IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
( 82 )
same perplexing Tartar features, which partake of Khitay and Manjhu, and Kalmâk, and Kirghiz semblance, yet are distinctly referable to neither one or the other. They are said to be the offspring of Chinese troops and traders of the abovenamed and other tribes by half-caste women of the cities. In Ila, these half-castes by a Manjhu father and Kalm6.k mother are called Solon, as those by a Khitay father and Kalmâk mother are called Shiba; but the terms, though known, are not commonly used in Kâshghar.
Similar to these half-castes in some respects, but strangely different in physiognomy, is the Châlgurt, or offspring of an Uzbak father by a woman of Kâshghar. The range in variety of feature in this class is very great, and its most notable peculiarity is that it presents an equal blending of the typical characters of the prime stocks, a point in which it differs remarkably from the Arghun. In the Châlgurt the cast of countenance and the small round head are decidedly Tartar features, but the full beard up to the ears is as markedly Tajik. The explanation may possibly be found in the aberration of the Uzbak type from its parent form, for in external appearance the Uzbak differs little from the Châlgurt he produces ; and the tendency of the latter to take after the father indicates that the superiority he has acquired by Caucasian intermixture has, through long continuance, become innate, and formed for his tribe a race sub-type similar to that of the Persian or the Othmanli further west. The Châlgurt class has received an immense impetus to its growth since the conquest of the country by the Amir, for his Andijan and Tashkand troops have taken very freely to the women of the country, and their barracks and military lines swarm with little children, the offspring of their alliances. Many of these children, as indeed are their mothers, are perfectly fair and rosy cheeked, and might pass for robust English children, but for the rotundity of their features and figures.
At Yarkand I selected thirty men and nine women out of the crowd one morning attending at the Embassy dispensary and measured their height and circumference of the head. The former measurement was taken standing against a graduated post with the boots on, consequently an allowance of from half an inch to an inch should be made for the thickness of the heels. The head measurement in the men was on a shaven scalp, and in the women over the smoothed hair ; and in each by a measuring tape passed round above the ears, and meeting in front between the supra orbital arches above the root of the nose. The results are thus tabulated :—
Men.—Height and Circumference of head.—Thirty subjects.
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| Inches. | Inches. |
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| Tallest ... | ... | 68•40 | 23.0 | Maximum. |
| Medium ... | ... | 64.37 | 21.43 | Medium. |
| Shortest ... | ••• | 60.20 | 20.40 | Minimum. |
Fromm—Height and Circumference of Bead.—Nine subjects.
Inches. Inches.
| Tallest Medium Shortest | 62.20 60.00 57.40 | 21'50 Maximum. 20.625 Medium. 20.10 Minimum. |
All the above were natives of the city and of Tartar race, and do not include any Andijani, Kashmiri, Badakhshi, or other foreigners. In almost all the bodies were well-formed and of square build.
The measured heights of individuals natives of other cities were these, viz.:—
A man of Ktzchâ, 71.60"; of Khutan, 72.10"; two men of Akstx, 71.10" and 71'50"; two men of Kâshghar, 69.60"; and a Dolan of Taskama, 65.40".
The urban population of the western cities, it will be gathered from the preceding remarks, is a confused mixture of Turk and Tartar, or Moghol and Tâjik, and the offspring of their several alliances one with the other. Their appearance as a whole baffles description, because the special characteristics of the several types are incapable of general
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