The Story of the Malakand Field Force | Page 4

their
hatred of control, arrest the further progress of development. We have
watched a man, able, thrifty, brave, fighting his way to power,
absorbing, amalgamating, laying the foundations of a more complex
and interdependent state of society. He has so far succeeded. But his
success is now his ruin. A combination is formed against him. The
surrounding chiefs and their adherents are assisted by the village
populations. The ambitious Pathan, oppressed by numbers, is destroyed.
The victors quarrel over the spoil, and the story closes, as it began, in
bloodshed and strife.
The conditions of existence, that have been thus indicated, have
naturally led to the dwelling-places of these tribes being fortified. If
they are in the valley, they are protected by towers and walls loopholed
for musketry. If in the hollows of the hills, they are strong by their
natural position. In either case they are guarded by a hardy and martial
people, well armed, brave, and trained by constant war.

This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks
little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless
levity, and the tribesmen of the Afghan border afford the spectacle of a
people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of
temper. Such a disposition, combined with an absolute lack of
reverence for all forms of law and authority, and a complete assurance
of equality, is the cause of their frequent quarrels with the British
power. A trifle rouses their animosity. They make a sudden attack on
some frontier post. They are repulsed. From their point of view the
incident is closed. There has been a fair fight in which they have had
the worst fortune. What puzzles them is that "the Sirkar" should regard
so small an affair in a serious light. Thus the Mohmands cross the
frontier and the action of Shabkadr is fought. They are surprised and
aggrieved that the Government are not content with the victory, but
must needs invade their territories, and impose punishment. Or again,
the Mamunds, because a village has been burnt, assail the camp of the
Second Brigade by night. It is a drawn game. They are astounded that
the troops do not take it in good part.
They, when they fight among themselves, bear little malice, and the
combatants not infrequently make friends over the corpses of their
comrades or suspend operations for a festival or a horse race. At the
end of the contest cordial relations are at once re-established. And yet
so full of contradictions is their character, that all this is without
prejudice to what has been written of their family vendettas and private
blood feuds. Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and
violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so
strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind. I
have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to
understand their mental impulses--if he knew, when it was their honour
to stand by him, and when it was their honour to betray him; when they
were bound to protect and when to kill him--he might, by judging his
times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to
the other. But a civilised European is as little able to accomplish this, as
to appreciate the feelings of those strange creatures, which, when a
drop of water is examined under a microscope, are revealed amiably
gobbling each other up, and being themselves complacently devoured.

I remark with pleasure, as an agreeable trait in the character of the
Pathans, the immunity, dictated by a rude spirit of chivalry, which in
their ceaseless brawling, their women enjoy. Many forts are built at
some distance from any pool or spring. When these are besieged, the
women are allowed by the assailants to carry water to the foot of the
walls by night. In the morning the defenders come out and fetch it--of
course under fire--and are enabled to continue their resistance. But
passing from the military to the social aspect of their lives, the picture
assumes an even darker shade, and is unrelieved by any redeeming
virtue. We see them in their squalid, loopholed hovels, amid dirt and
ignorance, as degraded a race as any on the fringe of humanity: fierce
as the tiger, but less cleanly; as dangerous, not so graceful. Those
simple family virtues, which idealists usually ascribe to primitive
peoples, are conspicuously absent. Their wives and their womenkind
generally, have no position but that of animals. They are freely bought
and sold, and are not infrequently bartered for rifles. Truth is unknown
among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from
which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field