Pathans: 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 true Pathan is perhaps the most Barbaric [Indpaedia does not agree] of all the races with which we are brought into contact in the Panjab. His life is not so primitive as that of the gipsy tribes. But he is bloodthirsty cruel, and vindictive in the highest degree : he does not know what truth or faith is^ in so much that the saying Afghan be iman has passed into a proverb among his neighbours ; and though he is not without courage of a sort and is often curioudy reckless of his life, he would scorn to face an enemy whom he could stab from behind, or to meet him on equal terms if it were possible to take advantage of him, however meanly. It is easy to convict him out of his own mouth ; here are some of his proverbs : A Pathan's enmity smoulders like a dung-fire.
A cousin's tooth breaks upon a cousin.— Keep a cousin poor, but use him.— When he is little play with him : when he is grown up he is a cousin ; tight him.— Speak good words to an enemy very softly : gradually destroy him root and branch.^At the same time he has his code of honour which he observes strictly, and which he quotes with pride under the name of Pakhtunwali. It imposes upon him three chief obligations, Nanaiodtai or the right of asylum, which compels him to shelter and protect even an enemy who comes as a suppliant ; hadal or the necessity to revenge by retaliation ; and Meluiastia or open-handed hospitality to all who may demand it. And of these three perhaps the last is. greatest.
And there is a sort of charm about him, especially about the leading men, which almost makes one forget his treacherous nature. As the proverb says — The Pathan is one moment a saint, and the next a devil.For centuries he has been, on our frontier at least, subject to no man. He leads a wild, free, active life in the rugged fastnesses of his mountains ; and there is an air of masculine independence about him which is refreshing in a country like India. He is a bigot of the most fanatical type, exceedingly proud, and extraordinarily superstitious. He is of stalwart make, and his features are often of a markedly Semitic type. His hair, plentifully oiled, hangs long and straight to his shoulder f he wears a loose tunic, baggy drawers, a sheet or blanket, sandals, and a sheepskin coat with its wool inside ; his favourite colour is dark-blue,' and his national arms the long heavy Afghan knife and the matchlock or jazail. His women wear a loose shift, wide wrinkled drawers down to their ankle?, and a wrap over the head ; and are as a rule jealously secluded. Both sexes are filthy in their persons.
Such is the Pathan in his home among the fastnesses of the frontier ranges. But the Pathans of our territory have been much softened by our rule and by the agricultural life of the plains, so that they look down upon the Pathans of the hills, and their proverbs have it —A hill man is no man, and again, Don't class burrs as grass or a hill man as a human being. The nearer he is to the frontier the more closely the Pathan assimilates to the original type ; while on this side of the Indus, even in the riverain itself, there is little or nothing, not even language, to distinguish him
•The Pasbto word tarbur is used indifferently for cousin or for enemy jand tarburwali either for cousinhood or for enmity.
3 This is not true of the northern Pathans, who shave their heads, and often their beards also.
3 The colour and cut of the clothes vary greatly with the tribe.
from his nelglibours of the same religion as himself. The Pathans are extraordinarily jealous of female honour, and most of the blood feuds for which they are so famous originate in quarrels about women. As a race they strictly seclude their females, but the poorer tribes and the poorer members of all tribes are prevented from doing so by their poverty. Among the tribes of our territory a woman's nose is cut off if she be detected in adultery ; and it is a favourite joke to induce a Pathan woman to unveil by saying to her suddenly You have no nose ! The Pathan pretends to be purely endogamous and beyond the border he probably is so ; while even in British Territory the first wife will generally be a Pathan, except among the poorest classes. At the same time Pathan women are beyond the Indus seldom if ever married to any but Pathans. They intermarry very closely, avoiding only the prohibited degrees of Islam. Their rules of inheritance are tribal and not Mahomedan, and tend to keep property within the agnatic society, though some few of the more educated famihes have lately begun to follow the Musalman law. Their social customs differ much from tribe to tribe, or rather perhaps from the wilder to the more civilised sections of the nation. The Pathans beyond and upon our frontier live in fortified villages, to which are attached stone towers in commanding positions which serve as watch-towers and places of refuge for the inhabitants. Small raids from the hills into the plains below are still common ; and beyond the Indus the people, even in British Territory, seldom sleep far from the walls of the village.
The figures showing the distribution of Pathans are given in Abstract No. 65 on page 191. They are the dominant race throughout the whole tract west of the Indus as far south as the southern border of the tahsil of Derah Ismail Khan, which roughly divides the Pathan from the Biloch. On this side of the Indus they hold much of the Chach country of Hazara and Rawalpindi, they have considerable colonies along the left bank of the Indus till it finally leaves the Salt-range, and they hold the northern portion of the Bhakkar thai. Besides those tracts which are territorially held by Pathans, there are numerous Pathan colonies scattered about the Province, most of them descendants of men who rose to power during the Pathan dynasties of Dehli, and received grants of land-revenue which their children often increased at the expense of their neighbours during the turmoil of the 18th century.
