1859.] Notes on Kdfiristaii. 317 



Notes on Kafiristdn. — By Captain H. Gr. Ra.verty, '3rd Beyt. 

 Bombay, N. I. 



Prefatory Remarks. 



Forty years have elapsed, since the Hon'ble Mountstuart Elphin- 

 stone, on returning from his embassy at the court of Shah Shiijahu- 

 1-Mulk, king of Afghanistan, in his valuable work on " Caubul," 

 gave a description of that highly interesting and brave race of peo- 

 ple, the Si'ah-posh Kafirs, supposed to be descendants of the Bakh- 

 trian Greeks. 



Some twenty years subsequent to Mr. Elphinstone, Sir Alexander 

 Burnes, in the account of his journey into Central Asia, gave a 

 slight notice of this people, the meagreness of which drew forth the 

 animadversions of the Edinburgh Reviewer, who, in the number for 

 January 1835, thus notices the subject : — 



a The remarks which our author makes on the Siah-posh Kafirs, 

 or black-clad unbelievers, who inhabit the high mountains, which 

 divide the basins of the Kabul and Badakshan rivers, are in like 

 manner infelicitous as well as scanty. He tells us that he can add 

 nothing to the intelligence respecting them collected by Mr. Elphin- 

 stone. Yet, imbibing the prejudices of his Mahomedan informants, 

 he calls the Kafirs savages ; which is certainly representing them 

 under a new aspect ; and this variance is the more remarkable, since 

 Mr. Burnes, while at Peshawer, formed an acquaintance with Moo- 

 lah Najeeb, a respectable man, who had travelled into the Kafir 

 country at the instigation of Mr. Elphinstone, and who gave, on his 

 return, a very interesting and favourable account of these brave and 

 ingenuous mountaineers. ' The Kafirs,' says our author, ' live in a 

 most barbarous manner, eating bears and monkeys ;' a kind of food 

 which does not appear to us to afford any incontrovertible implica- 

 tion of barbarism. The mention of monkeys suggests a well wood- 

 ed country. We know that the black-coated unbelievers have wine 

 in abundance, which they boil ; and always carry a small vessel filled 

 with it, suspended from their necks. The missionary Goez heard 

 with pleasure of a fair complexioned, wine-drinking race of moun- 

 taineers, who were not Mahomedans ; and hesitated not to conclude 



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