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0072	Serindia : vol.1
セリンディア : vol.1

into which the main trade route turns a short distance above Chitrāl proper, and by which after a couple of marches the Dorāh Pass is gained. The latter, practicable to laden animals for nearly half the year, offers an easy approach to the valley of Zebak by which, as seen above, the fertile tracts of Badakhshān and Wakhān on the uppermost Oxus lie equally open.

Compared with the route across the Dorāh, the one which ascends the Chitrāl or Yārkhun river to its headwaters near the Baröghil, and which I myself followed, can never have been of more than secondary importance. For until the modern mule-track was constructed, the precipitous rock-slopes of the gorges, through which the river has cut its way between Chitrāl and Mastūj, almost closed it to laden traffic, while higher up during the summer, a season otherwise favourable, the floods of the Yārkhūn rendered access to the Baröghil and the Āb-i-Panja branch of the Oxus difficult.

Relations with Ba-dakhshān.
The facility of communication with Badakhshān and the Oxus regions is reflected alike in trade, political, and other relations. The Chitrālis themselves do not appear to have ever been traders, if we except only the export of slaves in which their rulers indulged until comparatively recent times. But their country has probably seen for many centuries past a brisk flow of the traffic which is still carried on extensively between Indus and Oxus by the enterprising Pathān traders of Bājaur, whose colonies are to be met with both east and west of the Pāmirs. The dues collected on this trade have always formed a considerable source of revenue for the Chitrāl rulers.² That the rulers were at different periods themselves of northern origin is proved not merely by the acknowledged Irānian descent of the Katūr-Khushwakt dynasty, which still holds Chitrāl and Mastūj, and of the numerous privileged clans forming the Chitrāl aristocracy, but also by the traditions about repeated conquests from the Oxus side which, however vague chronologically, are yet plainly historical.⁴

Ethno-graphy of Chāral.
But even more significant is the fact that in a great portion of the Lutkhō Valley, to the south-east of the Dorāh, the subject population consists of Badakhshi immigrants, known as Yidghāh (Fig. 21), whose speech is practically identical with the Eastern Irānian language of Munjān, a hill district north-west of the Dorāh.⁵ The presence of a Persian-speaking colony of Badakhshis at Madaglusht near Kala Drōsh, the wide diffusion of the Maulai sect which has its modern home on the upper Oxus, and the increase in the number of settlers from Wakhān are additional evidence of the strong Irānian influence to which the autochthon population of Chitrāl must have been exposed from early times.⁶ It is, therefore, easy to understand why the physical characteristics of the Chitrālis (Fig. 7), as far as I could judge by appearance, seemed to me practically indistinguishable from the Homo Alpinus type, which is uniformly represented by the Ghālchah or Irānian-speaking hill tribes in the Oxus region and around the Pāmirs. The expert analysis, undertaken by Mr. T. A. Joyce, of the anthropometrical materials I collected during my stay at the Chitrāl capital may be expected to show to what extent that impression was true.⁷ The evidence would be still more conclusive if it

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