the glittering eyes and the growing abandon of the dancers one could watch the exciting effect of the performance. There was, alas ! nobody to tell me what each phase of the dance was supposed to symbolize, or of the feelings of the men. Was it with dances of this kind that the safe return from victorious raids on their Muhammadan neighbours was celebrated ? All I could learn from those who had witnessed similar dances before was the numbers of human victims the more prominent performers could claim. There were a few jovial-looking men who enjoyed credit for having slain from forty-two ` enemies ' downwards. That the number of ` heads ' included in each case women and children, for which Kafir raiders never had any mercy, was a detail scarcely calculated to bring these heroes humanly nearer.
With the Afghan subjugation completed within the last ten years or so, the struggle carried on by the Kafirs for so many centuries against their Muhammadan neighbours north and south has probably now closed for good. Thinking of the untold misery that must have accompanied this unrelenting savage warfare, one cannot regret the end. Yet the thought was oppressing that I had witnessed a scene which after a generation or so will never be seen again, and that with this ancient race now doomed to absorption much old-world lore was passing away which no amount of scholarly acumen could ever recover. May this last settlement of true Kafirs yet find its student before it is too late !
IIIF Color HighRes
