Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/268

 BALOCHI FOLKLORE.

BY M. LONGWORTH DAMES, I.C.S. (retired), M.R.A.S.

{Read at Meeting of 2^th May, 1902.)

The Balochi race is spread over a wide extent of country, from the valley of the Indus in Sindh and the Panjab to the southern part of the province of Kirman in Persia, and occupies a great portion, though not the whole, of the intervening country shown on our maps under the name of Balochistan. I do not intend, on this occasion, to enter into questions relating to its ethnological affinities, but will merely state that it appears to belong to the old Iranian stock, and that the Balochi language is certainly an Iranian dialect. The branch of the race with which I am concerned is that inhabiting the mountain country west of the Indus Valley, and spreading into the plains of the country known as the Derajat, and especially those tribes which still re- tain the use of the Balochi language. I must confess that my collections of materials were made originally mainly for purposes of philology, and only indirectly for reasons more strictly connected with folklore. I was very anxious espe- cially to preserve from destruction, while it was still possible, the remnants of the popular poetry of the Baloches before it disappears from the world along with their language, and I am happy to think that I met with some success in this object. I also took down, without modification or doctoring, a num- ber of stories in prose, and translations of about twenty of these were published some years ago in " Folk-Lore."^ I am glad to say that the collection of poems has now been taken up by the Rev. T. J. M. Mayer, of Dera Ghazi Khan, and I hope that we have succeeded in rescuing the greater

' Vol. iii., 517 ; vol. iv., 195, 285, 518; vol. viii., p. 77.