Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/160

GENERAL SKETCH OF THE FRONTIER AFGHAN TRIBES. forty years ago, when Mr. Elphinstone wrote of them, as he states, on hearsay:— 'They are remarkable for their peaceable conduct among themselves, and have neither wars among clans nor much private dissension. Though they are notorious plunderers, the smallest escort secures a traveller a hospitable reception throughout the whole tribe Then- manners are haughty, and their voices loud and commanding; but they are gentle and good-tempered in their intercourse with their guests and with each other. Such is their veracity, that if there is a dispute about a stray goat, and one party will say it is his, and confirm his assertion by stroking his beard, the other instantly gives it up without suspicion of fraud.' Though Major Edwardes has taken exception to this last paragraph, I should say that altogether nothing could be more truthful than these passages. The Wuzeerees are decidedly the most unanimous of all the Afghan tribes that we are acquainted with; they never quarrel among themselves, safeguards are always respected by them, and though, as Mr. Elplnnstone says, proverbially addicted to plundering, I have known large bodies of them live from one year's end to another without falling into any impropriety of the kind. With regard to their veracity, as the quotation above merely extends to then' conduct to one another, and as every quarrel among them is settled by arbitration and discussion, and as I never heard a Wuzeeree complain of another Wuzeeree having robbed or defrauded him, I consider the eulogy, in a great degree, correct and deserved. The possession of such an extent of virtue would not, however, make it incumbent on them to adhere to truth in their dealings with Bunnoochees, Khuttuks, or Government officials; their duties towards such being quite another affair in Wuzeeree ethics."—Taylors Report.

The above is not inaptly illustrated by a Wuzeeree anecdote of a man who, when at prayers, heard an alarm cry that a kafilah, or caravan, of merchants was approaching, and abandoning his worship, assisted in the plunder of the merchants; when it was over he returned to his prayers, and finished the portion that was incomplete. Some bystanders upbraided him for so unholy a proceeding, when he replied that he had been instructed not to pray when any worldly matter occupied his mind, and as he could not have helped thinking of the kafilah, he had deemed it most advisable to clear scores with it before finishing his prayers. The Wuzeerees, like all the Afghan mountain tribes, are most superstitious, and have so strong a reverence for ziaruts, or saints' graves, that it has been said of them, with a kind of grim humour, that Syuds, and other religious mendicants, are shy of venturing into their mountains, lest they should be killed and converted into local saints.

The Afreedees, a tribe who march with the Wuzeerees, are of a different and more savage nature; there is no comparison, according to Major Taylor, between their characters. "When a Wuzeeree lets blood," he writes, "there is usually