BALUCHISTAN

2%

Portuguese, Dutch, and English formed a straighter line of
advance over the open seas.
Leaving for the present the fascinating subject of
ethnographical developments in India, we will note very
briefly the geographical substratum on which the modern
trans-frontier states of India are founded before proceeding
 to topographical definitions.
In not very remote times all the outlying kingdoms
and provinces of the north-western trans-frontier of India
were Persian territory, and were included under the one
provincial designation Khorasan. Khorasan is the name
which, to this day, is applied by Afghan and Pathan to the
modern kingdom of Afghanistan and to all the border
mountain lands which lie between Afghanistan and India.
Khorasan still possesses a narrow geographical existence,
but it has shrunk into the limits of a small province on
the extreme east of Persia, of which Mashad is the capital.
The Khorasan of Persian empire, which has contributed
an indestructible Persian element to the population of
these border countries, included not only a great section
of Eastern Persia and nearly all of Baluchistan, Afghanistan,
 and Kashmir (as we know them now), but the Indus
Provinces of the Punjab and Sind as well, As late as the
thirteenth century Persian garrisons held the Peshawur
valley, where they were found by the Conqueror Chenghis
Khan. This ancient Persian element has almost disabpeared
 from the population of the Punjab and Sind,
but it is to be readily found throughout the rest of
ancient Khorasan. In Baluchistan it is represented by
the lowest class of agriculturists. The ancient lords of
the soil are now little better than the household slaves
of the mixed community of conquering races who have
flooded the country since the days of the Arab occupation,
 Throughout Northern Afghanistan the same original
Persian stock exists—as the tiller of the soil in the western
districts, but in the east in much more dominant form.
The Tajak population of the turbulent districts to the
orth of Kabul, the people who occupy the plains that
Wind along the foot of the Paghman mountains south