1 BILOCH, PATHAN, AND ALLIED RACES. 4.3
2 tally of lives due is kept between the various tribes or families ; but when
3 the account grows complicated it can be settled by betrothals, or even by
4 payment of cattle. The i-ules of inheritance do not follow the Islamic law,
5 but tend to keep ]n'operty in the family by confining succession to agnates ;
6 ' thouo-h some of the leading' and more educated men are said to be trying to
7 introduce the shara into their tribes.
8 The Biloches are nominally Musalmans, bnt singularly ignorant of their
9 religion and neglectful of its rites and observances ; and though they once called
10 themselves and were called by old historians " friends of hXi," and thoug-h, if
11 their account of their ejection from Arabia be true, they must have originally
12 been Shiah, they now belong almost without exception to the Sunni sect.
13 Like many other Musalman races of the frontier tliey claim to be Qureshi
14 Arabs by origin, while some hold them to be of Turkoman stock ; their customs
15 are said to support the latter theory : their features certainly favour the former.
16 The question is discussed at pages l^ffoi Mr. Fryer's Settlement Report of
17 Derah Ghazi. Their language is a Ijranch of the old Persian, and apparently
18 contains many archaic forms which throw light upon other modern develop-
19 ments from the same soui-ce. It is described in the Chapter on Languages.
20 It is now hardly spoken, so far as the Panjab is concerned, beyond the tribal
21 organisation of the Derah Ghazi Biloches ; and even among them it is
22 being gradually superseded by Multani or Jatki, the language of the plains,
23 and a Biloch Chief has been known to learn the language in order to talk
24 it to English officials. They have no written character, and no literature ;
25 but they are passionately fond of poetry, chiefly consisting of ballads describ-
26 in<)' the events of national or tribal history, and of love-songs ; and local
27 , poets are still common among them.
28 378. Early history of the Biloch. — Then- account of their origin is that
29 they are descended from Mir Hanizah, a Qureshi Arab and an uncle of the
30 Prophet, and were settled at Halab or Aleppo, till, siding with Huseu, they
31 were expelled Ijy Yaziz, the second of the IJmeyid Caliphs. This would be
32 about 680 A. D. They fled to the hill country of Kirman in Persia, where
33 they lived quietly for some time, and so increased in numbers that the King
34 became desirous of binding them to himself by ties of marriage. He accord-
35 inglv demanded a wife from each of the forty-four bolaks or tribes into which
36 P. 194] thej' are said to have then been divided, though all traces of them have
37 long since been lost. But their fathers had never given their daughters in
38 wedlock to a stranger, and they therefore sent forty-four boys dressed up in
39 girls^ clothes, and fled before the deception could be discovered. They moved
40 south-eastwards into Kech Makran or the tract Ijetween Afghanistan and the
41 coast of the Arabian Sea, then but partially inhabited, and there finally
42 settled in the eountiy which is now known as Bilochistan.^
43 From Jalal Khan, the Chief under whose leadership they made their last
44 migration, sprang foirr sons, Rind, Hot, Lashari and Korai, and a daughter
45 Jato. Five of their tribes still bear these names, but the Rind and Lashari
46 ippear to have been pre-eminent ; and the Biloches, or at least that portion of
47 ;he nation which later on moved northwards to our border, were divided into
48 two great sections under those names, and I believe that all Biloch tribes
49 still consider themselves as belonging to one or other of these sections. Thus
50 1 Mr, Fryer quotes ttutliorities for the occupation of the Makran Mountain^ by -Biloches at
51 least as early as (1) the beginning of the fifth century ; (2) the middle of the seventh century.
52 'Derah Ghazi Settlement Report, p. 19.)