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

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0091 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / Page 91 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000214
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

CH. III

PASSAGE THROUGH CHITRAL   41

centuries before had seen Alexander and his Macedonians pass by to the conquest of the Indian marches. There were to be seen, too, ruins of Buddhist shrines attesting an ancient civilization that had vanished since the last of the rulers who used to mint coins with Greek legends had ceased to hold sway in the land and to protect with its prosperity also its Buddhist sacred sites.

May 3 found us at the foot of the dreaded Lowarai Pass, over 10,200 feet high (Fig. 13), and our crossing effected before daybreak through gorges deeply choked with the snows of avalanches, some quite recent, showed that the difficulties that had been locally urged against an earlier passage northward had scarcely been exaggerated. Over fifty stout tribesmen, starting in several detachments to lessen risks, were needed for the transport of our belongings. With this obstacle once safely taken I could rapidly push up the deep-cut valley of Chitral to Fort Drosh, the northernmost outpost of British military power in India. Thence a long double march by the river, with the huge icy mass of the Tirichmir peak (about 25,000 feet high) in full view, carried me to the Chitral capital, a charming little oasis in this maze of steep barren mountains.

A few days of busy halt there enabled me to gather an ample anthropological harvest. In its autochthonous population Chitral holds an important branch of that 'Dard' race which by its antiquity and ethnic and linguistic affinities may well claim special interest. Already in the days of the Achaemenaean Empire its seat in these mountains was known to Ktesias. But the mountain fastnesses of Chitral have again and again offered shelter also to broken remnants of tribes unable to hold their own elsewhere. Thus I