120 G. W. LEITNER, PH.D., LL.D., D.O.L., ETC. 
much the same; whereas in Hunza they have gone beyond that 
stage, and care extremely little about their crimes being 
found out. The Mithaq and other religious utterances of the 
Druses and the Kelém-i-Pir of the Hunzas, if published to- 
gether, with certain new information which we have regarding 
the Crusade of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, would, I think, were 
time given and the matter elaborated, indeed deserve the 
attention of the readers of your “ Transactions.” It also seems 
strange that where such customs exist there should be a prize 
for virtue, but there is one in Hunza for wives who have 
remained faithful to their husbands, something like the 
French prize for rosiéres. 
(Formerly Suttee was practised, but Suttee had rather the 
meaning of Sathi or companion, as both husband and wife went 
to the funeral pyre.) Prizes are similarly given to wives who 
have not quarrelled for, say, a certain number of years with 
their husbands. The most curious custom which seems to 
permeate thesé countries is to foster relationship in nursing 
where a nurse and all her relations come not only within the 
prohibited degrees, which is against the spirit of Muham- 
medanism, but also create the only real bond of true attach- 
ment that I have seen in Dardistan, where other relatives 
seemed always engaged in murdering one another. 
Nearly all the chiefs in Dardistan give their children 
to persons of low degree to nurse, and these and the 
children of the nurse become attached to them through- 
out life, and are their only friends. But this foster- 
relationship is also taken in order to get rid of the 
consequences, say, of crime; for instance, in the case of 
adultery, or supposed adultery, the suspected person who 
declares that he enters into the relationship of son to the 
woman with whom he is suspected, after a certain penalty, is — 
really accepted in that position, and the trust is in no case 
betrayed. It is the only kind of forgiveness which is given 
in Dardistan generally to that sort of transgression; but 
further than that, drinking milk with some one, or appoint- 
ing some one as foster-father, which is done by crossing two 
vases of milk, creates the same relationship, except amongst 
the noble caste of Shins, who were expelled by the Brahmins 
from India or Kashmir, and who hold the cow in abhorrence 
as one of their religious dogmas, whereas in other ways they 
are really Brahmins, among whom we find Hindooism peeping 
out through the thin crust of Muhammedanism. 
Finally, there are differences amongst Muhammedans 
as great as there are between a good Christian who 
tries to follow the Sermon on the Mount, and a merely 
