1 62 PANJAB CASTES.
2 AfghSn, the races thus included being the Afghan proper, the Pathan proper,
3 the Gilzai, the Tajik, and the Hazara, besides tribes of less impoi-tance living
4 on the confines of the country.
5 The true Pathans are apparently of Indian ongin. Their language is
6 called Pasbto or Pakhto and they call themselves Pukhtanai or Pakhto-
7 speakers ; and it is this word of which Pathan is the Indian corruption. They
8 held in the early centuiies of our a?ra the whole of the Safed Koh and Northern
9 Suleman systems, from the Indus to the Helmand and from the sources of the [P.
10 Swat river and Jalalabad to Pe=hm and Quetta. The Afghans and Gilzais
11 spread into their country and adopted then- language and customs ; and just as
12 Irish, Scotch, and Welsh speaking the English language are commonly called
13 Englishmen, so all who speak the Pakhto tongue came to be included under
14 the name Pathan. Thus the Afghans and Gilzais are Pathans by virtue of
15 their language, thon2-h not of Pathan origin; the Tajiks and Haziiras, who
16 have retained their Persian speechj are not Pathans ; while all five are Afghans
17 by virtue of location, thoug:h only one of them is of Afghan race.
18 395. Early history of the Afghans. — The origin and early history of the
19 various tribes which compose the Afghan nation ai-e much disputed by
20 authorities of weight who hold very different views. I have in the following
21 sketch followed the account given by Dr. Bellew, as it affords a convenient
22 framework on which to base a description of those tribes. But it is said to be
23 doubtful whether the distinction which he so strongly insists upon between
24 Pathan proper and Afghan proper really exists or is recognised by the people ;
25 while the Jewish origin of any portion of the nation is most uncertain. But
26 the division of the nation into tribes, the internal affinities of those tribes,
27 and the general account of their wanderings are all beyond question ; and the
28 theories which account for them are only accepted by me to serve as
29 connecting links which shall bind them into a consecutive story. The tradi-
30 tions of the true Afghans who trace their name and descent fi-om Afghana,
31 the sou of Jeremiah, the son of Saul, and Solomou^'s commander-in-chief and
32 the builder of his temple, say that they were carried away from Syria by
33 Nebuchadnezzar and planted as colonists in Media and Persia. Thence they
34 emigrated eastwards into the mountains of Ghor and the modern Hazdra
35 country. The Afghans early embraced the creed of Islam, to which they
36 were converted by a small body of their tribe on their return from Araliia,
37 where they had fought for Mahomet under their leader Kais. It is from this
38 Kais or Kish, namesake of Saul's father, who manied a daughter of Khalid-
39 iljn-Walld a Qureshi Arab and Mahomet's first apostle to the Afghans, that
40 the modern genealogists trace the descent alike of Pathans, Afghans, and
41 Gilzai, or at any rate of such tribes of these races as we have here to deal
42 with ; and to him they say that the Prophet, pleased with his eminent services,
43 gave the title of Pathan, the Syi'ian word for rudder, and bade him du-ect
44 his people in the time path. Meanwhile, about the 5th and 6th century of
45 oui- sera, an irruption of Scythic tiibes from beyond the Hindu Kush into the
46 Indus Valley drove a colony of the Buddhist Gandhari, the Gandarii of
47 Herodotus and one of the four great divisions of that Pactyan nation which is
48 now represented by the Pathans proper, from theii- homes in the Peshawar
49 valley north of the Kabul river and in the hills circling it to the north ; and
50 • Dr. Bellew and Major James identify them witli the Pactiyans of Herodotus, and seem half
51 inclined to connect them with the Picts of Britain, as also the Scj-ths with the Scots, and certain
52 Pathan and Brahoi tribes with Cambrians and Ligurians !