An enquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan / prepared for and presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September, 1891) by H.W. Bellew.

  • Henry Walter Bellew
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan / prepared for and presented to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, September, 1891) by H.W. Bellew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. A FEW words are necessary to inform the reader how this Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan ” came to be written by me. In the beginning of this year, when invited by Professor G. W. Leitner to join the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, to be held in London in September, 1891, I was at the same time asked to contribute a Paper or Monograph towards the work of the Congress. I had no hesitation in accepting the invitation to join the Congress as a member; but to become a contributor to its work was quite another thing. For some time I was in doubt whether I could offer anything worthy the attention of the learned men who would take part in the work of the Congress. I happened to have by me a mass of miscellaneous notes and memoranda, and carried in my head a variety of information— acquired amongst the people themselves—all relating to the in- habitants of Afghanistan, and which I had thought of embody- ing in a book which I intended some day to write as a record of my experiences and observations during a long and exceptionally varied career in the active service of Her Most Gracious Majesty’s Government of India. But that “ some day,” from one cause and another, seems to be as intangible as the term itself is in- definite. Peflecting on this, it occurred to me that the present occasion offered a good opportunity to put before the public some part of what up to the present time remained with myself as so much useless information—useless from want of participation in it with others better qualified than myself to utilize the materials collected for the advancement of knowledge by the elucidation of the truth from the various data. I therefore decided to prepare, as a Monograph for the Congress, an Inquiry into the Ethno- graphy of Afghanistan,” confident that—however defective the Inquiry itself must necessarily be under the hurried conditions of its execution—it would at all events furnish the Orientalists with an inviting subject for investigation and further research. In the course of the Inquiry, I have, amongst other identifica- tions, identified certain tribes now inhabiting Afghanistan as the
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