278 



NATURE 



\Jan. 22, ii 



time to time removed from Persia to Kabul ; religion, 

 Shiah, with secret rites ; speech, Persian, and amongst 

 themselves, Turki ; are a very fine race, very fair, with 

 an evident mixture of Iranian ard Tatar blood. 



The Kohistanis and Siah Posh ("Highlanders" and 

 " Black Clothes ") forming the bulk of the population in 

 Kohistan, Swat, Kafiristan, Chitral, and generally of the 

 southern slopes of the Hindu-Kush down to the left bank 

 of the Kabul river, are of pure Aryan stock, allied to the 

 Kasbmirians, but probably more closely to the Badakhshis 

 and Wakhis. The Kohistanis are Moslem, the Siah Posh 

 still mostly pagans, hence called Kafirs, or Infidels, by 

 their neighbours, and their country Kafiristan. Their 

 speech, of which there are ten distinct varieties (Major 

 Tanner), is described as neo-Sanskritic, akin to Dardu 

 and Lughmani. But it has never been critically studied, 

 and may possibly prove to be pre- rather than neo- 

 Sanskritic ; is in any case of great philological interest, 

 having been isolated from the kindred tongues since the 

 eruption of Islam in the tenth century ; type, regular 

 features, blue and dark eyes, hair varying from light 

 brown to black, broad open forehead, tall and well-made. 

 But General A. Abbot ("Correspondence," edited by C. 

 R. Low, 1879) distinguishes between a fair type with blue 

 eyes, the aristocracy "descended of the Greeks "(?) and 

 a very dark type, the aborigines. The Kohistanis north 

 and north-west of Kabul, C. R. Markham says, are mainly 

 Tajiks (Proc. Geo. Soc , February 2, 1879, P- n 7); but 

 they are more probably of the kindred Galcha stock, for 

 those of Swat are represented as closely akin to the Siah 

 Posh whom I take to be of this race. They form two 

 main sections, the Torwals and Garwis. They took a 

 large share in the recent events about Kabul and have 

 just been reduced by the British. The Safis, who have 

 also lately been heard of in the same neighbourhood, are 

 simply Siah Posh converts of the Tagao valley, Kunar 

 district, north of Kabul ; three divisions : Wadin, Gorbaz, 

 and Musawid ; speech Pashae, closely allied to Lughmani 

 and Kohistani of Swat. 



We come now to the Afghans proper, whose original 

 home seems to have been the Kabul valley, whence they 

 spread westwards to the Ghor country, southwards to the 

 Suleiman mountains, and more recently down the Hel- 

 mand and Argbandab valleys to Kandahar. 1 They call 

 themselves Bani-Israel, " Sons of Israel," claiming descent 

 either from Saul or from the ten tribes, for on this point 

 they do not seem to be quite clear. But this is of the 

 less consequence that both claims are alike inadmissible. 

 Notwithstanding a certain Jewish expression, which they 

 have in common with the Armenians and other races of 

 the Iranian plateau, they are beyond all doubt an Aryan 

 and not a Semitic race, so far as these terms can be at all 

 used as racial rather than linguistic designations. And 

 here it may be well to remember that both Aryan and 

 Semite belong equally to one ethnical stock, convention- 

 ally known to anthropologists as the Caucasian or Medi- 

 terranean, and that they can often be distinguished one 

 from the other only by the test of language. We have 

 the same phenomenon in Europe, where but for their 

 speech no one would ever suspect that the Basques of the 

 western Pyrenees were other than a somewhat favourable 

 specimen of the Aryan race. This test, however, is 

 abundantly sufficient to sever them from that connection, 

 and the same test must suffice to remove the Afghans 

 from the Semitic to the Aryan group. 



Their most general and apparently oldest national 

 name is Pukhtun or Pakhtun, as it is pronounced by the 

 Khaibaris, and which has been identified with the Tnixrver, 

 of whom Herodotus heard through Scylax (509 B.C.) as 

 situated about the junction of the Kophes (Kabul) and 



1 Till the time of Sultan Babur, founder of the Mughal empire (beginning 

 of sixteenth century) the Afghan language was St. II confined to the north- 

 eastern and western highlands, Persian being elsewhere current, as it still is 

 mostly in the lowlands. 



Indus. Their country they still call Pukhtun-khwa, which 

 is equivalent to Watan-khwa, or "Home Land"; their 

 language is always called by them the Pukhtu, softened 

 in the west to Pushtu, and from Pakhtana, the plural of 

 Pakhtun, comes the form Pathan by which they are 

 known throughout India. This word has been cennected 

 with the root Pukhta, a hill, so that Pukhtun would mean 

 Highlander. But such derivations are seldom trustworthy, 

 and it may be questioned whether any people have ever 

 called themselves Hill-men, though often enough so 

 named by their neighbours. 



The alternative national name, Afghan, by which they 

 are exclusively known in Persia and Europe, has been 

 regarded by some as synonymous with Pukhtun, both 

 meaning " set free ; " but by others it has been con- 

 nected with Acvakan, the AQvaka, or " Horsemen," of 

 the Mahabharata, who are supposed to be the Assakani, 

 or Assekenes, of the later Greek historians. The natives 

 themselves draw a distinction between the two names, 

 so that although all Afghans are Pukhtana, not all 

 Pukhtana are true Afghans. The latter term is properly 

 restricted to the descendants of a legendary Kais, 

 one of the first apostles of Islam (ob. 662), from 

 whom, through his three sons, Saraban, Batan, and 

 Gurgusht, are supposed to spring the 277 Afghan 

 khels (tribes) proper. Of non-Afghan khels there are 

 reckoned 12S, making 405 Pukhtana khels altogether. Of 

 these 105 are Sarabani (from Saraban), 77 from Batan, in 

 two divisions ; Batanai 25, and Matti 52, these last being 

 known as Ghilzae ; 223 from Gurgusht, also in two divi- 

 sions ; Gurgushtai 95, and Karalanai 128, these last being 

 the non-Afghan or Pukhtana khels as above. In this 

 traditional account of the national genealogies the distinc- 

 tion between the true Afghan and non-Afghan tribes is 

 already obscured, for the latter are made to descend from 

 Gurgusht, one of the three sons of Kais, who is elsewhere 

 represented as the ancestor of the true Afghans alone. 

 But the confusion becomes intensified when it is added 

 that the very word Pathan, specially applicable to the 

 non-Afghans, and which we have seen is merely the 

 Indian form of Pakhtana, is explained to be a cor- 

 ruption of Pihtan, "rudder," a title said to have been, 

 conferred on Kais by the Prophet himself. Altogether 

 the distinction, though still maintained and recognised 

 by the various sections of the people, cannot at all 

 be regarded as racial. The true Afghans occupy mainly 

 the western, central, and north-eastern districts — Herat, 

 Seistan, Kandahar, and the Kabul basin, as far east 

 as Peshawar. The non-Afghans, or Pathans proper, are 

 found almost exclusively in the Sufed-Koh and Suleiman 

 highlands, as far south as the Kaura or Vahu Pass, 

 opposite Dera Fatah Khan. A line drawn from about 

 the parallel of Multan, through this point, westwards to 

 Tal through the middle of the Derajat, will very nearly 

 form the boundary in this direction of the Pathans on the 

 north, and the Baloches and Brahuis on the south. This 

 relative geographical area suggests a possible explanation 

 of the distinction between the two great divisions of the 

 race. From their more westerly position it is obvious 

 that the true Afghans must have been the first to adopt 

 Islam, and they may have thus come to look upon their 

 pagan brethren of the Suleiman highlands as Kafirs, 

 undeserving to rank as genuine Afghans, the distinction 

 thus originated naturally surviving their subsequent 

 conversion. 



In the subjoined table an attempt is made to give, for 

 probably the first time, a complete classification of all 

 the main sections of both divisions, with their chief sub- 

 branches, approximate number of khels, geographical 

 area, and population. The difficulty of the subject, oc- 

 casioned mainly by the minute tribal sub-divisions, may 

 be concluded from the fact that a complete genealogical 

 tree of, say, the Afridis ortheVaziris alone, would occupy 

 about two pages of NATURE. 



