Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/272

 256 Balochi Folklore.

Noclhbandagh) father of Gwaharam, is the Giver, the gold- scatterer, the typical generous man, who made holes in his money-bag, so that every one might pick up the gold, and gave all his clothes to a ragged Dom, taking his old shirt in exchange. This shirt he divided into two parts, one for his wife and one for himself. In the night a laden camel came and sat down in front of his tent. He told his wife to go out and smell the camel, as if it had a pleasant smell, and not the ordinary smell of a camel, it was sent from heaven ; and so it was. The camel was laden with gar- ments of every kind both for man and woman. The name Noclhbandagh is an almost literal translation of the Greek " cloud-compeller," and it is impossible not to suspect that we have here a fragment of some forgotten mythology. Nodhbandagh's son was Gwaharam, one of the heroes of the poems, and his name represents in Balochi the Middle Persian Varahran, that is the Avestic Verethraghna, the Vritrahan or Indra of the Veda, the deity of the storm- cloud.

Some of the ballads go further back than the sixteenth centurv, and profess to account for the origin of the Baloches, who are said to be descended from Mir Hamza, uncle of the prophet Muhammad, and to have their com- mencement at Halab, or Aleppo. Mir Hamza was married to a Peri, who saw him while he was bathing in a lake, but their child was for some reason abandoned in the wilderness, whence the story-tellers derive the name Baloch from bar, wilderness, and luck, naked, i.e., naked in the wilder- ness. This bit of popular etymology is, perhaps, not of great antiquity, and the old ballads do not mention the Peri, but simply say that the Baloches are descended from Mir Hamza. A more interesting story relates to their ad- ventures in Sistan, where historical traces of their presence may be found from the tenth century onwards. They were well received by the King Shamsuddin, but another king demanded brides from them, one from each of the forty-four