52

INDIA

an athlete as any man of thirty who followed him?
Nor is the marked difference of action pursued in the
conduct of military tactics by Baluch and Pathan respectively
 altogether conducive to our recognition of
the latter as the superior fighting man. It is characteristic
 of the two races that the Pathan should trust
to the accuracy of a long-range rifle and his capacity
for concealing himself behind the most elementary cover ;
and that the Baluch, finding himself outmastered in the
open field, should die at the head of his men in one final
effort to close with his enemy. There is no lack of
chivalrous courage about the Baluch chief, and no
cringing to the voice of any fanatical priesthood. His
ancestry and his traditions are his pride, and his own
right hand is his defence.
The complicated question of the ethnography of
Baluchistan and its relation not only to the tribal distribution
 of the western frontier, but to a very large section of
the Dravidian population of Southern India, is one which
claims more exhaustive treatment than it can receive here.
The geography of Herodotus, from which we learn the
names of the tribes and people occupying the seventeenth
Satrapy of the Persian empire (which includes a great
part of modern Baluchistan), enumerates many peoples
which can be identified to this day; and Arrian’s history
of Alexander's retreat further leads us to the conclusion
 that there was no vast difference between the distribution
 of tribes of Dravidian or Persian origin who
occupy Baluchistan now and that of 2500 years ago.
The governing race of Baluchistan was, until quite recent
historical times, that of the Bolédi, a race which is mentioned
 by Ptolemy, and whose real name (according to
Bellew) “seems to have been Bola, probably deriving
from the Assyrian (Asura of the Mahabharat), Bael, Bal,
or Bel.” However that may be, it seems possible that
they gave their name to Baluchistan. It was only during
the eighteenth century that the Boledi were dispossessed by
the Gichki, a dynasty of Rajput extraction. The Dravidian
peoples encountered by Alexander are still to be found