IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
| Cü. IV | AT A GAME OF POLO | 35 |
from outlying mountain hamlets, there were plenty of willing dignitaries at hand, from a former State Councillor downwards, to enforce discipline and impress all the victims with the importance of the occasion. By hours of demonstration on living specimens Surveyor Ram Singh was drilled into the mysteries of ` taking heads ' for anthropological purposes. When I could let him continue the practice on specially selected men, under the safeguard of occasional checks, the development of photographs in the dark room improvised by Naik Ram Singh absorbed much of my time and attention.
What with these labours, the record of local traditions,
adjustment of accounts, repairs, etc., my three days were, indeed, kept full to overflowing. Only to a few episodes can I briefly refer here. On the afternoon following my arrival I first met the Chief of Chitral as his guest at a game of polo played on the picturesque ground a little below the
offices of the Agency. It was a pleasure to watch the plucky play of riders in whose valleys the noble game has been the honoured pastime for many centuries.
Still more interesting was the opportunity for a long talk with the ruling Mehtar, Shuja-ul-Mulk, who had succeeded to the blood-stained ` Takht ' of Chitral after the events of 1895. Already in the descriptions of the Chitral siege in which he shared as a passive spectator ten years old, I had read of the excellent manners of the young chief. None of his ancestors could have displayed more of Eastern good breeding and grace than he now showed—in spite of his European clothes. We talked in Persian of the past of his land, of the relations that once bound it to the dominions of the distant ` Khakan-i-Chin,' the ` Great Khan of Cathay,' whose power asserted itself in these inaccessible valleys as late as the eighteenth century. Chitral has never enjoyed the distinction of a written history. Traditions, too, have survived only in vague outlines even for the late Muhammadan period. Hence manifest interest was aroused by what I could tell of the occasional glimpses of Chitral history which the Chinese Imperial Annals reveal from the seventh century onwards.
Tea and cakes served in true European fashion
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