62 
HISTORY OP THE KHOJAS OP EASTERN TtJRKISTAN. 
to be connected with orthodox religion) 2 and Pir or Mazdr, respectively, 
in the Kashmiri and Turki Musulman regions, where they are explained to be the 
tombs of holy men. As, however, they occupy precisely corresponding positions 
in all these regions (positions where it is generally eminently improbable that they 
could be graves, or which indicate some other associations, e.g., summits of passes, 
peaks of rock barely accessible, turns of a valley where one first comes in sight 
of a tall precipitous cliff or of a remarkable three-pointed mountain) it is, I think, 
more probable that they all owe their existence to some common origin ( e.g» , a 
primitive local demon worship) than that in the Musulman region alone they 
should be due to some cause which could not have operated in the other regions. 
Stray traces of a local demon worship underlie the existing religions all along the 
Himalaya and far as into Burma, where “ nat ” worship is interwoven with the 
orthodox Buddhism. 
Now if the above hypothesis be true, we have an explanation of these curiously 
un-Musulman features, viz., the fluttering tails and rags and heaps of horns. 
They merely carry on the local pre-Musulman mode of showing reverence for tradi¬ 
tionally hallowed spots, which has been extended to more modern holy rites such 
as graves ; and, on the other hand, the designation of graves has been carried back 
to explain the reverence exhibited for the older sites, which Islam refuses to honour 
as the abode of local demons or deities. 
Thus the Shrine of Ha?rat Afaq would be but a magnified and glorified adapta¬ 
tion of the rough cairns and pillars so often found in Tibet and in the Indian 
mountains ; a survival of the customs of a primitive local demon-worship, in fact. 
We were led round outside this shrine, in a circuit, keeping it on our left side 
( i . e., moving against the course of the sun) which seems to be the usual way of 
showing respect to it. Afterwards we were conducted over a newly erected mosque 
with wings, enclosing a square flagged court-yard, sufficiently large to contain 
several hundred worshippers. The Hail pointed out, with pride, that the building 
could boast of nineteen low domes, and was all built of burnt bricks. It had been 
constructed within the last four months, for the festival, or 'Id, which closes the 
Ramazan or month of fasting, and hence was called an ‘ Id-gah , or “ place for 
celebrating the 'Id 
We were then conducted into a raised and carpeted platform under some trees 
on the bank of a large tank or reservoir. Here an open marquee had been erected 
3 In the Buddhist countries—Western Tibet, China, etc.—these cairns on the tops of hills and cliffs 
are usually put up in connexion with the supposed functions of good and bad spirits, or benign and evil 
principles. In some places the hills, or other natural features, are believed to favour the passage and 
operations of beneficent spirits or infl uences , in others to obstruct them or to attract evil oneB. The 
cairns are placed so as to divert the malicious currents and to facilitate those regarded as propitious. 
In short, they are devices of the spiritualism prevailing among the inhabitants of the regions in 
question their ancient superstition that existed long before Buddhism was introduced, and which 
underlies the Buddhism of the Lamas to this day. The spiritualistic “ teachers,” or mediums (who 
are usually Lamas in Tibetan countries) ascertain the proper positions for the marks, or cairns, by 
mystic methods known only to themselves, and are employed to erect them by the people of the villages 
for grazing grounds, who regard them as a measure of protection. The Mongolian 060 , alluded to in 
Mr. Shaw’s footnote, is not quite the same thing.—N. E. 
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