Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/188

 BELOCH. (268)

HE Beloch tribe of Mahomedans of the Mooltan division of the Punjab must not be confounded with the Belochees of Western Sinde, with whom they have no connection. The Beloch are a Mahomedan sect or tribe, who are graziers and cultivators, and are represented to be "strongly built, pugnacious, and thieving." They breed and sell camels, and graze them in the jungles near Lahore, and camel's milk forms one of their chief articles of diet. In other respects they live as Soonnee Mahomedans in general, though they are rough, boorish, and extremely ignorant. They are said to be descended from men who immigrated into the Punjab about three and a half centuries ago; but then origin, or period of conversion to Mahomedanism, is not discoverable. Comparatively few of them cultivate land, the majority—and they are comparatively small in number—prefer living in the jungles of Googaira with their herds of camels, of which a proportion fit for work find a ready sale at Lahore, Mooltan, and the north-west provinces. Some of the clan are comparatively wealthy, and wear good clothing; others are very roughly and scantily attired. The man in the Photograph wears a turban of red silk; a scarf of silk, checked red, blue, and white; and trousers of checked red and white cotton. The Beloch, in general, have a rude, forbidding cast of features, to which the subject of the Photograph is certainly no exception.