POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 243

loyal and true to us, for their rulers know that, but for
the protection afforded them by the British Government,
they would long ago have succumbed to the fate which
has befallen many greater and more powerful states who
went to pieces in the general wreck which followed on the
dissolution of the Mogul empire in the beginning of the
sighteenth century, or who were swamped by Sikh ambition
in the beginning of the nineteenth. Mahrattas or Sikhs,
Sivaji or Ranjit Sing, one or the other, could have made
them his own long ago but for us’ (so says Sir Lepel Griffin).
The native states of India may be divided into five
groups : Muhammadan, Hindu, Maratha, Rajput, and Sikh.
The geographical distribution of these states is not
unimportant when considered in relation to the strength
in arms and armament that is maintained in different
portions of the Indian empire. The Muhammadan states
are scattered.. Excluding for the present Baluchistan and
Afghanistan (not officially recognised as “ native states”),
therearethose independent provinces on the bordersof Sind,
and between the newly demarcated boundary of Afghanistan
and the British India line, over which we exercise political
influence of a shadowy kind, although we refrain from
actual interference with tribal government. Those on the
border of Sind are controlled from Baluchistan. Those
on the border of Afghanistan are now controlled from
Peshawur as the capital of the North-West Frontier province.
 From end to end, from Karachi to Swat, the local
form of government is tribal. There is no central authority
with comprehensive influence, and the process of political
negotiation is carried on between British officials and
native ¢jirgahs,” or collections of the chief men amongst
the innumerable clans into which the tribes are subdivided.

In the wild mountain regions which form the barrier
between the plains of India and the plateaux of Baluchistan
and Afghanistan no other form of government has ever
been found possible. Whether Afghans ruled at Delhi,
or Brahmans reigned in Kabul, these frontier Pathans,
through whose hills the connecting routes between Kabul