Biloch, Pathan and Alhed Races: Tabulation of Tribal Statistics

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This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on The Races, Castes and Tribes of the People in the Report on the Census of the Panjab published in 1883 by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, KCSI Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article.

Tabulation of tribal statistics

Political considerations rendered it far more impor tant to obtain for administrative purposes fairly correct statistics of the Biloch and Pathan tribes than of the more settled tribes of the cis-lndus Panjab. But when i took up the question I found the difficulties so great, and my own ignorance of the subject so complete, that I obtained the sanction of Government to have these figures compiled by the Deputy Commissioners of the frontier districts. The difficulties mainly arose from three causes. In the first place the same word is, especially among the Pathans, constantly recurring among the various tribes as the name of clans who are wholly distinct from one another. Secondly, the same clan, especially among the Biloches, is affiliatted to a larger tribe in one district which in another it forms a distinct tribe of itself. Thirdly, many of the entries did not show full details of the tribe and clan, often only giving the Dames of the sept or family ; and the only hope of classing such entries rightly lay in having the classifioation made on the spot. The system adopted was as follows.

Each Deputy Commissioner drew up a list of the tribes and clans for which he wished to obtain separate figures for his own district. Of this list he sent copies to all the other districts concern ed. A joint list was then drawn up including all tribes or clans mentioned in any one of these district list, and the figures were tabulated in accordance with that joint list. The Biloch tribal figures were then compiled on the spot in the two Derails and Musaffargarh, and those for Pathans in the Peshawar divison, Derail IsmaiL Khan, and Bannu. For other districts and for Native States the figures were compiled to the best of our ability in the Central Office in accordance with the joint list already mentioned.