 |
30. TOMB OF GOOLAUM HOOSSEIN, AT CANDAHAR.
ON the 6th of August,1842, our brigade vacated cantonments, and, moving three miles, we pitched our camp half a mile from the walls of the city, opposite the Caubul gate, near the mosque of a celebrated saint. We were all in the highest spirits, for it was announced that Nott, contrary to the injunctions he had received to retire forthwith through Scinde, had determined to put his own construction on the ignominious order, and to retreat after a more soldierlike fashion, by advancing on Ghuznee and Cabul. Thus, if it were found (as our only authority, the Afghauns, reported) that Pollock had not advanced from Peshawur, we might succour Jellulabad, and, recovering step by step the ground lost through former errors and misfortunes, plant anew the banner of England on every spot where its brightness had been tarnished, whether on lofty citadel or in deep mountain defile.
But to our subject. In the burial-ground near our camp was the Mosque of the holy man Goolaum Hoossein Huzrutjee. It is two hundred years old. His sanctity, if proportionate to his dimensions, must have been enormous, for his grave, full three-and-twenty feet in length, was, as the Afghauns gravely asserted, by no means longer than his stature required. The court-yard was a square of four hundred and forty feet, and near the Mosque, in the centre of the wall opposite, was the tomb itself, which was decorated with flags, antlers, and other ornaments in the usual Afghaun fashion, which I shall presently describe at length. The remainder of the court-yard is well sprinkled with graves belonging to members of the royal family and former kings of the country. The shrine of this saint was apparently an object of exceeding veneration, if one might judge from the unusual ceremony and numerous genuflections used by those who entered the court-yard. In the course of five minutes representatives of at least as many nations approached to worship at the sacred spot. Here is seen the princely-looking Pharseewaun (Persian) chief, with upturned eyes, hands outspread, making his triple prostrations at the name of Allah. There bends also the long-haired, bare-legged Douraunee, in loose white “Cameese”, short blue “Payjamahs,” and gold embroidered skull cap, now at full length kissing the dust, now kneeling, now standing erect, as the successive parts of his ostentatious worship require. Motionless at the threshold, his arms crossed reverentially on his breast, his face half buried in his neck, his low murmur of Ullah ai Ullah alternating with the frequent sigh, and stealing at times a glance at us in the hope we observe him, stands a Ghiljye―a very Shylock in expression, in piety a Pharisee―of a tribe as treacherous and bloodthirsty as any in the land. A gang of Bombay “boys” push rudely past him, reeking with dirt and uncleanness, their unwashed faces surmounted by a mass of matted hair and rags. Short-waisted jackets clothe their upper man, their black legs are encased in a pair of the Sahib’s cast-off knee-breeches, the intervening ebon space girt with a pocket handkerchief borrowed from “master’s” wardrobe. They astonish the proud and ample-robed Afghaun, as well they may, racing half-naked round the tombs, chaunting, screaming, and gibbering like apes. What a contrast to the approaching group of Lohaunees, the wandering merchants of the country! They walk as though “they trod on necks.” Can any dress be more graceful? Their trousers, fastened tightly at the instep, swell out in close folds of silk or muslin as far as sixty yards of stuff (an allowance by no means unusual) will permit. Shirts of white calico, short-waisted, and embroidered like ploughman’s frocks, hang to their knees in loose drapery, white towering turbans crown their bronzed and florid countenances. Relief is given to the figure by gay “Loongies” hung carelessly around them, and interwoven with their primitive and singularly-fashioned weapons.
The dark ringlets, fine cast of countenance, and clear olive complexion of the Lohaunee, reminded me more forcibly of the national claim to a Hebrew lineage than the features of any other tribe; though all the Afghauns have more or less the full dark eye and aquiline nose, characteristic of the Jewish race, yet, owing probably to intermixture with other nations, and various causes, they are physically a far finer and handsomer people; nor have their features, particularly the more prominent ones, that exaggerated and Punch-like appearance perceptible in our English Jew, which is doubtless the result of continual intermarriage amongst a limited number.
I have been led, by these observations, to wander from the grave-yard of the Prophet, a subject I cannot entirely dismiss from my paper without briefly touching on the peculiarities of wailing the dead, and the mode of decorating the tombs adopted generally by those who visit this or any other burial-place. A day at the opening of spring, designated “day of the dead,” is set apart for making visits to the grave-yards, where the women, in particular, assemble in large bodies to lament over the departed. They commerce their sad duties in a kind of measured chaunt, gradually swelling into loud sobs and shrillest screams of woe and misery. It was on a cold, raw, cutting day, early in April, 1841, that I rode, hawk on fist, through a burial-ground, close under the Emperor Baber’s tomb, at Caubul. It extended along the uneven ridges of a low mountain range, and was remarkable at a great distance, with its jagged piles of tall cleft flints, standing out in bold relief against the clear blue sky. Numberless white-veiled and blue and black-draped figures flitted like shades among the tombs, and as the still wintry blast whistled by, it came laden with the wailings of the mourners. Women and young girls were ornamenting the still small chambers of their dead with early flowers; for they found violets and anemonies under the warm snow, ready to burst forth from their winter covering when the spring rays visit them in their rocky crevices. Others, whenever the rain permitted them, were lighting their little stone and red-clay lamps (Chiraug), to place in the niches of the grave-stones, or scatter about the tombs. Here they watched, and wept, and knelt; the young and the old, the withered crone, the youthful beauty, the high-born, the lowly, the feeble and the strong one; but though so different in age and circumstances, all bowed themselves there, absorbed in the one same melancholy duty of bewailing their fresh dead, and long since buried ones.
Some were there who beat their breasts in a perfect fury to the measure of their dirge; some, who lay at fullest length on the damp ground, covering their heads with dust, their griefs escaping in long-drawn sobs and moans; while others, baring their faces to the storm (the dank winds playing in their veils and tresses), totally heedless of the unhallowed gaze and presence of an unbeliever, stood with arms upraised to heaven, silent and motionless as the grave-sods at their feet. One poor Afghaunee girl, beside a newly-dug and freshly-decorated grave, seemed to have buried there her all. She sung her “waie, waie, waie” (alas! alas!) which I shall remember to the end of life; and, frenzied with her grief, tore her hair, rocking herself violently backwards and forwards, like a “Rachel refusing to be comforted.”
Frequently have I paused when passing their burial-grounds, and have come to the conclusion that, though often prettily laid out with marble tombs, and squares of variegated pebble work tastily decorated with flowers and evergreens, they are (and particularly so on the outskirts of their cities) the most lonesome and melancholy spots I ever remember to have seen in any of my wanderings. Very many are without a bush or tree, not even a stunted cypress or stiff lignum vitæ (the usual favourites of their grave-yards) to enliven the long, black, polished forests of bristling flints raised at the head and feet of the sleepers. Here and there, heaps of pebbles thrown loosely on the body by the friends of the deceased, or by the hand of some passing pilgrim, until they assume the form of miniature pyramids, with a stake pushed through their centre, a flag perhaps in by-gone days, and a few coloured rags fastened on twigs by the pitying wayfarer, mark the spots where “the poor victim of a brother’s hate” was struck down in the blood feud, or fell to the long knife of the midnight assassin―both events of too common occurrence in the land of the relentless Afghaun. From other graves a green pennon, surmounted by a metal hand, which points upwards to the route whereby the departed spirit of the true follower of the Prophet has winged its flight to Paradise, rears itself bravely amid a confused mass of rams’ horns and antlers of antelope and mountain sheep, which are denotive of power and strength. These, and a Fuqueer’s Takeea, or abode of some holy mendicant priest, surrounded by a mud wall, with many shaped and various-coloured standards pendant from the roof, the spiral horns of the ibex and wild goat, saws of the sword-fish, conch shells, and ostrich eggs for its adornments, form the principal features of the last home of these interesting yet terrible mountain warriors of Afghaunistaun.
[Keywords]
Farsiwan/ Lohani/ cheragh/ takya/ Ghulam Husayn Hazratji/ Peshawar/ Jalalabad/ qamis/ payjama/ Ghilzay/ lungi/ faqir
|
NEXT |
|
|
BACK |
|
|