Biloches: Tribal Organisation
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Tribal organisation
Sohrab Khan, the chief of the Dumki, a Rind tribe, is the nominal head of the Biloches, or at any rate of those on our frontier ; while all the northem tribes beyond our border acknowledge the supremacy of the Brahoi Khan of Kelat, a supremacy the reality of which has always varied with the personal character of the Khan, and which it is probable that our own frontier policy has lately saved from total extinction. But for all practical purposes^ the frontier tribes are The subsequent history of these tribes is related in section 385.
independent both of foreigners and of one another, and are held together by a common nationality against outsiders only. The tribe, at least in its present form, is a political and not an ethnic unit, and consists of a con glomeration of clans bound together by allegiance to a common Chief. Probably every tribe contains a nucleus of two, three, or more clans descended from a single ancestor.
But round these have collected a number of affiliated sections ; for the cohesion between the various parts of a tribe or clan is- not always of the strongest;, and it is not very uncommon for a clan or a portion of a clan to quarrel with its brethren, and leaving its tribe to claim the protection of a neighbouring Chief. They then become his hamsayahs or dwellers beneath the same shade, and he is bound to protect them antl they to obey him. In this manner a small section formerly belonging to the Laghari tribe, and still bearing its name, has attached itself to the Qasrani ; while there is a Jiskani section in both the Drishak and the Gurchani tribes.
Thus too, Rind tribes are sometimes found to include Lashari clans. So when Nasir Khan, the great Khan of Kelat who assisted Ahmad Shah in his invasion of Dehli, reduced the Hasanni tribe and drove them from their territory, they took refuge with the Khetran, of which tribe they now form a clan. Even strangers are often affiliated in this manner. Thus the Laghari tribe includes a section of Nahar Pathans (the family from which spining the Lodi dynasty of Dehli), who are not Biloch but who are Khetran. And the Gurchani tribe includes sections which, though bearing a Biloch name and talking the Bilochi language, are not allowed to be of Biloch race and are almost certainly Jat.
The tribe tuma.'nb under its chief or tumanddr is sub-divided into a small number of clans (para) with their unqaddams or headmen, and each clan into more numerous septs . Below the phalli come the famihes, of which it will sometimes contain as few as a dozen. The clans are based upon common descent ; and identity of clan name, even in two different tribes, almost certainly indicates a common ancestor. The sept is of course only an extended family. The tribal names are often patronymics ending in the Bilochi termination dni^ such as Gurchani, Balachani ; or in some few cases in the Pashto zai. An individual is commonly known by the name of his clan, the sept being comparatively unimportant. Marriage within the sept is forbidden,^ and this appears to be the only restriction. The Biloches freely marry Jat women, though the first wife of a Chief will always be a Bilochni. They say that they never give their daughters to Jats ; but this assertion, though probably true on the frontier, is most certainly not so beyond the tribal limits.
The tract occupied by each division of a Biloch tribe is sufficiently well defined ; but within this area the people are cither wholly nomad or, as is the case within our frontier, live in small hamlets, each inhabited by only a few famihes, having property in their cultivated lands and irrigation works, but without any actual demareation of the surrounding pasture lands. Thus the large and compact village community of the Eastern Panjab is unknown, and our village or matzah is in these parts merely a collection of hamlets included within a common boundary for administrative purposes.
1 A Persian (? Turkoman) word meaning 10,000 ; a body of 10,000 troops ; a district or tribe furnishing a body of 10,000 troops. But Mr. Fryer eays that cousins commonly intermarry.
