Biloch: Description
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Description
The Biloch presents in many respects a very strong contrast with his neighbour the Pathan. The political organi sation of each is tribal ; but while the one yields a very large measure of obedience to a chief who is a sort of limited monareh the other recognises no authority save that of a council of the tribe. Both have most of the virtues and many of the vices peculiar to a wild and semi-civilised life. To both hospitality
I had, with the valuable assistance of Mr. Douie, written a far more complete account of the Biloch than that given in the following pages. But after Mr. Douie had left India and many of ray notes had been destroyed, a great part of the MS. was lost in the office ; and I had to rewrite it as best I could with very incomplete materials, and a very short time in which to complete it.
Is a sacred duty and the safety of the guest inviolable ; both look upon the exaction of blood for blood ' as the first duty of man ; both follow strictly a code of honour of their own, though one very different from that of modern Europe ; both beheve in one God whose name is Allah, and whose prophet is Mahomet. But the one attacks his enemy from in front, the other from behind ; the one is bound by his promises,^ the other by his interests ; in short, the Biloch is less turbulent, less treacherous, less blood thirsty, and less fanatical than the Pathan : he has less of God in his creed and less of the devil in his nature.
His frame is shorter and more spare and wiry than that of his neighbour to the north ; though generations of independence have given to him too a bold and manly bearing. Frank and open in his manners and without servility, fairly truthful when not corrupted by our Courts, faithful to his word, temperate and enduring, and looking upon courage as the highest virtue, the true Biloch of the Derajat frontier is one of the pleasantest men we have to deal with in the Panjab. As a revenue payer he is not so satisfac tory, his want of industry, and the pride which looks upon manual labour as degrading, making him but a poor husbandman. He is an expert rider, horse-racing is his national amusement, and the Biloch breed of horses is celebrated throughout Northern India. Till quite lately he killed his colts as soon as they were born ; and his preference for mares is expressed in the proverb — A man with his saddle on a mare has his saddle on a horse ; a man with his saddle on a horse has his saddle on his head.If he cannot afford a whole mare he will own as many legs of one as he can manage ; and, the Biloch marhaving four legs, will keep her a quarter of each year for each leg of which he is master, after which she passes on to the owner of the remaining legs. He is a thief by tradition and descent, for he says, God will not favour a Biloch who does not steal and rob and the Biloch who steals recures heaven to seven generations of his ancestors.'But he has become much more honest under the civilising influences of our rule.
His face is long and oval, his features finely cut, and his nose aquiline ; he wears his hair long and usually in oily curls and lets his beard and whiskers gTOw, and he is very filthy in person, considering cleanliness as a mark of effeminacy. He usually carries a sword, knife and shield ; he wears a smock frock reaching to his heels and pleated about the waist, loose drawers and a long cotton scarf ; and all these must be white or as near it as dirt will allow of, in so much that he will not enter our army because he would there be obliged to wear a coloured uniform. His wife wears a sheet over her head, a long sort of night gown reaching to her ankles, and wide drawers ; her clothes may be red or white ; and she plaits her hair in a long queue.
As the time Biloch is nomad in his habits he does not seclude his women ; but he is extremely jealous of female honour. In cases of detected adultery the man is killed, and the woman hangs herself by order. Even when on the war-trail, the women and children of his enemy are safe from him. The Biloch of the hills lives in huts or temporary camps, and wanders with his herds from place to place. In the plains he has settled in small villages ; but the houses are of the poorest possible description. When a male child is born to him, asses dung in water, symbolical of pertinacity, is dropped into his mouth from the point of a sword before he is given the breast. A
' There is, in the hills above Haraud, a stone or cairn of cursing,erected as a perpetual memorial of the treachery of one who betrayed his fellow.
Tally of lives due is kepi, between the various tribes or famihes ; but when the account grows complicated it can be settled by betrothals or even by payment of cattle. The rules of inheritance do not follow the Islamic law, but tend to keep property in the family by confining- succession to agnates ; though some of the leading and more educated men are said to be trying to introduce the shara into their tribes.
The Biloches are nominally Musalmans, but singularly ignorant of their religion and neglectful of its rites and observances ; and though they once called themselves and were called by old historians friends of Ali and though, if their account of their ejection from Arabia be true, they must have originally been Shiah, they now belong almost without exception to the Sunni sect. Like many other Musalman races of the frontier they claim to be Qureehi Arabs by origin, while some hold them to be of Turkoman stock ; their customs are said to support the latter theory : their features certainly favour the former. The question is discussed at pages 19 ff Mr. Fryer's Settlement Report of Derah Ghazi. Their language is a branch of the old Persian, and apparently contains many arehaic forms which throw light upon other modern develop ments from the same source. It is described in the Chapter on Languages. It is now hardly spoken, so far as the Pan jab is concerned, beyond the tribal organisation of the Derah Ghazi Biloches ; and even among them it is being gradually superseded by Multani or Jatki, the language of the plains, and a Biloch Chief has been known to learn the language in order to talk it to English officials. They have no written character, and no literature ; but they are passionately fond of poetry, chiefly consisting of ballads describ ing the events of national or tribal history, and of love-songs ; and local poets are still common among them.
