THE BRIIMIS OF BALUCHISTAN.•
WHAT do most Englishmen, or, for the matter of that, most Anglo-Indiana, know about the great mountainous tract to the north-west of Sind, which contains a full thirteenth of the area of the Indian Empire, and yet, so inhospitable are its arid valleys, has only "a paltry 1-377th of the teeming millions enumerated at the current census "? Not much, we suppose, save a vague memory of a broad area, coloured partly pink on the maps, to indicate directly administered British territory, and partly yellow, to show tracts in which the "Political" guides indigenous rulers. Yet surely there are few more fascinating countries in the world. It was only in 1876 that Sir Robert Sandeman negotiated his famous treaty with the Khan of Kaiak and already one of the most turbulent and pugnacious races knows has beaten swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks. The order has gone forth that "nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." The order has been obeyed, though it is enforced by the merest handful of British officers, trained, it is true, in the school of one of the most gifted of frontier administrators.
One of these officers, the author of the two books before us, is not only filled with the true frontiersman's enthusiasm for his people and his task, but possesses a very pretty gift of English style. Many Indian officials have a nimble and ready pen, but Mr. Denys Bray has more. His Census Report, for all its sober array of facts and figures, has a more than statistical or ethnological interest. It is a human document, put into singularly arresting and vivid English, so that the most careless and lazy reader may for once, if he will, be as absorbed in a Government publication as in the newest novel, simply because Hr. Bray has a
. • 0.) Th. Lifo-Iristory ins. Brdfaii. By Denys Bray: I.C.S. • tendon The Royal Asiatic Society. net] -,---(2)..AAt000rtaa-tho-C•ag.o -Bah,ohiot. • By Denys Bray. I.C.S. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing. Vic 6d. not.]
romantic and interesting tale to tell, and tells it with a literary vigour not common even among professional men of letters.
Of the many tribes who dwell in the broad area of Baluchi- stan the most curious in many respects are the Brithili, if only from the surprising fact that, though since they have become Mohammedan their language has borrowed its vocabulary freely from Afghanistan and Persia, yet it is unmistakably Dravidian in structure and mechanism. Which is as if we were to discover in the mountains of Wales a race using a speech composed chiefly of English words, but undoubtedly Turkish in its syntax and idioms.
In the little book which the Royal Asiatic Society has wisely published at the charges of the Prize Publication Fund, which it owes to the generosity of H.H. the Raja of Cochin and other rulers of Dravidian India, Mr. Bray has set down the substance of many conversations with Mirza Sher Muhammad, himself a Bahia. "I shall tell the tale," he says, "as it was told to me, jealously preserving its refreshing naivete, its intimacy, and boldness of detail." The result is a narrative of the most absorbing interest. Let us by all means study the aspirations of Young India, the results of a hundred and fifty years of British rule. But do not let us forget the border tracts, where half-a-dozen young English. men find congenial and honourable occupation in studying the manners and customs of rough mountaineers as yet untouched by the itch for Western culture and Western luxury. Mr. Bray's little work is one of the most original and fascinating books that have ever been written on an alien race. It comes opportunely, if any of us feel inclined to despair of our power of conciliating and controlling Eastern peoples. The Royal Asiatio Society is to be congratulated upon being sponsor to a work whose ethnographical and linguistic interest is heightened by a significant vigour of style—significant because it shows how keenly the author enjoys his frank and familiar intercourse with the tribesmen among whom he lives and labours.
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