1 40 PANJAB CASTES.
2 These two great races present many features of unusual interest. Among
3 both the tribal organisation still sui'vivesj in parts at leastj in the most
4 complete integi-ity, and affords us examples of one extreme of that series
5 which terminates at the other in the compact village communities of our
6 eastern districts. jVIoreover the intense tribal feeling of the Biloch and
7 Pathan and the care with which they keep up their genealogies, enable us to
8 point to both nations for undoubted examples of the process by which a race
9 possessed of pride of blood in an extreme degree affiliates to itself sections
10 of other races, gives them a place in its tribal organisation on condition only
11 of subjection to the supreme authority, and after a time invents a fiction
12 of common descent by which to account for their presence. There can
13 be little doubt that the process which we know has taken place among the
14 Pathan and Biloch has not been without examples among the other races
15 of the Panjab, and that aboriginal, Jlongol, and other elements have in a
16 similar manner been absorbed into the tribal or caste organisation of the Aryan
17 stock.
18 373. The Pathans and the Biloches are both foreigners in the Panjdb
19 proper, and have entered its political boundaries within the last few hundred
20 years, though it is not impossible that in doing so the Pathans only re-entered a
21 country which their ancestors had left more than a thousand years ago. Yet
22 their freedom from the ii-ksome and artificial restrictions of caste, and
23 the comparative license which their tribal customs permit them in the matter
24 of intermairiagc, have caused their example to jiroduce a wonderful effect
25 upon the neighbouring Indian races ; and it is the proximity of these races,
26 and the force of that example daily set before them by nations living next
27 door, to which, far more than to the mere political supremacy of a Mahoraedan
28 dynasty or adoption of the Mahomedan creed, I attribute the laxity of
29 caste mles and observances which characterises the people of our Western
30 Plains. The point has already been noticed in section 347. Some of the
31 social and tribal customs of these people are exceedingly curious. Un-
32 fortunately we know but little of them, and what little information I
33 have been able to collect I have not had leisure to record in the following
34 pages. I may however mention two of theii- most striking customs. One is
35 the prevalence of the vesJi or periodical distribution of land among the compo-
36 nent households of a clan, which wc foimd to be the practice on some
37 parts of the frontier when we annexed the Panjiib, while it still exists in full
38 force among both the Biloches and the Pathans of Independent Territory.
39 The second custom is also one common to both nations, though not I believe to
40 all their tribes. It is the existence of a Levitical clan, often called Mirkhel
41 among the Pathans, who' have the exclusive privilege of performing certain
42 priestly functions connected, not with the ]\Iahomedan religion but with tribal
43 ceremonies, such for instance as the dedication by passing under spears of the
44 fighting men of the tribe when about to go to war.
45 874. Tabulation of tribal statistics. —Political considerations rendered it far more impor-
46 tant to obtain for administi-ative purposes fairly correct statistics of the Eiloch and Pathan tribes
47 than of the more settled tribes of the cis-Indus Panjab. Knt when I took up the question I found
48 the difficulties so great, and my own iguorance of the subject so complete, that I obtained the
49 sanction of Government to have these figures compiled by the Deputy Commissioners of the
50 frontier disb'icts. The difficulties mainly arose from three causes. In the first place the same
51 word is, especially among the Pathans,' constantly recuiTiug among the various tribes as the
52 name of clans who are wholly distinct from one another. Secondly, the same clan, especially
53 among the Biloches, is affiliated to a larger tribe in one district while in another it forms a distinct
54 tribe of itself. Thirdly, many of the entries did not show full details of the tribe and clan,_ often
55 only giTiDg the names of the sept or family ; and the only hope of classing such entries rightly