National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

42   MARCO POLO.   VOL. r. BK. I.

edge of the Tibetan territory, and some of them took service as

Tibetan officials." (E. H. PARKER, Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904,

P. 143.)

li

XXXII., pp. 178-179- "

BOLOR.

We read in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Haidar (Notes by

Ney Elias ; translated by E. D. Ross, 1895), p. 135, that Sultán

Said Khán, son of Mansur Khán, sent the writer in the year 934

(1528), " with Rashid Sultán, to Balur, which is a country of

infidels [Kdjristdn], between Badakhshan and Kashmir, where

we conducted successfully a holy war [ghazdl], and returned

victorious, loaded with booty and covered with glory."

Mirza Haidar gives the following description of Bolor

(pp. 384-5) : " Balur is an infidel country [Karistán], and most

of its inhabitants are mountaineers. Not one of them has a

religion or a creed. Nor is there anything which they [con-

sider it right to] abstain from or to avoid [as impure] ; but they

do whatever they list, and follow their desires without check or

compunction. Baluristán is bounded on the east by the province

of Káshgar and Yárkand ; on the north by Badakhshán ; on the

west by Kábul and Lumghán ; and on the south by the depend-

encies of Kashmir. It is four months' journey in circumference.

Its whole extent consists of mountains, valleys, and defiles,

insomuch that one might almost say that in the whole of

Baluristán, not one farsdkk of level ground is to be met with. The

population is numerous. No village is at peace with another, but

there is constant hostility, and fights are continually occurring

among them."

From the note to this passage (p. 385) we note that " for some

twenty years ago, Mr. E. B. Shaw found that the Kirghiz of the

Pamirs called Chitrál by the name of Pálor. To all other

inhabitants of the surrounding regions, however, the word appears

now to be unknown. . . .

" The Balur country would then include Hunza, Nagar,

possibly Tásh Kurghán, Gilgit, Panyál, Yasin, Chitrál, and

probably the tract now known as Kafiristan : while, also, some

of the small states south of Gilgit, Yasin, etc., may have been

regarded as part of Balur. . . .

" The conclusions arrived at [by Sir H. Yule], are very nearly

borne out by Mirza Haidar's description. The only differences

are (1) that, according to our author, Baltistán cannot have been

•

.