Indian Antiquary Vol 46

SR No.: 032538
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 508
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 123

JUNE, 1917]
A THIRD JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA
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of Kashmiri descent, he proved in every way a worthy successor to Naik Ram Singh, whose devoted help on my second journey I owed to the same regiment, and whose tragic end I have recorded in Desert Cathay.
The other assistant, Mian Afrazgul Khan, & Patlan of the saintly Kaka-khel clan, and a Sepoy from the Khyber Rifles, was my own choice, and experience soon showed how much reason I had to be pleased with it. Originally a schoolmaster on the Peshawar border, with a sound vernacular education, he had soon after his enlistment in that famous Frontier Vilitia Corps been noticed for his topographical sense and superior intelligence. After a year's training in the Military Surveyors' Class at Roorkee, where he greatly distinguished himself, he was permitted by Sir George Roos-Keppel, Chief Commissioner, N.-W. Frontier Province, and Honorary Colonel of the Regiment, to join me as temporary draftsman and surveyor in connection with the excavations I was carrying on in the spring, 1912, as Superintendent of the Frontier Circle, Archeological Survey. There I was soon impressed by his marked and varied ability, and when in addition I became aware of his energy and genuine love of adventure I did not hesitate to engage him as an assistant surveyor for the journey. Our small party was completed by two Indian servants; one of them, Yusuf, a man of somewhat sporting " instincts, was to act as my cook, and the other Pir Bakhsh, a worthy elderly person from the mountains north of Kashmir, as his substitute in case of illness or some temporary outbreak of bad temper. The experience of previous journeys had warned me as to the necessity of this double string, and I owe it probably to its restraining influence that I was able to retain the services of both men in spite of all trials and bring them back to their homes in the end safely and in a state of contentment.
Ever since the plan of my journey was first formed I had been exercised in my mind by the difficulty of finding a practicable route which would take me across the great mountain barriers northward to the border of Chinese Turkestan on the Pamirs, and which was still new to me. By the initial portions of my previous journeys I had exhausted the only apparent alternatives of the Chitral and Hunza valleys leading to practicable crossings of the main Hindukush range. Even the devious route over the Karakorum passes I had seen on my return journey of 1908. But fortune seemed to favour me at the start, unexpectedly to open for me the eagerly desired new approach to my goal.
For long years I had wished to explore the important valleys of Darel and Tangir which descend to the Indus from the north some distance below Chilas. Darel (Ta-li-lo) is prominently mentioned in the accounts of old Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, partly because there passed through it a route which some of them followed on their descent from the uppermost Oxus to the Indus and the sacred sites of the Indian north-west frontier, and partly by reason of a famous Buddhist sanctuary it once contained. No Europeans had ever been able to visit these territories, as the disturbed political conditions of the local tribal communities, coupled with their fanatical spirit, effectively closed access to them. But in recent years Raja Pakhtun Wali, of the Kushwaqt family, once ruling Yasin and Mastuj, had, after an adventurous career, succeeded in founding and gradually extending a chiefship of his own among these small Dard republics. The desire of consolidating his rule and securing support for his children's eventual succession had led him a short time before to seek friendly relations with the Gilgit political Agency. When I learned of the opportunity chance thus offering I decided to use it for a new route to the Pamirs. The matter needed diplomatic handling. But finally the effective help given by my kind friend the Hon. Mr. Stuart Fraser, Resident in Kashmir, with the assent of the Indian Foreign Department, secured