Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎635r] (1286/1814)

^ as hakeixl
lan 1874
S ^ since
ash kid riv er
if noi
Y chapter on
^ 0Y the 200
' e ^oldsmid’s
Groldsmid
^ been done;
al line wkicli
a this region
of a Persian
its features
en estimated
he 80,000 of
encountered
Ihe Mekran
md, is com- 3
which have
ire consider-
cultivation.
L entrancing
ked ravines,
at Jalk in
iown on the
innter. la
nperature is
the highest
s, who give ?
■ descent, of
,t the end of
ppo, whence
elled by the
lusein.
ieoplc whom
oth of them
>r Aryam iset
5 t be rejected .
THE EASTERN AND SOUTH-EASTERN PROVINCES 259
m favour of a non-Arab genealogy. 1 Pottinger, on the other
hand, attributed to them a Turkoman, i.e. Seljuk-Turkish descent.
Though numerically the most important tribe in Beluchistan,
they yield a moral and political ascendency to smaller, but more
warlike, tribes of Kurds and Nushirwanis (themselves claiming
descent from Kushirwan, the famous Sassanian king, but in reality
cleiiving theii name from a district so called, near Isfahan, whence
they originally emigrated) ; while in parts, e.g. in Dashtiari, are
a people, more obviously of Hindu lineage, whose ancestors, though
they are unaware of it, came from Sind, and whose language
contains many Hindu words. There is also throughout the country
a considerable admixture of the African element, due to the large
importation of slaves from Muscat and Zanzibar. Some of the
faces present a thoroughly negro type. The ordinary Beluchi, of
whom I have seen many, is not nearly so formidable a specimen of
humanity as the Afghan, though like him be wears his long
black hair in curls, frequently moistened with rancid butter. In
parts of the country they are in a very backward and degraded
condition, but little removed from primitive savagery. The
majority are great thieves and liars, and are apt to round off
every period with the swaggering assertion, ‘ I am a Beluch.’
Politically they have but two feelings : an intense passion for
tribal independence, with all its murderous accompaniments of
blood feuds and border raids, and an outspoken dislike of the
Persians, whom they call Gajars (pronounced not unlike the
English word cudgel), the Beluch version of the name of the reigning
dynasty. This hatred, to which every traveller without exception
has testified, is accompanied by a corresponding respect for the
British name and rule. The prestige of British power in India
has spread far and wide through Beluchistan, and there is scarcely
a native chieftain who has not appealed, or who is not willing, to
1 Dr. Bellew {Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, 1891) identifies
the Beluchis with the Balaecha of the Chohan Rajput tribe who originally occu
pied the Nushki district. The tribe variously known as Kurush, Korish, Gorich.
aijd Guraish, which is still widely extended on the Indus border, is the Royal
Rajput Kerush, Keruch, or Kurech. When these tribes were converted to Islam,
they changed their name to Koreish, and pretended an Arab descent in order to
conceal the fact. Bellew, therefore, assigns to the Beluchis a Rajput or Indian
pedigree, and explains their dialect as a Persianised Indian tongue. The Rinds,
who are now spoken of as a branch of the Beluch stock, are in reality the tribe
of which the Beluchis are a branch, the name being derived from the Rin or
Run of Kuch, the Sanskrit Aranya, or ‘ waste.’
s 2