her, however, her face was an enigma. It was full of pain, and wan as the face of one who watches still beside the dead, yet it did not look as if she had been crying, at any rate, not recently. It was a grief that seemed to enclose and underlie the personal one; to have passed through the earlier passionate, convulsive stage, which fights and struggles and cries aloud in its misery, and to have entered into the secondary one-the stage where trouble becomes no longer an invader, but an abiding presence, a grim house-guest, the sharer of a lifetime. It was a phase which he felt and resented as he did so might remain always, might remain even if it came to be overlaid with joy.

From The Contemporary Review. AFGHAN LIFE IN AFGHAN SONGS.

ON the night of the 7th of April, 1886, (Wednesday, II P. M.), as I was sitting in the garden of my bungalow at Peshawer, gazing at the stars and the silver moon, etc. etc., I heard my Afghan chaukidar,* old Piro, of the Khali tribe, muttering in a broken voice fragments of a song that sounded like a love-song. I asked him to repeat the song to me; this he modestly declined to do for a long time, but at last he gave way, and began:

My love is gone to Dekhan, and has left me
I have gone to him to entreat him.

alone:

"What is it to me that thou shouldst become a Raja at Azrabad?"†

I seized him by the skirt of his garment and said: "Look at me!"

The field was new and unexplored: English people in India care little for Indian songs.

She hardly spoke to him, except to utter a brief word of thanks for the care which had smoothed their journey. All her thoughts seemed to be concentrated Here old Piro stopped, and neither for upon Mrs. Cathers. There was too, as love nor for money could I prevail upon she attended to her wants, the same him to go on; his répertoire was exhausted. vaguely penitential expression, the same But my interest had been awakened, and air of secret remorse, which had so often from that night I resolved to collect what exasperated him when directed towards I could of the Afghan popular poetry. her husband. He turned with an impulse of impatience to Jan, who sprang eagerly out of the carriage to meet her friend, and whose small face, with its aureole of bleached hair, looked as satisfactorily self-possessed and unemotional as ever. Children were, after all, the only rational and natural creatures, he said to himself irritably. Others women especially even the best and noblest, were apt sooner or later to take on a pose. It might be the most inevitable of poses, but still it was one. Their circumstances laid hands upon them, and twisted them insensibly. They felt what they conceived they ought to feel, until at last they grew to be what they wished in the first instance they really were.

It was an unwonted ebullition of impatience, a breath upon the mirror of his loyalty, and he had the grace to feel a little ashamed of himself the next minute. Did he seriously expect, that with her husband not a week dead, not yet laid in the grave, she was to dress herself in smiles to meet him? Whether she were bleeding inwardly to death, or whether peace, the white-winged, was already beginning to flutter before her windows, outwardly it would be the same. Decency, self-respect that pity which was the rock, he knew, on which all else with her rested-made it inevitable. He knew this, of course, he knew, in short, that he was unreasonable, but has that ever yet hindered man or woman from being so?

It con

I had gone to the border to study the Afghan language and literature, but I had soon to recognize that the so-called Afghan literature is hardly worth the trouble of a journey from París to Peshawer. sists mainly of imitations and translations from the Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani. For a time, under the Moguls, an original and free spirit permeated those imitations, and Mirza Ansari, the mystical poet, or Khushhal Khan, prince of the Khatak tribe, would be accounted a true poet in any nation and any literature. But these are rare exceptions, and the theological

lucubrations of the much-revered Akhun Darveza, that narrow, foul-mouthed, rancorous, and truly pious exponent of Afghan orthodoxy, the endless rifacimenti of Hatim Tai, the most liberal of Arabs, of Ali Hamza and the companions of the Prophet, or the ever-retold edifying story of Joseph and Zuleikha, all seem as if they had been written or copied by mediæval monks or unimaginative children.

The popular, unwritten poetry, though despised and ignored by the reading classes, is of quite a different character. It is the work of illiterate poets; but it

During a few months' stay on the border I collected about one hundred and twenty songs * of every description love-songs, folklore, hymns, romantic songs, and political ballads. If we want to know what an Afghan is, let us put all books aside and receive his own uncon-ley of the Helmend. scious confession from the lips of his favorite poets. The confession, I am afraid, would not be much to their honor on the whole, but it will be the more sincere. This is the value of the wild, unpremeditated accents of these people; a poor thing it is, but it expresses their na

and travelling guests meet every night to
hear the news that is going round, and
listen to any man that has a tale to tell or
a song to sing. The ustad pockets half
the sum given by the host, and the other
half is divided between the shagirds.
When a shagird feels he can compose for
himself and is able to achieve a reputa-
tion, he leaves his master and becomes
himself an ustad. I am sorry to say that
dums generally are not over-sensitive
about literary honesty; plagiarism is rife
among them.
A dum will readily sing,
as his own, songs of the dead or the living.
It is the custom that poets should insert
their names in the last line; you have only
to substitute your own name for the name
of the real author or of the former plagia-
rist; people will not applaud you the less,
though of course the injured party may
retort with a satire or a stab. A good
dum may die a rich man; Mira would
hardly open his mouth anywhere under
fifty rupees. He was an illiterate man;
he could not read, but he knew by heart a
wonderful number of songs, and could
improvise. You would ask him for a song
in a certain shade of feeling; then he
would go out with his men, and an hour
afterwards they would come back and
sing a beautiful chorus on the rebab. His
song of "Zakhmé" is sung wherever
there are Afghans, as far as Rampor in
Rohilkhand, and Hyderabad of Dekhan,
and sets them a-dancing as soon as the
first notes are struck. It was sung at the
Ravul Pindi interview as the national song
of the Afghans, though it is nothing more
or rather, nothing less than a love-
song. An Irish journalist - Mr. Grattan
Geary, of the Bombay Gazette
struck with its melody, and had it printed.
It is, I believe, the only Afghan song that
has ever been published.*

was

Per

of the mollahs, the dum is as popular in
his profane as in his semi-sacred charac-
ter. Song is a passion with the Afghans;
in fact one of the few noble passions with
which he is endowed. Whenever three
Afghans meet together, there is a song
between them. In the hujra, during the
evening conversation, a man rises up,
seizes a rebab, and sings, sings on.
haps he is under prosecution for a capital
crime; perhaps to-morrow he will be
hunted to the mountain, sent to the gal-
lows; what matters? Every event of pub-
lic or private life enters song at once,
and the dums are the journalists of the
Afghans. I fancy the dum of to-day has
preserved for us faithfully enough a pic-
ture of what the bard was with the Gauls.

II.

AFGHAN HONOR.

THE supreme law for the Afghan is honor; they have the idea, and have a word for it: nangi Pukhtâna, or Afghan honor. But the word does not convey with them the same ideas as with us, and needs explanation. The nangi Pukhtâna includes a number of laws, of which the chief are nanavatai, badal, and mailmastai; that is to say, law of asylum, law of revenge, and law of hospitality.

"By nanavatai, or the entering in,' the Pukhtun is expected, at the sacrifice of his own life and property if necessary, to shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof."* As soon as you have crossed the threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours; as soon as you are out he resumes his natural right to take your life by every means in his power, fair or foul.

The people piously inclined object to song, among the Afghans as well as else- You know of the dramatic tale by Proswhere; and the mollahs inveigh against per Mérimée, of the Corsican father shootthe dums. There is only one occasioning his own child because he has shown when even a mollah will approve of the song of a dum; it is when the Crusade, or, as the Anglo-Indians say, the Crescentade, has been proclaimed; then is the time for the dum to rehabilitate himself, as he sings the glories of the sacred war, the bliss reserved to the ghazi, the roses that grow for him in the groves above, and the black-eyed houris that come from heaven and give the dying man to drink of the sherbet of martyrdom. But in spite

Two songs have been translated by Mr. Thorburn

in his book on Bannu, and another by Col. Raverty in the introduction to his Afghan grammar.

to the gendarmes the room where an outlaw had hidden himself. The Afghans have the same tale, but a degree higher in dramatic horror, because here it is the son that does justice upon his father. It is the tale of " Adam Khan and Durkhani," a tale that has been popular for more than a century, has inspired, and still inspires, many poets; it is, in fact, one of the subjects that every poet must treat. There are of course an infinite number of versions; I give here the one that was sung

H. W. Bellew, Yusufzais, p. 212.

What are the feelings of an Afghan lisBetween thee and me here is the Lord as wit-tening to the tale of horror? The poet

necessary to deserve him the esteem of his own people; but he was a shúm, and Mahmud has made his name immortal in a satire. This satire is in the form of a dialogue between pupil and master, shagird and ustad:

happens not seldom that an Afghan Sepoy | had in his house the original manuscripts from Yaghistan-many Afghans from of Khushhal Khan; he had his enemies' over the border enlist in the native con- blood on his hand; he had everything tingent asks for leave for private business; that means that there is up there some wolf's head which he has to take. There is a story of an Afghan Sepoy, who, having not joined his paltan in due time, complained bitterly of the iniquity of his officer, who had dismissed him from service: "I had a duty of badal to perform; I had a foe to kill. The scamp absconded for weeks; what could I do?"

Mailmastai is a virtue of a less stern character; it is hospitality in the widest meaning of the word. The Afghan is bound to feed and shelter any traveller who knocks at his door; even infidels have a claim upon his hospitality. The laws of mailmastai are binding on the commune as well as on the individual; the hujra is the home of those who have no home. Even in British districts the chief of the village, the malik or lambardar, raises a special revenue the malba, or hospitality tax-for the entertainment of passing travellers. Whether rich or poor, the duty is the same for all. The poor entertain poorly, the rich richly. It happens not seldom that they run into debt, and fall a prey to the Hindu money-lender, for fear they should deserve the name of a shúm, a miser the worst insult to an Afghan, especially to an Afghan of high rank. Old Afzal Khan, of Jamalgarhi, of the royal family of the Khataks, will be remembered for a long time amongst his people because he was a shúm, and poet Mahmud sang a cruel song of him. Here is his story; it is the old story of the end of a great name.

PUPIL: At Jamalgarhi lives Afzal Khan.
MASTER: Tell me about him. He boast-

fully praises himself and his sons every mo

ment.

guest coming,

MASTER: He says to him: "Wherefore do you come?"’*

PUPIL: He kills him with questions from head to foot.

MASTER: He has no fear, no respect of the Lord.

PUPIL: He never lets a guest rest on a bed in the hujra.

MASTER: His mouth is always open as an empty well.

PUPIL: He who will cut him into pieces, MASTER: Will be a Ghazi, and it is a scamp he will kill.

PUPIL: He has no teeth, his mouth is black as an oven.

MASTER: Let him vanish from my eyes; he sets all his kith and kin a-blushing,

PUPIL: There will never be such a shame

less fellow as Afzal Khan.

MAHMUD says: I wag my tongue upon him freely in the bazaar.

Afzal Khan was born in the first years Last year, in May, I saw the poor old The curse of the poet was not lost. of this century; he is descended in direct line from the prince of the Khataks, scamp, in chains, pleading for his life beKhushhal Khan, the great warrior and fore the sessions judge in Kachehri. He great poet, who for years in his mountains was charged with traitorous murder; his two sons and two servants were with him defied Aurengzeb and the Mogul empire, in the dock. As witnesses were speaking, and "who, as he boasts, was the first to the five accused men did not cease from raise his standard in the field of Afghan muttering prayers and telling their beads, song, and subjugated the empire of words in order to make the depositions harmless under the hoof of his battle-steed." About and turn the heart of the judge in their 1830 his cousin, Khavas Khan, received favor. Afzal Khan was acquitted, but one the investiture of Akora at the hands of Runjet Singh, the Sikh suzerain of the of his sons and one of his servants were now British Afghans; Afzal Khan stabbed sentenced to death. When I left, the ap him with his own hand on his way home from Lahore. He rendered service during the mutiny; his income was 3,629 rupees, 822 of which were a pension from government for loyal service. Afzal Khan was a rich man; he had a great name; he

peal was pending at Lahore. I am afraid by this time the grandson of Khushhal the English in India have a foible for Khan has been dangling for a long time;

A question never to be asked from a guest until his needs have been attended to.