178-179.
BOLOR.
We read in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Haidar (Notes by Ney Elias;
translated by E.D. Ross, 1895), p. 135, that Sultan Said Khan, son of
Mansur Khan, sent the writer in the year 934 (1528), "with Rashid Sultan,
to Balur, which is a country of infidels [Kafiristan], between
Badakhshan and Kashmir, where we conducted successfully a holy war
[ghazat], and returned victorious, loaded with booty and covered with
glory."
Mirza Haidar gives the following description of Bolor (pp. 384-5): "Balur
is an infidel country [Kafiristan], and most of its inhabitants are
mountaineers. Not one of them has a religion or a creed. Nor is there
anything which they [consider it right to] abstain from or to avoid [as
impure]; but they do whatever they list, and follow their desires without
check or compunction. Baluristan is bounded on the east by the province of
Kashgar and Yarkand; on the north by Badakhshan; on the west by Kabul and
Lumghan; and on the south by the dependencies of Kashmir. It is four
months' journey in circumference. Its whole extent consists of mountains,
valleys, and defiles, insomuch that one might almost say that in the whole
of Baluristan, not one farsakh of level ground is to be met with. The
population is numerous. No village is at peace with another, but there is
constant hostility, and fights are continually occurring among them."
From the note to this passage (p. 385) we note that "for some twenty years
ago, Mr. E.B. Shaw found that the Kirghiz of the Pamirs called Chitral by
the name of Palor. To all other inhabitants of the surrounding regions,
however, the word appears now to be unknown....
"The Balur country would then include Hunza, Nagar, possibly Tash Kurghan,
Gilgit, Panyal, Yasin, Chitral, and probably the tract now known as
Kafiristan: while, also, some of the small states south of Gilgit, Yasin,
etc., may have been regarded as part of Balur....
"The conclusions arrived at [by Sir H. Yule], are very nearly borne out by
Mirza Haidar's description. The only differences are (1) that, according
to our author, Baltistan cannot have been included in Balur, as he always
speaks of that country, later in his work, as a separate province with the
name of Balti, and says that it bordered on Balur; and (2) that Balur
was confined almost entirely, as far as I am able to judge from his
description in this passage and elsewhere, to the southern slopes of the
Eastern Hindu Kush, or Indus water-parting range; while Sir H. Yule's map
makes it embrace Sarigh-Kul and the greater part of the eastern Pamirs."
XXXIII., p. 182. "The natives [of Cascar] are a wretched, niggardly set of
people; they eat and drink in miserable fashion."
The people of Kashgar seem to have enjoyed from early times a reputation
for rough manners and deceit (Stein, Ancient Khotan, p. 49 n). Stein, p.
70, recalls Hiuan Tsang's opinion:
