36

INDIA

and Mongolian invaders. The Tajak shows himself
chiefly in the Kohistani districts north of Kabul and
bordering Kafiristan, where he becomes dominant and
aggressive in proportion as. he is newly converted to
the tenets of the Muhammadan faith. In the west
of Afghanistan, though still prevalent, he is less predominant,
 being there subordinate to the Afghan. He
is the tiller of the soil, the ¢“ghulam” or slave of the
community. The blue-coated agriculturist, who with
round felt hat and triangular spade cultivates the poppy
beds about Herat, is a Tajak. The Tajak is indeed by
ancestry closely allied to the normal Persian villager of
the Khorasan, and he talks more or less the same language.
His master, the Afghan, who calls himself Durani, claims
descent from the “lost tribes,” rejoices in the name of
“ Ben-i-Israel,” and firmly believes himself to be of the
seed of Abraham, of the chosen people of Jehovah. His
traditions, his family names, his Semitic features, his
civil code of unwritten law are all more or less Israelitish,
and it is difficult to tell, if his traditions are false, how he
came by all these evidences of their truth. On the other
hand his language is Pushtu, an ancient tongue of
Sanscrit origin showing no trace of Hebrew influence.
And because his language is Pushtu, he claims a certain
affinity in language and laws with the Pushtu tribes of
the frontier, and acknowledges himself to be a Pathan—
which means only that he talks the Pushtu language.
The Afghan has gradually migrated and spread from his
original seat in Southern Afghanistan to the north—to the
Kabul Valley. As ¢ Mohmand"” and “ Yusufzai” he has
possessed himself of large tracts of country in Swat and
those contiguous districts which are beyond the limits of
what we now recognise as Afghanistan, so that there is
direct affinity of race as well as language and traditions
between the Afghans of Afghanistan and the Mohmands
and Swatis of our independent border provinces. The
Amir of Kabul is the priestly head of them all, and the
defender of their faith. There is no real recognition of
the Sultan of Turkey as their religious head.