Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s7: G. Muslim Race Titles
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s7
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G. Muslim Race Titles
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§ 103. Of the total Muslim population of India nearly 58 per cent bear the titles of races foreign to the country. Those whose names imply Arab descent amount to 30,442,000. About 4,239,000 nominally belong to the tribes on the north-west frontier, and the remaining 434,000 affiliate themselves to races introduced by the Central Asian dynasties which successively ruled from Delhi. It must not be supposed, however, that the proportion of foreign blood is that indicated by the prevalence of the above titles, except in the case of the frontier races, who have naturally overflowed into Sindh and upper India. On the contrary, in some parts of the country, it is said that converts from Brāhmanism are so deeply imbued with the notion of a fourfold division of society, fostered by the traditional sacerdotal partition of the Indian world into Brāhman, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya and S'ūdra, that they consider themselves bound, when accepting Islām, to enrol themselves as either Sēkh, Saiyad, Mughal or Paṭhān. In eastern Bengal, accordingly, the name of Sēkh is practically assumed to connote native, instead of foreign, origin. In the Panjab, again, and the region round Delhi, the long supremacy of the Mughal has endowed that race with a halo which is still attractive to the local convert. Nearly nine tenths of the Turk, too, belong to a subdivision of Banjārā, which, as already stated above, adopted Islām en masse; and, finally, nearly all the Arabs of Sindh bear the title of Kalhōrā, the ruling race before the Talpur. The figures now to be reviewed, then, must be taken with the above qualifications. The latter, it will have been seen, apply most extensively to the communities purporting to belong to the native land of the Prophet, which ought to be the most honourable, as they are the most numerous on the record.
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§ 104. (a) **Arabian** (25,441,900). The small number returning themselves as Arab, without detail, might be still further reduced were the Kalhōrā to be treated as an indigenous body, bringing the total down to about 75,000. The returns of Mother-tongue would justify still further diminution, but in the west of India, where the Arab is chiefly found, the community is divided into the Vilāyatī, or foreigners, principally from Hadramāt, and the Muvallad, or native-born, the latter being the progeny of Arab or sometimes Makrānī fathers by wives taken from some local Sunni caste, in whose household the current vernacular is Hindūstānī. The Arabs settled in India permanently are generally guards in the service of native Chief or kept by the principal bankers in the same capacity. The others, true to their secular connection with India, are merchants and traders, with the modern addition of horse-dealing, in connection with the ports on the Persian Gulf. The two small tribes of Hans and Khaggā, in the Panjāb, are also said to be Arabs who came by land and settled north of Multān. They are now apparently merged in the Paṭhān or Jaṭ tribes. The title of Sēkh is widely spread over the country, and, except in the Panjāb and Kashmīr, predominates more or less over all Muslim designations. The common practice just referred to, of taking this name on conversion is justified by
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the Ḥadīth, or saying of the Prophet "All converts to my faith are of me and my tribe". In Lower Bengal, from which 80 per cent of the Ṣēkh are returned, this title covers 85 per cent of the total Muslim population. In the Muslim State of Haidarābād, the corresponding proportion is 70 per cent, and in Mysore, also under rulers of this creed once, it is over 60 per cent. Elsewhere it ranges from 25 to 40. It is smaller, as is to be expected, in upper India where Islām was the State religion, and in the Panjāb where conversion does not affect caste or social position, and where, as in the upper Gangetic region, the larger communities often contain a Brāhmanic and a Muslim branch, giving the convert the opportunity of retaining his former status, with a change in his worship only, and often a very slight one even in that. In Bihār, a province which stands between the ignorance of eastern Bengal and the exclusiveness of the upper valley, it is only the converts of the higher castes, such as Rājput, Bābhan or Kāyasth, who are allowed to pass directly into a race-title. Those of humbler origin have to spend a time in the probationary grade, as it were, of Nau-Muslim, or raw-recruits, and their further advancement depends upon their conduct or worldly prosperity.
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The Ṣēkh are much subdivided, though throughout the greater part of India the sections have little more significance than the main title. Originally, amongst the Arabs, the term denoted eldership or a position of authority only. It subsequently became the special designation of the Qurēṣ, the tribe to which the Prophet belonged, and of the descendants of his own family and of his relations. Thus, the Banū 'Abbās Ṣēkh are derived from his uncle, 'Abbās; the Hāṣimī, from his great grandfather; J'afarī, from his cousin. The Ṣiddīqī are so called from the first Khalīf, Abu Bakr, named Aṣ Ṣiddīq, or the Truthful One. The second Khalīf, Omar, was called Fārūq, the Distinguisher of Right from Wrong, and from him come the Fārūqī. The Anṣārī, or Helpers, were the inhabitants of Al Medinah, who sheltered the Prophet, and so on with several more of these subdivisions. In some Provinces the details of Ṣēkh have been tabulated, but for the most part the value of the return is vitiated by the preponderance of those who failed to have this information entered against their names. At best, except in the north, the return indicates in most cases no more than the personal preference of the householder. In the Gangetic region, so far as the information goes, the favourite section is decidedly the Ṣiddīqī, and after it, the Qurēṣī. In the Panjāb, too, and in Sindh the Qurēṣī have been separately given, but the return is only partial.
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The Saiyad, a title said to be derived from Sūd, gain, are, strictly speaking, the descendants of 'Ali, cousin of the Prophet, who became his son-in-law, and the line is generally limited to his offspring by Fāṭma, not by his other wives. Thus the primary division of the Saiyad is into the claimants through Ḥasan and those through Ḥussain, the proto-martyrs of the faith, but many call themselves after other relatives of the Prophet, using the same titles as the Ṣēkh. Others have adopted geographical names, such as Būkhārī, Sabzawārī, Bilgrāmī, Bārha, the two last being descended from a celebrated Saiyad of 'Irāq, whose family settled in upper India, like many others, in the train of one of the Muslim conquerors. Probably in all the tracts surrounding Delhi and the principal seats of Muslim authority there are families of Saiyad who hold their estates by inheritance from ancestors who rendered distinguished service to the Mughal power either in the field or in administration. Indeed, one family is said to have "made four Timurides emperors, dethroned and killed two, and blinded and imprisoned three". The genealogy of most of the Saiyad of India, however, is not so well attested, and, apart from the selection of this rank by converts of high Brāhmanic caste, which is a practice said to have received the approval of the great Emperor Akbar, it is reported to be not uncommon for a Muslim changing his sect from Sunnī to Ṣī'ah, to signify his belief in the rank of 'Alī as premier Khalīf, by adopting himself into the company of the Apostles. Nevertheless, far down to the south, there are Saiyad settled whose forefathers followed the fortunes of some one or other of the Muslim invaders, and who now, though in some cases reduced to take to lowly occupations for a living, generally hold to their rank and intermarry only with other Saiyad, or members of the Mughal or Paṭhān races, and occasionally, but as seldom as possible, with some respectable local family of the same sect. For there are, it should be noted, Sunnī Saiyad as well as those of the Ṣī'ah sect, to which, in theory, all ought to belong. In the western Panjāb the Saiyad is usually a religious teacher, irrespective of race or descent, and too often is a member of "that pestilential horde of holy men, who not only prey upon the substance of the people but hold them in the most degrading bondage". "The Paṭhān is a bigoted Sunnī, yet he maintains more Saiyad than the Balūc, once known as "the friends of 'Alī".
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§ 105. (b) Mongol (394,600). Of the two races which entered India with the Ghaznavides and later, the Turk and the Mughal, it is hard to say which is the more unduly magnified in the Census returns. The inclusion among the former of the Turkiyā sub-caste of Banjārā has been mentioned. Then, too, in Bihār and round Delhi, Turk is the equivalent amongst the peasantry for any official, especially if he be of the creed of Islām, and Mughal serves the same purpose in Orissa and the east Dekkan. The real Turk in the north is the traveller or merchant from Turkistān, who is a temporary sojourner in Kashmir and Peshāwar. The only permanent colony is that left by Timur in Hazāra at the end.of the 14th century. In the west coast, in Bombay and a few other towns, and in Haidarābād, there are probably a few families of Osmanli. The Mughal element, in the south and east is better defined, as the convert of those parts does not affect the title, and those who bear it are probably correctly described, being as they are, the representatives of families brought into Bengal and the south Dekkan by the semi-independent Viceroys of Delhi. In the north there is the tendency already mentioned to assume the title of Mughal on conversion or on rising in the world, which is found in the parts of the Panjāb where Islām predominates but the Paṭhān influence is not supreme. Along the Jamnā, however, there are considerable numbers of true immigrants, settled upon estates conferred upon their family by the Turk Emperors, from Bābar downwards. The distinction between Turk and Mughal, however, is not in such cases very clearly drawn, and subdivisions are returned which are common to both, as, for instance, Turkman, Qizilbaṣ, and even Caghatāi, the tribe of Bābar. As a rule, the Mughal and Paṭhān, assuming them to be of really pure descent, are not considered, away from the frontier, at all events, as equal in rank to the Saiyad and Ṣēkh, and their position, consequently, depends a good deal upon that of the family in its neighbourhood. In the interior, too, there is a tendency to introduce endogamous subdivisions, or more correctly, perhaps, to make existing sections endogamous. There is also, at the lower edge of these communities, a fringe of dependents who are either bastards of the upper classes, as among the Rājputs, or have taken the title of their employers and patrons on conversion. These do not intermarry with the Mughal or better families of the Sēkh. In the west of India, in addition to the Caghatai, there is a considerable sprinkling of Persian settlers and refugees, who go by the name of Mughal. They are strict Sī'ah and do not intermarry with Indian Muslim. Most of them have engaged in trade. The Caghatai, on the other hand, have become almost an integral part of the Muslim masses, and are Sunnī, with the customs, language, and religious observances of their neighbours.
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§ 106. (c) **The Paṭhān and Balūc** (4,287,000). If the hypothesis of the identity of the Paṭhān with the Paktyes of Herodotus be true, as is now generally believed, these tribes must have been from time immemorial neighbours of India, and even occupants of some part of the territory which is now included in that country. Some of them, again, were people amongst whom Brāhmanism found a favourable reception, and then, Buddhism, the latter especially lingering long in these secluded valleys and on the high road to India which passes near them. The Paṭhān, however, accepted with equal zeal and devotion the exceedingly narrow and superstitious form of Islām now current amongst them, and anything less like the mild and tolerant character of the Indian Buddhist than the present temperament and habits of the frontier men of nowadays can hardly be imagined. At the same time, the Paṭhān, like all highlanders in the tribal stage, has his charm in his virile independence and his strict observance of the national code of hospitality and asylum, even towards an enemy — the great solace of his life. It cannot be denied, however, that the epithet of "faithless", universally appended to his name by those who have to deal with him, is, like most of the proverbial sayings of the country-side, very well deserved, by at all events the hillmen. Those who have settled in the plains of the Panjāb, even though within easy reach of their fellow tribesmen of the highlands, are soon softened by their circumstances, and the more they prosper the less respect they show for the hard life they have left behind. In the interior of India there is no Province or State without its quota of this race, and, no doubt, looking at the extent to which soldiers of fortune were settled by their victorious employers upon the land overrun by them, there is a good deal of real Paṭhān blood disseminated amongst them, but not to anything like the amount indicated on the face of the returns for regions like Bengal or the peninsula. In the former, indeed, the title of Paṭhān is regarded as the right of a converted member of a Brāhmanic military caste, and the further detail of selecting a tribe or clan presents no more difficulty to him than that of a Rājput clan does to an aspiring Kōl.
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The term Paṭhān is now used to denote any one speaking the Pakhtūn language, or Paṣtū, and thus includes the Afghān, a foreign race which, however, has impressed its name upon the whole country. The Afghān, whose Jewish origin is insisted on by several authorities, and regarded as unproved by others, first settled in the hill tracts of Ghor and Hazāra. Thence they descended upon the Helmand valley, which was in the occupation of the Gāndhārī, a Paṭhān tribe expelled from the Peshāwar valley by one of the Scythian invaders. These people were dominated and then converted by the Afghān, who finally intermarried freely with them. The Gāndhārī, however, took the first opportunity of reverting to their former seat, where, under the names of Yūsufzāi, Mohmand, etc., they now reside. The Afghāns, by this time known as Tarīn, Ṣirānī, and Abdālī, or Durrānī, remained round Kandahār until the 18th century, when they transferred their headquarters to Kābul. The Ghilzāi, a Turk tribe which is Paṭhān but not Afghān, arrived across the Bāmīān from Ghor, like its predecessors. After rendering great assistance to Mahmūd of Ghazni on his raids into India, the Ghilzāi took possession of the country between Jellālābād and Qal'at-i-Ghilzāi, and have since spread east and west from that nucleus. In addition to the Gāndhārī just mentioned, the Paktyes contained, according to ancient writers, the Aparytai, or Āfrīdī; the Sattagydai, or Khatak, and the Dadikai, or Dādi, all of whom are ascribed to an Indian origin. Along with the Afghān, Ghilzāi, the Scythic Kākar, the Wazīrī (said to be Parmār Rājputs), and a few Turk accretions brought down by Sabaktagīn and his successors, these tribes constitute the Paṭhān of to-day. The territories occupied by the ancient people of that name, however, have been much altered. The Kākar nearly obliterated the Dādi in Sewistān; the Khatak and Āfrīdī were dispossessed by the Turk to a great extent. But through the operation of intermarriage and the adoption by all of the Paṣtū language, the whole has been welded into one nation, with the usual fictions as to common descent to explain the fusion.
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The modern Paṭhān inhabitants of upper India were first introduced by the Lōdī and Sūr dynasties, and consisted chiefly of Ghilzāi, who were not Afghān, nor, at that time, Paṭhān. They were soon followed, however, by large bands of other tribes, who were generously endowed with estates by the Ghaznī Chiefs and also by Bābar, whose original army grew like a snowball as he moved it across the hills to the plains of promise. The tribes most numerously represented in this distribution were the Yūsufzāi, the Orakzai, Lōdī, Kākar and Karlānrī. The tribal organisation gets weaker, as is only to be expected, as the distance from the frontier increases, and is scarcely to be found in its original form east of the Jamna, where the Rohilla community, well known in history, is probably the best-knit, as it is the most prosperous, of the larger settlements of this race. In addition to the Paṭhān colonies and the converts arrogating to themselves that title, there is a floating population of from 100,000 to 150,000 Powindah, or itinerant traders of Paṭhān nationality. They belong chiefly to the Ghilzāi tribes, though, owing to their nomad life, their connection with their kinsfolk is of the loosest. Large caravans assemble in the autumn to the east of Ghaznī, and march in armed bodies through the dangerous country of the Wazīrī and Kākar, to the Indus at Dēra Ghāzī Khān. Here they deposit their arms, leave their families encamped on the grazing grounds along the river, under the guardianship of a detachment of their fighting men, and wander off across upper India, often as far as Bihār, selling the goods and horses they have brought from Kandahār and Central Asia. When these have been disposed of, the Powindah act as pedlars on behalf of merchants in the larger towns. In the spring they re-assemble on the Indus, and wend their way back to Kandahār, dispersing from that centre by their various routes through Herāt and Kābul to the north. Some few of the band engage in contract labour for the season. There are gangs, also, but not belonging to the regular Powindah, which remain longer in India, taking up work as it suits them, and usually affecting tracts well known for their prosperity and the unwarlike character of their population. In these lush pastures their superior size and strength, added to their loud and gruff voices provide them with a living until they are moved on by the police towards a region where those qualifications are sufficiently familiar to fail to extort respect or alimony.
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§ 107. **Balūc.** A line drawn from Dēra Ghāzī Khān through the Sulaimān range due west to Quettah demarcates approximately the Paṭhān on the north, from the Balūc on the south; but the latter have advanced considerably to the north of this limit in the Indus valley, and have also established large colonies in upper and middle Sindh. The Balūc statement of their origin is to the effect that they belong to Aleppo, and were expelled from Syria on sectarian grounds. They found their way through Baghdād and Kirmān to Makrān, where they lived for many generations before they occupied Khalāt and the south Sulaimān hills, which they took from the Paṭhān. A large section of their community was expelled from Balūcistān in a tribal dispute, and settled in Sindh. Members of these exiled clans joined with their
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married with Jāṭ and Balūc, and have even admitted adult recruits from these races into their tribes. Nevertheless, they have preserved their distinct physical features, being shorter and more swarthy than their neighbours; and, though, as remarked in the Introduction, their language has been overlaid with Sindhī and Balūcī, they keep, for domestic use at all events, a tongue undoubtedly Dravidian in its main characteristics. In common with their neighbours, from whom they have perhaps borrowed it, they hold the tradition of Arab descent, Aleppo being their chosen seat of origin. On the other hand, they are equally certain that they have never lived in any other country but that which they now occupy. Setting on one side the conjecture that the Brāhūī are of Scythian race, for which there is little corroborative evidence, it is known that there was of yore a considerable Indian population settled along the hill-country west of Sindh, with its own customs and temples. It is possible, therefore, that the Brāhūī may denote the high-water mark of the Dravidian extension northwards, left derelict and isolated under the protection of the desert, after the Indus had changed its course and the tide of Āryan occupation had absorbed the bulk of the darker race. In the present day the Brāhūī are specially addicted to the rearing and tending of camels. They enjoy a good social position in Balūcistān, but are rarely found far from their wide pastures, except for purposes connected with their occupation.
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With these tribes ends the list of the communities which have been selected as representative of the different elements of which the vast and complicated society of India is compounded. That the review of their leading characteristics is imperfect has been fully admitted throughout, and the certainty of error will not be denied by any one who has attacked even the outworks of a task of this nature. It needs but little experience of Indian life to bring home to the student of ethnography the vanity of thinking that the whole field can be adequately surveyed in the light of such knowledge as can possibly be acquired by a single individual. Here, indeed, if anywhere, a little knowledge is dangerous, because, as has been abundantly shown in the course of this review, Indian society differs from tract to tract to an extent which inevitably involves the lurking danger of being led astray by analogy or similarities of nomenclature, rites or customs, into the assumption that what is true of a community in one part is equally applicable to a body of perhaps the same name elsewhere. Information upon such distinctions must be obtained, as a rule, at second-hand, and fortunately, the supply thereof has greatly increased of late years both in amount and quality and has received valuable additions even since the body of this review was written. It is on such material that reliance has been mainly placed in the attempt here made, perhaps rashly, to give a word-picture of society as it exists to-day in India, not merely geographically, but as a whole.