thereabouts, it is commonly said that when a woman dies and has been laid on a bier, she, if she has not been an ill-doer, gives the bearers such a shake when they lift the bier by its four sides, that against their will and hindrance, her corpse falls to the ground ; but, if she has done ill, no movement occurs. This was heard not only from Kflnaris but, again and again, in Bajaur, Sawad and the whole hill-tract. Haidar-'all Bajaurt, a sultan who governed Bajaur well, when his mother died, did not weep, or betake himself to lamentation, or put on black, but said, "Go! lay her on the bier ! if she move not, I will have her burned." l They laid her on the bier ; the desired movement followed ; when he heard that this was so, he put on black and betook himself to lamentation.
Another buluk is Chaghan-saral,2 a single village with little land, in the mouth of Kafiristan ; its people, though Musalman, mix with the Kafirs and, consequently, follow their customs.3 A great torrent (the Kiifiar) comes down to it from the northeast from behind Bajaur, and a smaller one, called Pich, comes down out of Kafiristan. Strong yellowish wines are had there, not in any way resembling those of the Nur-valley, however. The village has no grapes or vineyards of its own ; its wines are all brought from up the Kafiristan-water and from Plch-i-kafiristani.
The Pich Kafirs came to help the villagers when I took the place. Wine is so commonly used there that every Kafir has his leathern wine-bag {khig) at his neck, and drinks wine instead of water.4
1 i.e. treat her corpse as that of an infidel (Erskine).
3 It would suit the position of this village if its name were found to link to the TurkI verb chaqmaq, to go out, because it lies in the mouth of a defile (Dahanah-i-koh, Mountain-mouth) through which the road for Kafiristan goes out past the village. A not-infrequent explanation of the name to mean White-house, 'Aq-saral, may well be questioned. Chaghan, white, is Mughuli and it would be less probable for a Mughuli than for a Turk! name to establish itself. Another explanation may lie m the tribe name Chugani. The two forms chaghan and chaghdr may well be due to the common local interchange in speech of » with r. (For Dahanah-i-koh see [some] maps and Raverty's Bajaur routes.)
3 Nimchas, presumably, half-bred iA custom, perhaps in blood ; and not improbably, converTed Kanrs. it is useful to remember that Kafiristan was once bounded, west and south, by the Baran-Water.
1 Kafir wine is mostly poor, thin and, even so, usually diluted with water. When kept two or three years, however, it becomes clear and sometimes strong. Sir G. S. Robertson never saw a Kafir drunk (Kafirs of the Hindu-kush, p. 591).
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