for not working his ruby mines to profit, has now returned to the
trade in men, “with the aid of our present of rifles and our moral support.” Nor
is Bokhara said to be behind Chitrál in the revival of the slave-trade from
Darwáz, in spite of Russian influence; so that we have the remarkable
instance of two great Powers both opposed to slavery and the slave-trade,
having revived it in their approach to one another. Nor is a third Power, quite
blameless in the matter; for when we worried Hunza, that robber-nest
remembered its old allegiance to distant Kitái and arranged with the Chinese
authorities at Yarkand to be informed of the departure of a caravan. Then,
after intercepting it on the Kulanuldi road, the Hunzas would take those they
kidnapped from it back for sale to Yarkand!
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.
Indeed, as has already been pointed out, the recrudescence of kidnapping
is largely due to the state of insecurity and confusion caused by our desire to
render the Afghan and the Chinese frontiers conterminous with our own, in
the vain belief that the outposts of three large and distant kingdoms, acting in
concert, will keep Russia more effectively out of India than a number of small
independent republics or principalities. Afghanistan may now be big, but every
so-called subject in her outlying districts is her inveterate foe. As stated in a
letter from Nevsky to the Calcutta Englishman, in connection with Colonel
Grambcheffsky’s recent explorations:
“One and all, these devastated tribes are firm in their conviction that the
raids of their Afghan enemies were prompted and supported by the gold of
Abdur Rahman’s English protectors. They will remember this on the plateau of
Pamir, and among the tribes of Kaffiristan.”
However colourable this statement may be as regards Shignán, Raushan,
and perhaps even Wakhan, I believe that the Kafirs are still our friends. At the
same time it should not be forgotten that, owing to the closing of the slave-
markets in Central Asia, the sale of Shiah subjects had temporarily stopped in
Chitrál. The Kafirs were being less molested by kidnapping Muhammadan
neighbours; the Hunzas went back to agriculture, which the Nagyris had
never abandoned; Kashmîr, India, and the Russian side of Central Asia
afforded no opening for the sale of human beings. The insensate ambition of
officials, British and Russian, the gift of arms to marauding tribes and the
destruction of Kashmîr influence, have changed all this, and it is only by a
return to “masterly inactivity,” which does not mean the continuance of the
Cimmerian darkness that now exists as to the languages and histories of the
most interesting races of the world, that the peace and pockets of three
mighty empires can be saved.
In the meanwhile, it is to the interest of Russia to force us into heavy
military expenditure by false alarms; to create distrust between ourselves and
China by pretending that Russia and England alone have civilizing missions in
Central Asia, with which Chinese tyranny would interfere; to hold up before us
the Will-o’-the-wisp of an impossible demarcation of the Pamirs, and finally, to
ally itself with China against India. For let it not be forgotten, that once the
Trans-Siberian railway is completed, China will be like wax in her hand; and
that she will be compelled to place her immense material in men and food at
the disposal of an overawing, but, as far as the personnel is concerned, not
unamiable neighbour. The tribes, emasculated by our overwhelming
civilization, and driven into three large camps, will no longer have the power
of resistance that they now possess separately.
Let us therefore leave intact the two great belts of territories that Nature
has raised for the preservation of peace in Asia—the Pamir with its adjacent
regions to the east and west, and the zone of the Hindukush with its hives of
independent tribes, intervening between Afghanistan on the one side and
Kashmîr on the other, till India proper is reached. This will never be the case
by a foreign invader, unless diplomatists “meddle and muddle,” and try to put
together what Nature has put asunder. What we require is the cultivation of
greater sympathy in our relations with natives; and, comparing big things with
small, it is to this feeling that I myself owed my safety, when I put off the
disguise in which I crossed the Kashmîr frontier in 1866 into countries then
wrongly supposed by our Government to be inhabited by cannibals. This
charge was also made, with equal error, by one tribe against the other. Then
too, as in 1886, the Indian Press spoke of Russian intrigues; but then, as in
1886, I found the very name of Russia to be unknown, except where it had
been learnt from a Kashmîr Munshi, who had no business to be there at all, as
the treaty of 1846, by which we sold Kashmîr to Ghulab Singh, assigned the
Indus as his boundary on the west. Now, as to the question as to “What and
where are the Pamirs?” I have already stated my view in a letter to the Editor
of the Morning Post, which I trust I may be allowed to quote:
“As some of the statements made at the Royal Geographical Society are
likely to cause a sense of false security, as dangerous to peace as a false
alarm, I write to say that ‘Pamirs’ do not mean ‘deserts,’ or ‘broken valleys,’
and that they are not uninhabitable or useless for movements of large bodies
of men. They may be all this in certain places, at certain periods of the year,
and under certain conditions; but had our explorers or statesmen paid
attention to the languages of this part of the world, as they should in regard
to every other with which they deal, they would have avoided many idle
conjectures and the complications that may follow therefrom. I do not wish
them to refer to philologists who have never been to the East, and who
interpret ‘Pamir’ as meaning the ‘Upa-Meru’ Mountain of Indian mythology,
but to the people who frequent the Pamirs during the summer months, year
after year, for purposes of pasturage, starting from various points, and who in
their own languages (Yarkandi, Turki, and Kirghiz) call the high plain, elevated
valley, table-land, or plateau which they come across ‘Pamir.’ There are,
therefore, in one sense many ‘Pamirs,’ and as a tout-ensemble, one ‘Pamir,’ or
geographically, the ‘Pamir.’ The legend of the two brothers, ‘Alichur and Pamir,’
is merely a personification of two plateaux. Indeed, the obvious and popular
idea which has always attached to the word ‘Pamir,’ is the correct one,
whether it is the geographical ‘roof of the world,’ the ‘Bám-i-dunya’ of the
poet, or the ‘Pamir-dunya’ of the modern journalist. We have, therefore, to
deal with a series of plateaux, the topographical limits of which coincide with
linguistic, ethnographical, and political limits. To the North, the Pamirs have
the Trans-Altaic Mountain range marking the Turki element, under Russian
influence; the Panja river, by whatever name, on the West is a Tadjik or
Iranian Frontier [Affghan]. The Sarikol on the East is a Tibetan, Mongolian, or
Chinese Wall, and the South is our natural frontier, the Hindukush, to go
beyond which is physical death to the Hindu, and political ruin to the holder of
India, as it also is certain destruction to the invader, except by one pass,
which I need not name, and which is accessible from a Pamir. That the Pamirs
are not uninhabitable may be inferred from Colonel Grambcheffsky’s account
[which is published at length elsewhere in this issue of the Asiatic Quarterly
Review]. A few passages from it must now suffice:—‘The Pamir is far from
being a wilderness. It contains a permanent population, residing in it both
summer and winter.’ ‘The population is increasing to a marked extent.’ ‘Slavery
on the Pamir is flourishing: moreover, the principal contingents of slaves are
obtained from Chatrar, Jasen, and Kanshoot, chanates under the protectorate
of England.’ ‘On descending into Pamir we found ourselves between the
cordons of the Chinese and Affghan armies.’ ‘The population of Shoognan,
numbering 2,000 families, had fled to Pamir, hoping to find a refuge in the
Russian Provinces’ (from ‘the untold atrocities which the Affghans were
committing in the conquered provinces of Shoognan,’ etc.). ‘I term the whole
of the tableland “Pamir,” in view of the resemblance of the valleys to each
other.’
“The climate of the Pamirs is variable, from more than tropical heat in the
sun to arctic cold in the shade, and in consequence, is alike provocative and
destructive of life. Dr. G. Capus, who crossed them from north to south,
exactly as Mr. Littledale has done, but several months in the year before him,
says in his ‘Observations Météorologiques sur le Pamir,’ which he sent to the
last Oriental Congress,—‘The first general fact is the inconstancy of severe
cold. The nights are generally coldest just before sunrise.’ ‘We found an
extreme amplitude of 61 deg. between the absolute minimum and maximum,
and of 41 deg. between the minimum and the maximum in the shade during
the same day.’ ‘The thermometer rises and falls rapidly with the height of the
sun.’ ‘Great cold is less frequent and persistent than was believed to be the
case at the period of the year dealt with’ (March 13 to April 19), ‘and is
compensated by daily intervals of elevation of temperature, which permit
animal life, represented by a fairly large number of species, and including
man, to keep up throughout the winter under endurable conditions.’ Yet ‘the
water-streak of snow, which has melted in contact with a dark object, freezes
immediately when put into the shadow of the very same object.’ ... The
solution of political difficulties in Central Asia is not in a practically impossible,
and certainly unmaintainable, demarcation of the Pamirs, but in the
strengthening of the autonomy of the most interesting races that inhabit the
series of Circassias that already guard the safety alike of British, Chinese, and
of Russian dominion or spheres of influence in Central Asia.”

Woking, Nov. 29.


It is not impossible that the tribes may again combine in 1892 as they did in
1866 to turn out the Kashmîr troops from Gilgit. The want of wisdom shown in
forcing on the construction of a road from Chalt to Aliabad, in the centre of
Hunza, as announced in to-day’s Times, must bring on, if not a confederation
of the tribes against us, at any rate their awakened distrust. It is doubtful
whether it was ever expedient to establish an outpost at Gilgit, and the
carrying it still farther to the traditional apple of discord, the holding of Chalt,
which commands the Hunza road, is still more impolitic. As in Affghanistan, so
here, whatever power does not interfere is looked upon as the saviour from
present evils. Once we have created big agglomerations under Affghanistan,
or China, or Kashmir, we are liable to the dangers following either on collapse,
want of cohesion, treachery from within, the ambitions of a few men at the
respective courts, or, as with us, to serious fluctuations in foreign politics due
to the tactics of English parties. The change, therefore, from natural
boundaries to the wirepulling of diplomatists at Kabul, Peking, or Downing
Street is not in the interests of peace, of our empire, or of civilization.
Besides, it should not be forgotten that we have added an element of
disturbance, far more subtle than the Babu, to our frontier difficulties. The
timid Kashmîri is unsurpassed as an intriguer and adventurer among tribes
beyond his frontier. The time seems to have arrived when, in the words of the
well-known Persian proverb,[107] the sparseness of races round the Pamirs
should bid us to be on our guard against the Affghan, the “bad-raced”
Kashmîrî, and the Kambó (supposed to be the tribe on the banks of the
Jhelum beyond Mozaffarabad). Perhaps, however, the Kambó is the Heathen
Chinee; and the proverb would then be entirely applicable to the present
question. After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia will be
able to exert the greatest pressure on China. The Russian strength at
Vladivostok is already enormous, and when the time comes she can hurl an
overwhelming force on what remains of Chinese Manchuria, before which
Chinese resistance will melt like snow. Peking and the north of China are thus
quite at the mercy of Russia. She will find there the most populous country of
those she rules in Asia, and with ample supplies. China has a splendid raw
material, militarily speaking; and Russia could there form the biggest army
that has ever been seen in Asia, to hold in terrorem over a rival or to hurl at
the possessions of a foe.
It is against such possibilities that the maintenance of “masterly inactivity,”
qualified by the moral and, if need be, pecuniary or other material support of
the Anglo-Indian Government is needed. This is the object of this paper,
before I enter into the more agreeable task of describing the languages,
customs, and country of perhaps the most interesting races that inhabit the
globe.

The Times of the 30th November publishes a map of the Pamirs and an
account of the questions connected with them that, like many other
statements in its articles on “Indian affairs,” are incorrect and misleading.
Having been on a special mission by the Panjab Government, in 1866, when I
discovered the races and languages of “Dardistan,” and gave the country that
name, and again having been on special duty with the Foreign Department of
the Government of India in 1886 in connection with the Boorishki language
and race of Hunza, Nagyr, and a part of Yasin, regarding which I have recently
completed Part I. of a large work, I may claim to speak with some authority
as regards these districts, even if I had no other claim. The point which I wish
to specially contradict at present, is the one relating to the Russians bringing
themselves into almost direct contact with “the Hunza and other tribes subject
to Kashmîr and, as such, entitled to British protection and under British
control.”
Dr. Leitner as a Bukhara Maulvi, when crossing the Frontier in 1866
during the Kashmîr War with the Dard Tribes.

When I crossed the then Kashmîr frontier in 1866, in the disguise of a


Bokhara Maulvi, armed with a testimonial of Muhammadan theological
learning, I found that the tribes of Hunza, Nagyr, Dareyl, Yasin, and Chitrál
had united under the leadership of the last-named to expel the Kashmîr
invaders from the Gilgit Fort. My mission was a purely linguistic one; but the
sight of dying and dead men along the road, that of heads stuck up along the
march of the Kashmîr troops, and the attempts made on my life by our
feudatory, the late Maharaja of Kashmîr, compelled me to pay attention to
other matters besides the languages, legends, songs, and fables of the
interesting races with whom I now came in contact under circumstances that
might not seem to be favourable to the accomplishment of my task. I had
been warned by the then Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab, Sir Donald
McLeod, whose like we have not seen again, not to cross the frontier, as the
tribes beyond were supposed to be cannibals; but as I could not get the
information of which I was in search within our frontier, I had to cross it. My
followers were frightened off by all sorts of wild stories, till our party was
reduced from some fifty to three, including myself. The reason for all this was,
that the Maharaja was afraid that I should find out and report his breach of
the Treaty by which we sold Kashmîr to him in 1846, and in which the Indus is
laid down as his boundary on the west. In 1866, therefore, at any rate, even
the tenure of Gilgit, which is on the other side of the Indus, was contested
and illegal, whilst the still more distant Hunza and Nagyr had more than once
inflicted serious punishment on the Kashmîr troops that sought to invade
districts that have preserved their autonomy during the last fourteen
centuries, as was admitted by The Times of the 2nd November, 1891, before
its present change with the times, if an unintentional pun may be permitted.
Then, as ever, the Anglo-Indian newspapers spoke of Russian intrigues in
those regions. I am perfectly certain that if, instead of the fussiness of our
statesmen and the sensationalism of our journals, the languages, history, and
relations of these little-known races had been studied by them, we should
never have heard of Russia in that part of the East. It is also not by
disingenuousness and short cuts on maps or in diplomacy, but by knowledge,
that physical, ethnographical, and political problems are to be solved; nor will
the bold and brilliant robberies of Russia be checked by our handing over the
inhabitants of the supposed “cradle of the human race” to Affghan, Kashmîr,
or Chinese usurpations. Above all, it is a loss of time to palm off myths as
history in order to suit the policy or conceal the ignorance of the moment.
Just as little as Darwaz and Karategin are ancestral dominions of Bokhara,
and, therefore, under Russian influence, so little did even Badakhshan, and
much less so, Raushan, Shignan, and Wakhan, ever really belong to
Affghanistan. As for the Chinese hold on Turkistan, we ourselves denied it
when we coquetted with Yakub Khush Begi, though Kitái was ever the
acknowledged superior of Eastern Turkistan. If Hunza admits any allegiance, it
is to China, and not to Kashmîr; and the designations of offices of rule in that
country are of Chinese, and not of Aryan origin, including even “Thàm,” the
title of its Raja.
As a matter of fact, however, the vast number of tribes that inhabit the
many countries between the Indus and the Kuner own no master except their
own tribal head or the tribal council. From kidnapping Hunza, where the right
to plunder is monarchical, hereditary, and “ayeshó” = “heaven-born,” to the
peace and learning of republican Kandiá or Gabriál, all want to be left alone. If
a neighbour becomes troublesome, he is raided on till an interchange of
presents restores harmony. It is impossible to say that either side is tributary
to the other. The wealthier gives the larger present; the bigger is considered
the superior in a general sort of way, and so two horses, two dogs, and a
handful of gold dust are yearly sent by Hunza to Kashmîr or to Yarkand as a
cloak for much more substantial exactions in return. Nagyr sends a basket of
apricots instead of the horses and dogs. In 1871 Chitrál still paid a tribute to
Badakhshan in slaves, but it would be absurd to infer from this fact that
Chitrál ever acknowledged the suzerainty of Jehandar Shah, or of the Affghan
faction that dispossessed him. Nor were the Khaibaris, or other highway
robbers, our rulers, because we paid them blackmail, or they our subjects
because they might bring us “sweetmeats.”
The points in which most Englishmen are as deficient as Russians are
generally proficient, are language and a sympathetic manner with natives.
That, however, linguistic knowledge is not useless may be inferred from the
fact that it enabled me, to use the words of my Chief, Commissary General H.
S. Jones, C.B., during the Russian War in 1855, “to pass unharmed through
regions previously unknown and among tribes hitherto unvisited by any
European.”
Also in topography and geography linguistics are necessary; and the absurd
mistakes now made at certain learned societies and in certain scientific
journals, regarding the Pamirs, would be avoided by a little study of the
Oriental languages concerned. In 1866, the map which accompanies my
philological work on “Dardistan” shows, on linguistic grounds, and on the
basis of native itineraries, the various Pamirs that have been partially revealed
within the last few weeks, or have been laboriously ascertained by expensive
Russian and British expeditions between 1867 and 1890. The publication of
my material, collected at my own expense and which shall no longer be
delayed, would have saved many complications; but when, e.g., I pointed out,
in 1866, that the Indus, after leaving Bunji, ran west instead of south, as on
the then existing maps, I got into trouble with the Topographical Survey,
which “discovered” the fact through its well-known “Mulla” in 1876. The
salvation of India that is not made “departmentally” is crucified; and whoever
does not belong to the regular military or civil services has no business to
know or to suggest. Mr. Curzon, when presiding at a meeting of the late
Oriental Congress, assured us that a new era had risen; but only the other
night, at the Royal Geographical Society, a complaint was made of the
reluctance of official departments in giving the Society information. As a rule,
the mysteriousness of offices only conceals their ignorance, of which we have
an instance in Capt. Younghusband being sent to shut the passes after the
Russians had already stolen a march on, or through, them.
The neutralization of the Pamirs is the only solution of a difficulty created by
the conjectural treaties of diplomatists and the ambition of military emissaries.
Left as a huge happy hunting-ground for sportsmen, or as pasturage for
nomads from whatever quarter, the Pamirs form the most perfect “neutral
zone” conceivable. That the wanderings of these nomads should be
accompanied by territorial or political claims, whether by Russia, China,
Affghanistan, Kashmir, or ourselves, is the height of absurdity. As for Hunza-
Nagyr, the sooner they are left to themselves the better for us, who are not
bound to help Kashmîr in encroaching on them. Kashmîr managed them very
fairly after 1848; and when it was occasionally defeated, its prestige did not
suffer, for the next summer invariably found the tribal envoys again suing for
peace and presents. The sooner the Gilgit Agency is withdrawn, the greater
will be our reputation for fair dealing. Besides, we can take hostages from the
Chiefs’ families as guarantees of future tranquillity. Hunza-Nagyr are certainly
not favourable to Russia, whilst Nagyr is decidedly friendly to us. The
sensational account of Colonel Grambcheffsky’s visit to Hunza, which he
places on his map where Nagyr is, seems to be one of the usual traps to
involve us in great military expenditure and to alienate the tribes from us. It is
also not creditable that, for party or personal purposes, the peaceful and
pious Nagyris,—whom our own Gilgit Resident, Colonel Biddulph, has reported
on as distinguished for “timidity and incapacity for war,” “never having joined
the Hunza raids,” “slavery being unknown in Nagyr,”—should be described as
“kidnappers,” “raiders along with Hunza,” “slave-dealers,” “robbers,” and
“scoundrels,”—statements made by a correspondent from Gilgit in a morning
newspaper of to-day, and to all of which I give an unqualified contradiction.
The establishment of the Gilgit Agency has already drawn attention to the
shortest road for the invasion of India; and it is significant that its advocate at
Gilgit should admit that all the tribes of the Indus Valley “sympathized with
the Hunzas,” from whose depredations they are erroneously supposed to have
suffered, and that they were likely “to attack the British from behind by a
descent on the Gilgit road” to Kashmîr. Why should “the only other exit from
Gilgit by way of the Indus Valley be through territories held by tribes hostile to
the British”? Have the Gilgit doings already alienated the poor, but puritanical
Chilásis, tributaries of Kashmîr, who adjoin our settled British district of
Kaghan? Are we to dread the Republic of Muhammadan learning, Kandiá, that
has not a single fort; pastoral Dareyl; the Koli-Palus traders; agricultural
Tangir, and other little Republics—one only of eleven houses? As for the places
beyond them, our officials at Attock, Peshawur, Rawalpindi, and Abbottabad
will deal with the Pathan tribes in their own neighbourhood, which have
nothing to do with the adjoining Republics of quiet, brave, and intelligent
Dards, on both sides of the Indus, up to Gilgit, to which I have referred, and
which deserve our respectful study, sympathy, and unobtrusive support.
G. W. Leitner.
16th December, 1891.

The following account, published by Reuter’s Telegram Company, will


supplement the preceding article:—
“Woking, Dec. 13.
“A representative of Reuter’s Agency interviewed Dr. Leitner at his residence
at Woking to-day, with the object of eliciting some information on the subject
of the Hunza and Nagyr tribes, with whom the British forces are at present in
conflict.
“Dr. Leitner, it is needless to say, is the well-known discoverer of the races
and languages of Dardistan (the country between Kabul and Kashmir), which
he so named when sent on a linguistic mission by the Punjab Government in
1864, at a time when the various independent tribes, including Hunza and
Nagyr, had united in order to turn the troops of the Maharaja of Kashmir out
of Gilgit. At that time it was considered that the treaty of 1846, by which
Great Britain sold Kashmir to the Maharaja, had confined him to the Indus as
his westward boundary, and had therefore rendered his occupation of Gilgit
an encroachment and breach of treaty.
“Dr. Leitner, although the country was in a state of war, which is not
favourable to scientific research, managed to collect a mass of information,
and a fine ethnographical collection, which is at the museum at Woking. He
has also made many friends in the country, and is doubtless the highest, if not
the only, authority regarding these countries.
“Dr. Leitner, who was quite unprepared for to-day’s visit, said that the
relations which he had kept up with the natives of Gilgit, Hunza, Nagyr, and
Yasin forced him to the conclusion that a conflict had been entered into which
might have easily been avoided by a little more sympathy and knowledge,
especially of the Nagyr people. Indeed, it was not a light matter that could
have induced the venerable chief of Nagyr to make common cause with his
hereditary foe of Hunza, unless he feared that the British threatened their
respective independence.
“Not many weeks ago Dr. Leitner received a letter from the chief of Nagyr,
in which he recommended to his kind attention his son, now in Kashmir, on
the ground that he, even more so than any other member of his numerous
family, was a well-wisher to the British Government. At that time the chief
could not have had any feelings of animosity, although he might have
protested, together with his rival of Hunza, against the British occupation of
Chalt. In fact, it was not true that Nagyr and Hunza were really subject to
Kashmir, except in the vague way in which these States constantly recognised
the suzerainty of a neighbouring power in the hope of getting substantial
presents for their offerings of a few ounces of gold dust, a couple of dogs, or
basket of apricots, etc. Thus Chitrál, the ally of Great Britain, used to pay a
tribute of slaves to the Ameers of Badakshan; but it would be absurd on that
ground to render Chitrál a part of Afghanistan, because Badakshan now, in a
manner, belongs to Abdurrahman. Hunza, again, sends a tribute to China;
and, in a general way, China is the only Power that ever had a shadow of
claim on these countries, but it is a mere shadow. Dr. Leitner said, the only
policy for Great Britain is, in the words of the Secretary of State or Viceroy, ‘to
maintain and strengthen all the indigenous Governments.’ This policy he
would extend to the triangle which has Peshawur for its base, and thereby
interpose a series of almost impregnable mountainous countries, which would
be sufficiently defended by the independence of their inhabitants. If Circassia
could oppose Russia for thirty years, even although Russia had the command
of the Black Sea, how much more effective would be the resistance of the
innumerable Circassias which Providence had placed between ourselves and
the Russian frontier in Asia? We ought to have made these tribes look upon us
as a distant but powerful friend, ready to help them in an emergency; but
now, by attacking two of them, we caused Russia to be looked upon as the
coming Saviour; indeed, the people of Wakhan, on the Pamir side of Hunza,
were already doing so, whilst Shignan and Roshan, which had been almost
depopulated by our friends, the Afghans, had already begun to emigrate into
Russian territory. Here Dr. Leitner added that the Russian claims through
Bokhara were as illusory as those of Kashmir, and historically even less
founded than those of China. Indeed, no one had a right to these countries
except the indigenous peoples and chiefs who inhabited them; and in this
scramble for the regions round the Pamir, great Britain was simply breaking
down her natural defences by stamping out the independence of native tribes
and making military roads; for it was the absence of those roads on the
British side that rendered it impossible to an invader to do England any real
harm or to advance on India proper.
Asked why the trouble had broken out at the present time, Dr. Leitner said,
that he had been kept without information of the immediate cause, but he felt
certain that it was owing to the attempt to construct a military road to Hunza,
whereby England would only facilitate the advent of a possible invader from
that direction, besides making Hunza throw in its lot with that invader. It was
perfectly untrue, as alleged in some of the Indian papers, that the Nagyris
were kidnappers, and that our attack would be an advantage to the cause of
anti-slavery. The fact was just the other way. Kidnapping had been stopped in
1869 as far as Hunza was concerned.
The Nagyris never raided at all; Chitrál also gave up selling its Káfir or Shiah
subjects into slavery when the markets of Badakshan were closed; but now
that confusion had caused the English and Russian advance, Hunza had again
taken to raiding, and Chitrál to selling slaves. As for Nagyr, the case was quite
different; they were an excellent people and very quiet, so much so that
Colonel Biddulph, the Resident, described them as “noted for timidity and
incapacity for war,” whereas in his “Tribes of the Hindu Kush” he also states
that the people of Hunza are not warlike in the sense in which the Afghans
are said to be so. No doubt the Nagyris dislike war, but would fight bravely if
driven to do so. Colonel Biddulph adds: “They are settled agricultural
communities, proud of the independence they have always maintained for
fourteen centuries, hemmed in by lofty mountains, and living under rulers
who boast of long, unbroken descent from princes of native blood.” He also
bears testimony to the fact that “the Nagyr people were never concerned in
these raids, and slavery does not exist among them.” At the same time Dr.
Leitner fully admitted that the Hunza people were not a model race, since
they used to be desperate raiders and kidnappers, and very immoral and
impious. The father of the present king used to dance in a state of
drunkenness in the mosque; but, on the other hand, we were not bound to be
the reformers of Hunza by pulling down one of the bulwarks to our Indian
Empire. Hunza was a picturesque country in every sense; it was nominally
governed by fairies: ecstatic women were the prophetesses of the tribe,
recounted its past glories, and told what was going on in the neighbouring
valleys, so they were its historians and journalists as well as its prophetesses.
No war was undertaken unless the fairies gave their consent, and the chief
fairy, Yudeni, who protects the “Tham” (a Chinese title), has no doubt already
struck the sacred drum in order to call the men of the country to defend the
“Heaven-born,” as their chief is called. The two “Thams” of Hunza and Nagyr,
who have a common ancestry, are also credited with the power of causing
rain, and there would certainly appear to be some foundation for this
remarkable fact.
The two tribes are great polo players; archery on horseback is common
amongst them; and they are very fair ibex hunters.
The people of Nagyr are as pious and gentle as those of Hunza are the
contrary. Their language went back to simple sounds as indicative of a series
of human relations or experiences, and clearly showed that the customs and
associations of a race were at the basis of so-called rules of grammar. Nothing
more wonderful than their language could be conceived; it went to the root of
human thought as expressed in language, but the language had already
suffered by foreign influences between 1866, when one son of the Rajah of
Nagyr taught him, and 1886, when another son of the Rajah continued his
lessons.
As regards religion, the Hunzas are Mulais, a mysterious and heretical sect,
akin to the Druses of the Lebanon, practising curious rites, and practically
infidels. He had obtained a few pages of their secret Bible, the Kelam-i-pir,
which throws much light on the doctrines of the so-called “assassins” during
the Crusades. The Nagyris are pious Muhammadans of the Shiah
denomination.
Dr. Leitner then showed the map accompanying his linguistic work on
Dardistan. After comparing it with the most recent Russian and British maps,
that of Dr. Leitner gives the fullest and clearest information, not only as
regards Hunza-Nagyr, where all the places where fighting has occurred are
marked, but also as regards the various Pamirs, thus anticipating in 1866 on
linguistic grounds and native itineraries the different Pamirs that have recently
been settled geographically. It shows that the ethnographical frontier of the
Pamirs to the north are the Turki-speaking nomads of the trans-Altaic range
(now Russian); to the west the Persian, or Tajiks (now Afghan); to the south
the Aryan Hindu Kush [British]; and to the east the wall of the Serikol
Mountains, dividing or admitting Chinese, Tibetan, or Mongolian influence.
The indeterminate river courses through the Pamir, or a line stretched across
its plateaux, valleys, and mountains, are obviously an unmaintainable
demarcation, which is liable to be transgressed by shepherds under whatever
rule; but the whole of the Pamirs together, as a huge and happy hunting-
ground, are, no doubt, if neutralized by the three Powers concerned, the best
possible frontier, as “no man’s land,” and a perfect neutral zone. “What
matter,” continued Dr. Leitner, “if the passes are easy of access on the Russian
side, it is on the descent, and on the ascent on our side that almost
insuperable difficulties begin. Where we are now fighting in Hunza-Nagyr only
the low state of the river which divides Hunza from Nagyr enables us to make
a simultaneous advance on both. Otherwise we should have to let ourselves
man by man down from one ledge of rock to another, and if we miss our
footing be whirled away in the most terrible torrent the imagination can
conceive. Why, then, destroy such a great defence in our favour if Hunza is
kept friendly, as it so easily can be, especially with the pressure exercised on
it by the Nagyris, whose forts frown on those of Hunza all down the river that
separates their countries? I cannot conceive anything more wanton or suicidal
than the present advance even if we should succeed in removing one of the
most important landmarks in the history of the human race by shooting down
the handful of Nagyris and Hunzas that oppose us. They preserve the pre-
historic remnants of legends and customs that explain much that is still
obscure in the life and history of European races. A few hundred pounds a
year judiciously spent and the promise of the withdrawal of the Gilgit Agency,
which was already once before attacked when under Colonel Biddulph, would
be a far better way of securing peace than shooting down with Gatlings and
Martini-Henry rifles people who defend their independence within their crags
with bows, arrows, battleaxes, and a few muskets; and promise of the
withdrawal of the Gilgit Agency might be contingent upon the increase of the
number of hostages belonging to the chiefs’ families that are now annually
sent to Kashmir as a guarantee of friendly relations.
The Hunzas and Nagyris are not to be despised as foes; they are very good
marksmen. In 1886, when the Kashmir troops thought they had cleared the
plain before the Gilgit Fort entirely of enemies, and not a person was to be
seen outside it, the tribesmen would glide along the ground unperceived
behind a stone pushed in front of them, and resting their old flint muskets on
them shoot off the Maharajah’s Sepoys whenever they showed themselves
outside the fort. Indeed, it was this circumstance that induced Dr. Leitner to
abandon the protection of the fort and make friends with the tribesmen
outside. All the tribes desired was to be left alone in their mountain
fastnesses. They had sometimes internecine feuds, but would unite against
the common foe. It was merely emasculating their powers of resistance to
subject them, either on the one side to Bokhara, which meant Russia, or to
Afghanistan or Kashmir, which meant Great Britain, or to China, which meant
dependence on a Power that might be utilized any day against Great Britain
after the completion of the trans-Siberian railway. Diplomatists, frontier
delimitation commissions, and officers, both British and Russian, anxious for
promotion, had, continued Dr. Leitner, created the present confusion; and it
was now high time to rely rather on the physical obstacles that guaranteed
the safety alike of the British, Russian, and Chinese frontiers than on the
chapter of political accidents.
Dr. Leitner, who is going to give a lecture at the Westminster Town-hall to-
morrow afternoon on “The Races, Religions, and Politics of the Pamir
Regions,” then showed our representative Col. Grambcheffsky’s map, which
put Hunza where Nagyr ought to be, and ignored the latter place altogether,
just as did the last map of the Geographical Society in connection with Mr.
Littledale’s tour. Grambcheffsky’s map, however, had since been corrected by
evidently an English map, and it was strange that Russians had easier access
to English maps than Englishmen themselves. In fact, all this secrecy, Dr.
Leitner maintained, was injurious to the acquisition of full knowledge
regarding imperfectly known regions. Attention was then directed to a number
of maps, that of Mr. Drew, a Kashmir official, showing Hunza-Nagyr to be
beyond Kashmir influence. This was practically confirmed by several official
maps and the statements of Colonels Biddulph and Hayward, the latter of
whom placed the Kashmir frontier towards Hunza at Nomal, whilst the British
are now fighting sixteen and a half miles beyond in front of Mayun, where the
first Hunza fort is. The Nagyr frontier Dr. Leitner places at Jaglot, which is
nineteen miles from Nilt, where we are simultaneously fighting the first Nagyr
fort.
Dr. Leitner, in conclusion, expressed his conviction, from his knowledge of
the people concerned, that any one with a sympathetic mind could get them
to do anything in reason; but that encroachments, whether overt or covert,
would be resisted to the utmost. Indeed, England’s restlessness had brought
on the present trouble.
In 1866, he stated, the very name of Russia was unknown in these parts,
and in 1886 was only known to a few. Yet the English Press in both these
years spoke of Russian intrigues among the tribes. He did not fear them as
long as the Indian Empire relied on its natural defences, its inner strength,
and on justice to its chiefs and people, and as long as its policy with the tribes
was guided by knowledge and good feeling.

APPENDIX II.
NOTES ON RECENT EVENTS IN CHILÁS AND CHITRÁL.

In 1866 I was sent by the Punjab Government on a linguistic mission to


Kashmir and Chilás at the instance of the Bengal Asiatic Society and on the
motion of the late Sir George Campbell, who hoped to identify Kailás or the
Indian Olympus with Chilás.[108] Although unable to support that conjecture, I
collected material which was published in Part I. of my “Dardistan” and which
the Government declared “as throwing very considerable and important light
on matters heretofore veiled in great obscurity.” That some obscurity still
exists, is evident from the Times telegram of to-day (5th December, 1892), in
which an item of news from the Tak [Takk] valley is described as coming from
Chitrál, a distant country with which Chilás has nothing to do. The Takk village
is fortified, and through the valley is the shortest and easiest road to our
British district of Kaghán. It is alleged that some headmen of Takk wished to
see Dr. Robertson at Gilgit, who thereupon sent a raft to bring them, but the
raft was fired on and Capt. Wallace, who went to its assistance, was
wounded. [Chilás is on the Kashmir side of the Indus, and the Gilgit territory
is reached by crossing the Indus at Bunji.]
The incident is ascribed either to “the treachery of the men who professed
willingness to come in” or to the mischievousness of “other persons.” It is
probable from this suggestion of treachery and the unconscious use of the
words “to come in,” which is the Anglo-Indian equivalent for “surrender,” that
the headmen of Takk were not willing to make over their Fort to the British or
to open the road to Gilgit. The Takk incident, therefore, is not a part of the so-
called “Chitrál usurpation,” under which heading it immediately appears, but is
a part of our usurpation on the tribes inhabiting the banks of the Indus. In
1843, these tribes inflicted a severe loss on the Sikh invaders, and in my
“history of the wars with Kashmir” the part taken by the manly defenders of
Takk, now reduced from 131 to some 90 houses, is given in detail. It seems to
me that as the Gilgit force was unable to support “the Chitrál usurpation” of
our protégé, Afzul-ul-Mulk, owing to his being killed by his uncle Sher Afzul, it
is to be employed to coerce the Indus tribes to open out a road which ought
never to have been withdrawn from their hold. About 50 years ago the Takk
men were stirred into so-called rebellion by Kashmir agents in order to justify
annexation. It is to be hoped that history will not repeat itself, or that, at any
rate, the next 50 years will see the Indus tribes as independent and peaceful
as they have been since 1856, especially in Chilás (before 1892), and as
mysterious as Hunza ought to have remained till our unnecessary attack on
that country caused practically unknown Russia to be looked upon as the
Saviour of Nations “rightly struggling to be free” (see Baron Vrevsky’s reply to
the Hunza deputation). Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat; and no
greater instance of folly can be conceived, than the construction of a military
road through countries in which the chamois is often puzzled for its way. Nor
was the attention of the Russians drawn to them before we made our own
encroachments.
As for the Pamirs, whatever may be the present interpretation of Prince
Gortchakoff’s Convention, the Russians were unwilling to let political
consequences or limits accompany the erratic wanderings of Kirghiz sheep in
search of pasturage in that region. Prince Gortchakoff’s advocacy of a Neutral
Zone and of the autonomy of certain tribes was justified by the facts (which
he, however, rather guessed than knew) and was worthy alike of that
Diplomatist and of our acceptance in the interests of India and of peace. The
incorporation of certain Districts in the domain, or under the sphere of
influence, of Afghanistan, was distasteful to tribes attached to their hereditary
rulers or to republican institutions and was not too willingly accepted by the
Amir of Afghanistan, who now expects us to defend the white Elephants that
we have given him better than we did Panjdeh. Some Muláis that had fled
from Russian tyranny to Afghan territory assured me that “the finger of an
Afghan was more oppressive than the whole Russian army.” Indeed, so far as
Central Asia is concerned, Russia, with the exception of certain massacres,
has hitherto behaved, on the whole, as a great civilizing power.[109]
As for Sirdar Nizám-ul-Mulk, this is his name and not his title. He is the
“Mihtar” or “Prince” Nizám-ul-Mulk, and neither an Indian “Sirdár” nor a
“Nizám.” He is also the “Badshah” of Turikoh, this being the district assigned
to him in his father’s lifetime as the heir-apparent. He was snubbed by us for
offering to relieve that excellent officer, Col. Lockhart, when a prisoner in
Wakhan! He has written to me from Turikoh for “English phrases and words
with their Persian equivalents as a pleasure and a requirement.” This does not
look like hostility to the British. He spoke to me in 1886 of his brother Afzul’s
bravery with affection and pride, though he has ever maintained his own
acknowledged right as the successor of his father Amán-ul-Mulk. If he has
been alienated from us or has ever been tempted to throw himself into the
arms of Russia, it has most assuredly been our fault. Besides, just as we have
abandoned the Shiah Hazaras, our true friends during the late Afghan War, to
be destroyed by their religious and political foe, the Sunni Amir Abdurrahman,
so have the Amir Sher Ali and the Tham of Hunza, Safdar Ali Khan, rued their
trust in Russian Agents. I regret, therefore, to find in the Times telegram of
to-day that “the Nizám” “is acting without the support of the British Agent”
“who has not interfered,” when he had already interfered in favour of the
usurper Afzul-ul-Mulk.
As for the connivance of Amir Abdurrahman, my “rough history of Dardistan
from 1800 to 1872” shows that, in one sense, Chitrál is tributary to
Badakhshán and as we have assigned Badakhshán to the Amir, he, no doubt,
takes an interest in Chitrál affairs. I believe, however, that interest to be
somewhat platonic, and he knows that his friend Jehandár Shah (the late
wrongfully deposed hereditary ruler of Badakhshán) never paid any tribute to
Afghanistan. But Chitrál once also paid tribute to Dîr, with whose able Chief,
Rahmat-ullah-Khan, “the Nizám” is connected by marriage. Chitrál on the
other hand has received a subsidy from Kashmir since 1877, but this was as
much a tribute from Kashmir to Aman-ul-Mulk, as a sign of his subjection to
Kashmir, for shortly after he made offers of allegiance to Kabul. With all alike
it is

“The good old rule, the simple plan,


That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.”

It is misleading to speak of their relations to neighbouring States as


“tributary.” Are the Khyberis tributary to us or we to them, because we pay
them a tribute to let our merchants travel through their Pass? Have we never
ourselves come, first as suppliants, then as merchants, then as guests, then
as advisers, then as protectors, and, finally, as conquerors?
The procedure of Afghanistan, of Chitrál, of Kashmir, and of our own is very
much alike and so are the several radii of influence of the various factors in
“the question.” We have our fringe of independent frontier tribes with whom
we flirt, or wage war, as suits the convenience of the moment. Afghanistan
has a similar fringe of independent Ishmaelites round it and even through it,
whose hands are against everybody and everybody’s hands against them.
Chitrál is threatened all along its line by the Kafirs, who even make a part of
Badakhshán insecure, but are nevertheless our very good friends. Kashmir has
its fringe on its extreme border, especially since, in violation of our treaty of
1846, it has attacked countries beyond the Indus on the west, including the
Kunjûtis of Hunza, who resumed their raiding—which had ceased in 1867—
during and after Col. Lockhart’s visit in 1886. Yet there can be little doubt
about “the loyalty” of those concerned. The Amirs of Afghanistan consider
themselves “shields of India,” as I have heard two of them say, and so did our
Ally of Kashmir, who ought never to have been reduced to a subordinate
feudatory position. What wonder then that old Amán-ul-Mulk of Chitrál should
also have tried to become a buffer between Afghanistan on the West, Kashmir
on the East, India on the South and, latterly, Russia in the North, if indeed the
whole story of Russian intrigue in Chitrál be at all truer than a similar mare’s
nest which we discovered in Hunza? It is the policy of Russia to create false
alarms and thereby to involve us in expenditure, whilst standing by and
posing as the future saviour of the tribes. Our tendency to compromises and
subservient Commissions of delimitation and to “scuttling” occasionally, is also
well known and so we are offered in Russian papers “an Anglo-Russian
understanding on the subject of Chitrál,” as if Chitrál was not altogether out of
the sphere of Russia’s legitimate influence! It is also amusing to find in the
Novosti that Russia’s sole desire is “to prevent Afghanistan from falling into
British hands.” We are already spending at Gilgit on food etc. for our troops
more in one year than were spent in the 40 years of the so-called
mismanagement of Kashmir, which I myself steadily exposed, but which kept
the frontier far more quiet than it has been since the revival of the Gilgit
Agency. There is every prospect now of heavier and continued expenditure as
the policy of the Foreign Department of the Government of India develops. On
that policy a veto should at once be put by the British Parliament and public, if
our present Liberal Administration cannot do so without pressure from
without. We should conciliate Nizam-ul-Mulk before it is too late. He is
connected with Umra Khan of Jandôl and with the influential Mullah Shahu of
Bajaur through his maternal uncle, Kokhan Beg. He has also connections in
Badakhshan, Hunza and Dîr, as already stated. Indeed, we ought to have
given him our support from the beginning. I doubt whether it would be
desirable to subdivide Chitrál as stated in to-day’s Times, letting Sher Afzul
keep Chitrál proper, giving Yasin to “the Nizám” and letting Umra Khan retain
what he has already seized of Southern Chitrál. As for Sher Afzul, I believe,
that he is also “loyal.”
As for Hunza, I am not at all certain that the fugitive, Safdar Ali Khan, really
murdered his father. At all events when the deed was committed, I find that it
was attributed to Muhammad Khan,[110] probably not the present Mir
Muhammad Nazim who has acknowledged the suzerainty of England (through
Kashmir) and of China. The latter power has always had something to say to
Hunza, and the very title of its Chief “Tham” is of Chinese origin. The subsidy
that China used to pay for keeping open the commercial road from
Badakhshan and Wakhan through the Pamirs along Kunjût (Hunza) to
Yarkand, was about £380 per annum, and this sum was divided between four
States and ensured the immunity of the route from raids.[111] I doubt whether
in future £380 a year on Hunza alone will enable us to keep it quiet, and I am
sure that the lofty superciliousness with which Chinese officials discuss the
Pamir question, as something that scarcely concerns them, is no evidence of
that pertinacious power abandoning claims to a suzerainty in those regions
which are historically founded, although their exercise has been more by an
appeal to imagination of the glorious and invincible, if distant, “Khitái,” than
by actual interference.
Indeed, it is China alone that has a grievance—against Russia for the
occupation of the Alichur Pamir—against Afghanistan for expelling her troops
from Somatash (of subsequent Yanoff fame)—and against England for
encroaching on her ancient feudatory of Hunza, whose services in suppressing
the Khoja rebellion in 1847 are commemorated in a tablet on one of the gates
of Yarkand.

H. H. Mihtar Nizam-ul-Mulk and his late Yasin Council.


Chitrali Musicians and the Badakshi Poet, Taighun Shah.

Note.—We add a reproduction of the photographs of the Mihtar and


Badshah Nizam-ul-Mulk, sitting in Council with his uncle, Bahadur Khan, now
at Gilgit, where he represented Afzul-ul-Mulk. On the Nizam’s left is his foster-
uncle, Maimun Shah, whilst behind him stand our Indian Agent, Wafadár Khan
and a Chitráli office-holder, Wazîr Khan, of corresponding rank. We also give
the portrait of the Chitrál Court poet and musician, the celebrated Taighûn
Shah, one of whose songs, with its notation, was published in our issue of the
1st of January, 1891. He is seated with the two flute-players who always
precede the King of Chitrál when on a tour.

Although the period may be past in which a great English Journal could ask,
“what is Gilgit?” the contradictory telegrams and newspaper accounts which
we receive regarding the countries adjoining Gilgit show that the Press has
still much to learn. Names of places, as far apart as Edinburgh and London,
are put within a day’s march on foot. Names of men figure on maps as places
and the relationships of the Chiefs of the region in question are invented or
confounded as may suit the politics of the moment, if not the capacity of the
printer. The injunctions of the Decalogue are applied or misapplied, extended
or curtailed, to suit immediate convenience, and a different standard of
morality is constantly being found for our friends of to-day or our foes of to-
morrow. The youth Afzul-ul-Mulk was credited with all human virtues and with
even more than British manliness, as he was supposed to be friendly to us. He
had given his country into our hands in order to receive our support against
his elder brother, the acknowledged heir of the late Aman-ul-Mulk of Chitrál,
but that elder brother, Nizám-ul-Mulk, was no less friendly to English interests,
although he has the advantage of being a man of capacity and independence.
The sudden death of Aman-ul-Mulk coincided with the presence of our
protégé at Chitrál, and the first thing that the virtuous Afzul-ul-Mulk did, was
to invite as many brothers as were within reach to a banquet when he
murdered them. No doubt, as a single-minded potentate, he did not wish to
be diverted from the task of governing his country by the performance of
social duties to the large circle of acquaintances in brothers and their families
which Providence bestows on a native ruler or claimant in Chitrál and Yasin. A
member of the Khush-waqtia dynasty of Yasin, which is a branch of the Chitrál
dynasty, told me when I expressed my astonishment at the constant murders
in his family: “A real relative in a high family is a person whom God points out
to one to kill as an obstacle in one’s way, whereas a foster-relative (generally
of a lower class) is a true friend who rises and falls with one’s own fortune” (it
being the custom for a scion of a noble house to be given out to a nurse.)

The dynasty of Chitral is said to have been established by Baba Ayub, an


adventurer of Khorassan. He adopted the already existing name of Katór,
whence the dynasty is called Katore. The Emperor Baber refers to the country
of Katór in his Memoirs and a still more ancient origin has been found in
identifying Katór with “Kitolo, the King of the Great Yuechi, who, in the
beginning of the 5th century, conquered Balkh and Gandhara, and whose son
established the Kingdom of the Little Yuechi, at Peshawur.” (See Biddulph’s
“Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh,” page 148.) General Cunningham asserts that the
King of Chitrál takes the title of Shah Kator, which has been held for nearly
2,000 years, and the story of their descent from Alexander may be traced to
the fact that they were the successors of the Indo-Grecian Kings in the Kabul
valley. If Katór is a corruption of Kaisar, then let it not be said that the
remnant of the Katore exclaimed with the Roman gladiator: “Ave, Kaisar-i-
Hind, morituri te salutant.”
Amán-ul-Mulk, the late ruler of Chitrál, was, indeed, a terrible man, who to
extraordinary courage joined the arts of the diplomatist. He succeeded his
elder brother, surnamed Adam-Khôr or “man-eater.” His younger brother, Mir
Afzul, is said to have been killed by him or to have committed a convenient
suicide; another brother, Sher Afzul, who is now in possession of Chitrál, was
long a fugitive in Badakhshan whence he has just returned with a few
Afghans (such as any pretender can ever collect) and a hundred of the Chitráli
slaves that used to be given in tribute to the Mir of Badakhshan, which itself
never paid a tribute to Kabul before the late Sher Ali of Afghanistan installed
Mahmud Shah, who expelled his predecessor Jehandar Shah, the friend of
Abdur-Rahman, the present Amir of Afghanistan. Another brother of Aman-ul-
Mulk was Kokhan Beg, whose daughter married the celebrated Mullah Shahu
Baba, a man of considerable influence in Bajaur, who is feared by the Badshah
of Kunar (a feudatory of Kabul and a friend of the British) and is an enemy of
the Kamôji Kafirs, that infest one of the roads to Chitrál. This Kokhan Beg,
who was a maternal uncle of Afzul-ul-Mulk, was killed the other day by his
brother Sher Afzul coming from Badakhshan. I mention all this, as in the
troubles that are preparing, the ramifications of the interests of the various
pretenders are a matter of importance. Other brothers of Aman-ul-Mulk are:
Muhammad Ali (Moriki), Yádgar Beg, Shádman Beg and Bahádur Khán (all by
a mother of lower degree), and another Bahádur Khán, who was on the
Council of Nizám-ul-Mulk. Nizám-ul-Mulk has therefore to contend with one or
more of his uncles, and by to-day’s telegram[112] is on his way to the Chitrál
Fort in order to expel Sher Afzul with the aid of the very troops that Sher Afzul
had sent to turn out Afzul-ul-Mulk’s Governor from Yasin. I believe that Nizám-
ul-Mulk has or had two elder half-brothers, Gholam of Oyôn and Majid
Dastagir of Drôshp; but, in any case, he was the eldest legitimate son and,
according to Chitrál custom, was invested with the title of Badshah of Turikoh,
the rule of which valley compelled his absence from Chitrál and not “his
wicked and intriguing disposition” as alleged by certain Anglo-Indian journals.
Of other brothers of Nizám-ul-Mulk was Shah Mulk (of lower birth), who was
Governor of Daraung and was killed by Afzul-ul-Mulk. He used to live at Dros
(near Pathan in Shashi). Afzul-ul-Mulk of Drasun, whom we have already
mentioned as a wholesale fratricide, was killed in his flight to one of the
towers of the Chitrál Fort from the invading force of his uncle, Sher Afzul of
Badakhshan. A younger half-brother is also Behram-ul-Mulk (by a lower
mother), called “Viláyeti,” of Moroi in Andarti. Other brothers are: Amin-ul-
Mulk, a brother of good birth of Oyôn (Shoghôt), who was reared by a woman
of the Zondré or highest class; Wazir-ul-Mulk (of low birth) of Brôz; Abdur-
Rahman (low-born) at Owir (Barpèsh), and Badshah-i-Mulk, also of Owir, who
was reared by the wife of Fath-Ali Shah. There are no doubt other brothers
also whose names I do not know. Murid, who was killed by Sher Afzul, is also
an illegitimate brother.
A few words regarding the places mentioned in recent telegrams may be
interesting: Shogôth is the name of a village, of a fort, and of a district which
is the north-western part of Chitrál, and it also comprises the Ludkho and
tributary valleys. Through the district is the road leading to the Dara and
Nuqsán passes, to the right and left respectively, at the bottom of which is a
lake on which official toadyism has inflicted the name of Dufferin in
supersession of the local name. Darushp (Drôshp) is another big village in this
district and in the Ludkho valley, and Andarti is a Fort in it within a mile of the
Kafir frontier. The inhabitants of Shogôth are descendants of Munjanis, whose
dialect (Yidgah) I refer to elsewhere, and chiefly profess to be Shiahs, in
consequence of which they have been largely exported as slaves by their
Sunni rulers. Baidam Khan, a natural son of Aman-ul-Mulk, was the ruler of it.
The Ludkho valley is traversed by the Arkari river which falls into that of
Chitrál. At the head of the Arkari valley are three passes over the Hindukhush,
including the evil-omened “Nuqsán,” which leads to Zeibak, the home of the
heretical Maulais (co-religionists of the Assassins of the Crusades) in
Badakhshán. It is shorter, more direct, and freer from Kafir raids than the
longer and easier Dora pass. Owir is a village of 100 houses on the Arkari
river, and is about 36 miles from Zeibak. Drasan is both the name of a large
village and of a fort which commands the Turikoh valley, a subdivision of the
Drasan District, which is the seat of the heir-apparent to the Chitrál throne
(Nizám-ul-Mulk). Yet the Pioneer, in its issue of the 5th October last, considers
that Lord Lansdowne had settled the question of succession in favour of Afzul-
ul-Mulk, that Nizám-ul-Mulk would thus be driven to seek Russian aid, but that
any such aid would be an infringement of the rights of Abdur-Rahman. Now
that Abdur-Rahman is suspected, on the flimsiest possible evidence, to have
connived at Sher Afzul’s invasion of Chitrál, we seek to pick a quarrel with him
for what a few weeks ago was considered an assertion of his rights. Let it be
repeated once for always that if ever Abdur-Rahman or Nizám-ul-Mulk, or the
Chief of Hunza or Kashmir or Upper India fall into the arms of Russia, it will be
maxima nostra culpa. I know the Amir Abdur-Rahman, as I knew the Amir
Sher Ali, as I know Nizám-ul-Mulk, and of all I can assert that no truer friends
to England existed in Asia than these Chiefs. Should Abdur-Rahman be
alienated, as Sher Ali was, or Nizám-ul-Mulk might be, it will be entirely in
consequence of our meddlesomeness and our provocations. Russia has
merely to start a will-o’-the-wisp conversation between Grombcheffsky and
the Chief of Hunza, when there is internal evidence that Grombcheffsky was
never in Hunza at all, and certainly never went there by the Muztagh Pass,
that we, ignoring the right of China and of the treaty with Kashmir in 1846,
forgetful of the danger in our rear and the undesirability of paving for an
invader the road in front, fasten a quarrel on Hunza-Nagyr, and slaughter its
inhabitants. No abuse or misrepresentation was spared in order to inflame the
British public even against friendly and inoffensive Nagyr. What wonder that a
Deputation was sent from Hunza to seek Russian aid and that it returned
contented with presents, and public expressions of sympathy which explained
away the Russian official refusal as softened by private assurances of
friendship? Whatever may be the disaster to civilization in the ascendancy of
Russian rule, the personal behaviour of Russian agents in Central Asia is,
generally, pleasant. As in Hunza, so in Afghanistan, some strange suspicion of
the disloyalty of its Chief, suggested by Russia, may involve us in a senseless
war and inordinate expense, with the eventual result that Afghanistan must
be divided between England and Russia, and their frontiers in Asia become
conterminous. Then will it be impossible for England ever to oppose Russia in
Europe, because fear of complications in Asia will paralyze her. Then the
tenure of India will depend on concessions, for which that country is not yet
ripe, or on a reign of terror, either course ending in the withdrawal of British
administration from, at any rate, Northern India. Yet it is “Fas ab hosti doceri,”
and when Prince Gortschakoff urged the establishment of a neutral zone with
autonomous states, including Badakhshan, he advocated a policy that would
have conducted to centuries of peace and to the preservation of various
ancient forms of indigenous Oriental civilization by interposing the mysterious
blanks of the Pamirs and the inaccessible countries of the Hindukush between
Russian and British aggression.

Instead of this consummation so devoutly to be wished, and possible even


now, though late, if action be taken under good advice and in the fulness of
knowledge, either Power—

“Thus with his stealthy pace


With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.”
If ever the pot called the kettle black, it is the story of Anglo-Russian
recriminations. Russian intrigues are ever met by British manœuvres and
Muscovite earth-hunger can only be paralleled by English annexations. Here a
tribe is instigated to revolt, so that its extermination may “rectify a boundary,”
there an illusory scientific frontier is gradually created by encroachments on
the territories of feudatories accused of disloyalty, if not of attempts to poison
our agents. By setting son against father, brother against brother and, in the
general tumult, destroying intervening republics and monarchies, Anglo-
Russian dominions are becoming conterminous. Above all

“There’s not a one of them but in his house


I keep a servant fee’d.”

And it is this unremitting suspicion which is alike the secret of present


success and the cause of eventual failure in wresting and keeping Asiatic
countries and of the undying hatred which injured natives feel towards
Europeans.
The attempt to obtain the surrender of the Takk fort, and of the Takk valley,
a short and easy road to the British District of Kaghán, has merely indicated to
Russia the nearest way to India, just as we forced her attention to Hunza and
are now drawing it to Chitrál. David Urquhart used to accuse us of conspiracy
with Russia in foreign politics. Lord Dufferin in his Belfast speech sought the
safety of India in his friendship with M. de Giers and his Secretary popularized
Russia in India by getting his work on “Russia” translated into Urdu. Certainly
the coincidence of Russian as well as British officials being benefited by their
respective encroachments, Commissions, Delimitations, etc., would show their
“mutual interest” to consist in keeping up the farce of “Cox and Box” in
Central Asia, which must end in a tragedy.
As an official since 1855, when I served Her Majesty during the Russian
War, I wish to warn the British public against the will-o’-the-wisp of our
foreign policy, especially in India. I can conceive that a small, moral and
happy people should seek the ascendancy of its principles, even if
accompanied by confusion in the camps of its enemies. I can understand that
the doctrines of Free Trade, of a free Press, a Parliamentary rule, the Anti-
Slavery propaganda and philanthropic enterprises generally, with which the
British name is connected, should have been as good as an army to us in
every country of the world in which they created a Liberal party, but these
doctrines have often weakened foreign Executive Governments, whilst “Free
Trade” ruined their native manufacture. What I, however, cannot understand
is that a swarming, starving and unhappy population should seek consolation
for misery at home in Quixotism abroad, especially when that Quixotism is
played out. If bread costs as much now as in 1832 although the price of
wheat has fallen from 60s. to 27s. a quarter, it is, indeed, high time that we
should lavish no more blood and treasure on the stones of foreign politics, but
that we should first extract the beam from our own eye before we try to take
out the mote from the eye of others.
What these foreign politics are worth may be inferred from the growing
distrust on the Continent of British meddlesomeness or from what we should
ourselves feel if even so kindred a race as the Prussians sought to monopolize
British wealth and positions. It would be worse, if they did so without
possessing a thorough knowledge of the English language or of British
institutions. Yet we are not filled with misgivings when our Indian Viceroys or
Secretaries of State cannot speak Hindustani, the lingua franca of India or
when an Under-Secretary has a difficulty in finding Calcutta on the Map.
India should be governed in the fulness of knowledge and sympathy, not by
short cuts. It should not be the preserve of a Class, but the one proud boast
of its many and varied peoples. When Her Majesty assumed Her Indian title, it
was by a mere accident, in which pars magna fui, at the last moment, that
the Proclamation was translated to those whom it concerned at the Imperial
Assemblage. This superciliousness, wherever we can safely show it, the
cynical abandonment of our friends, the breach of pledges, the constant
experimentalizing on the natives, the mysteriousness that conceals official
ignorance, is the enemy to British rule in India, not Russia. A powerful Empire
can afford to discard the arts of the weak, and should even “show its hand.”
India should be ruled by a permanent Viceroy, a member of the Royal family,
not by one whom the exigencies of party can appoint and shift. When in 1869
the Chiefs and people of the Panjab deputed me to submit their petition that
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales be pleased to visit India, it was because they felt
that it was desirable in the interests of loyalty to the Throne. If it be true that
H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught is going out as the next Viceroy, I can only say
that the longer his admirers miss him in England, the better for India, which
requires its best interests to be grouped round a permanent Chief.

Dec. 7th.—As for the wanton aggression on Chilás which never gave us the
least trouble, as all our Deputy Commissioners of Abbottabad can testify, it is
a sequel of our interference last year with Hunza-Nagyr. The Gilgit Residency
has disturbed a peace that has existed since 1856 and now continues in its
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