Indian Antiquary Vol 03

SR No.: 032495
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 420
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1874.
forget that there was a Kobâd succeeded by a Khusrd in the 6th Christian century, to whom the names of these places may be quite as much due, as to the Kayant kings a thousand years before them?
The next stage was Klá Jan Beg, thence to Bandar and by Nasirabad to Banjâr, where they joined Sir F. Goldsmid's party; then by Peshawarân, the site of a populous city utterly destroyed by Taimurlang, to Khyrâbâd, the first inhabited place the party saw after passing the AfghanSistân frontier. Several marches ahead the climate became notably different from that of the districts left behind. During the day the air was delightfully mild and balmy, and at night fresh and bracing. In crossing the Kala Koh range you, in fact, enter another country, and the change is no less observable in the characteristics of the people than of the climate. The inhabitants have much fairer skins than the Afghans, are clothed differently, and appear a more orderly community. Thirty miles more passed, and the Mission met the first travellers seen on all the road from Kandahar westward. They were a small party of twenty men on their way from Birjand to Sistân for grain. They were needy, and therefore showed none of the haughty indifference of ordinary Afghans towards strangers. Birjand is the centre of a considerable trade with Kandahar and Herat on one side, and Kirman, Yazd, and Tehran on the other. It is also the seat of the carpet manufactures for which this district has been celebrated from of old. The carpets are called galin, and the best kinds fetch very high prices from the aristo. cracy of the country.
From Birjand the party proceeded to Ghibk or Ghink, and thence by Ram to Ghayn or Qayn, supposed to have been founded by Karin, "a son of the blacksinith Kawah of Ispahân, the hero of the Peshdadi kings, who slew the tyrant Zâhâk, and whose leather apron-afterwards captured by the Arab Såd-bin-Waqass---became the standard of Persia, under the name of darfshi Kituâni, op the Kåwåní standard. It was studded with the
most costly jewels by successive kings, to the last of the Pahlavi race, from whom it was wrested by the Arab conqueror, and sent as a trophy to the Khalif 'Umar."
From Ghayn they went by Girimunj, and Kakhak, through a very dangerous country, to Bijistân, one of the principal towns of the Tabbas district. Hereabouts the people were found to have suffered dreadfully from famine. The camp was surrounded by crowds of beggars, famished, gaunt and wizened creatures. Boys and girls, of from ten to twenty years of age, wan, pinched and wrinkled, whined around in piteous tones and Fainly called on Ali for aid. Along the entire march from Ghayn to the Persian capital, hardly a single infant or very young chili was to be seen: they had all died in the famine. "We nowhere heard the sound of music nor song nor mirth in all the journey up to Mashad. We passed through village afte: village, each almost concealed from view in the untrimmed foliage of its gardens, only to see repetitions of misery, melancholy, and despair. The suffering produced by this famine baffles description and exceeds our untutored conceptions." In the single province of Khoras. san the loss of population was estimated at 120,000 souls, and over the whole kingdom could not be less than a million and a half. In the disorganization and laxity of authority produced during this horrible time, the Turkman began with fresh ardour their wonted frays, and during three years carried off twenty thousand Persian subjects from Mashad alone, for the slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara. During the height of the distress, the citizens of Mashad would flock out to the plains "to be captured by the Turkman, preferring a crust of bread in slavery to the tortures of a slow death under the heedless rule of their own Governors, who never stirred a finger to alleviate their sufferings or relieve their necessities." We cannot, however, follow our author in the details of his journey from Mashad to Tehran, and thence to Baghdad, interesting though many of them are.
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA. THE NÅGAMANGALA COPPER PLATES. has been good enough to make on certain passages Sir, --The notice which Professor Eggeling has of my rendering. bestowed upon the Någa mangala copper plates | First, as regards the name Konga ni taking the in his letter of the 13th March, published in the form Kodgani, and my suspieion that this might Indian Antiquary (ante,p. 151), demands my sincere furnish a clue to the origin of Kodagu, the name acknowledgments. The approval he has kindly of Coorg. The word undoubtedly appears in the expressed of my former contributions are doubly photo-lithograph as Kongani, but this is not so gratifying as coming from the representative of in the photograph from which it was obtained, the Royal Asiatic Society. I may, however, he and from which my translation was made. A pernitted to reply to some of the observations he defect there occurs, a large white spot, on the nga,