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Art. IV.—On Ruins in Makrán

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Major Mockler
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Extract

Gwáder is a seaport on the coast of Makrán (ancient Gedrosia), and Makran the name of the southernmost portion of the country marked Baluchistán in our maps. The derivation of the word “Makrán” is doubtful; indeed, I have never heard a satisfactory derivation. Baluchistán, viz. the country of the Baluchis, is so called from the people by whom it is now principally inhabited, who, themselves, claim to be of Arab extraction (Arabs of the Koreish tribe), stating that they were forced to emigrate, about the latter end of the seventh century, from the neighbourhood of Aleppo, in Syria, by the tyranny of the Khalif Yezid, in consequence of their having taken the part of Husain (the martyr), grandson of Muhammad; and that, passing through Persia, they eventually reached Makrán, which they gradually overran and became masters of. Their traditions are, however, meagre and unsatisfactory. They do not appear to have preserved the name of a single place through which they passed in their journey through Persia; nor have they any recollection of the people inhabiting Makran at the time of their advent. This state of oblivion may, perhaps, be accounted for by the gradual manner of their coming into the country, viz. clan by clan at a time; but, in the lists of their ancestors, as I have received them, many names must have been omitted.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1876 , pp. 121 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1876

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References

page 122 note 1 Plate, Fig. 1.

page 126 note 1 The word “damb” is a Baluchi word signifying a place cut off from communication with the outer world; and, regarding the stone huts described in the following paper, to which the name of “dambs” is given, the Baluchis hare a tradition that, in a year of great famine, the inhabitants of a city, which then stood on this spot, collected all the old and infirm persons belonging to the community, and built them up, each in a separate living tomb; they add that to each person was given a pot of water and a certain quantity of grain, and that they were left to die; in this manner accounting for the presence in these “dambs” of the pots of which they, or others before them, have pretty well destroyed the last. They also say that the persons so confined were of very diminutive stature, corresponding with the small size of some of the “dambs.” It is noteworthy that a very similar tradition regarding what are, I imagine, remains of somewhat similar structures, is found amongst the Tamils of Southern India; see Caldwell's Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, Appendix, p. 695.

page 127 note 1 Plate, Figs. 3, 4a, 6a.

page 128 note 1 Plate, Pigs. 7, 9.

page 130 note 1 [The type here noted is a common Parthian one; but the Greek words suggested are impossible. I would propose for the first, ΘΕΟΠΑΤΡΟϒ, and for the second, ΦΙΛΩΠΑΤΟΡΟΣ.—V.]

page 131 note 1 Plate, Fig. 8.

page 132 note 1 Plate, Fig. 5.

page 133 note 1 Plate, Fig. 10.