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0097 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 / Page 97 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000234
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with passages over shingly slopes and climbs over rock-strewn
wastes. Only at a few spots the barren grey and yellow of the
rocks was relieved by some green shrubs growing where scanty
watercourses forced their way down the fissured slopes. After
six hours' steady climbing and scrambling it was a relief to
see at last the valley widen again, and two hours more
brought me to Ghulmit village. It occupies a wide alluvial
fan on the flank of a considerable glacier, the white crest of
which could be seen from a distance rising above the orchards
and fields.

At Ghulmit that part of the Hunza Valley is entered which
is known as Little Guhyal. It takes this name from its
inhabitants, Wakhi immigrants from Wakhan or Guhyal on
the Oxus. It was easy to notice the change of race in the
assembly of well-built handsome village headmen which
received me some distance from the village. Headed by the
Mir's relation, Muhammad Nafiz, who acts as his representa-
tive among the villages of this part of the valley, they escorted
me in stately procession to the little orchard of apricot trees
where my camp was to be pitched. I was delighted to hear
at last the language of Wakhan, which had attracted my
attention years before I first came to India, as a remarkably
conservative descendant of the ancient tongue of Eastern Iran.
It seemed strange that I should have first touched the
linguistic borders of old Iran, high up in these mountains. The
fact was bound to remind me that the Pamirs which I was
about to approach, mark the point of contact not only of great
geographical divisions, but also of equally great language
families and of the races speaking them. Close to the Kilik
Pass is the point where the watersheds bounding the drainage
areas of the Oxus, Indus, and Yarkand Rivers meet; and it is
plain that as far as history can take us back, these areas
belonged to the sphere of the dominant races of Iran, India,
and Turkestan.

The Wakhis of Little Guhyal, numbering altogether about