Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/273

Rh clans of which they then consisted. This was an insult to the Baloches. (Even in the nineteenth century the Khosas went to war rather than give a bride to the Nawāb of Bahāwalpur.) So they temporised, and sent forty-four boys dressed as girls to the king. As they were still young they were made over to the care of nurses, but as they grew up in the king's zenana, the king's suspicions were raised, and the nurses in charge of the boys were put to the question by an original and, I believe, unique method. They were clothed in leathern shalwārs, or trousers, loose garments fastened tight at the ankles, and inside these cats were turned loose! The eldest of the boys, to save them, then made a clean breast of it on receiving the king's promise of pardon. The king kept his word, and sent the boys back to their clans, but immediately pursued them with all his forces. He was, however, defeated, and their exodus to Mekrān was safely accomplished. There they had a great chief named Jalāl Khān, who had four sons and one daughter who have given their names to the five principal divisions of the race. The story goes that Rind, the eldest son, had been appointed heir by his father and proceeded to perform the funeral ceremonies by erecting an āsrokh, or platform; but Hot, the second son, refused to join him, and started a separate ceremony for himself. Thereupon the others followed suit, "and there were five āsrokhs in Kech." The forty-four clans distributed themselves, some joining one and some another, and hence the five great tribes: Rind, Lashari, Hot, Korai, and Jatoi, to one of which nearly all the modern tribes trace their descent.

Thus we find a reproduction in modern times of the fiction of descent from an eponymic ancestor, for there can be little doubt that the tribal names are older than those of their supposed ancestors. Many so called patronymics are in reality either local names like Lashāri, from the country called Lāshār, or nicknames like Rind, a vagabond. The bards of each modern tribe delight to trace the genealogy