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But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious
than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the
ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit
swinging a stone or coloured glass ball, suspended by a string from a
tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine
male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on
some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few
instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development
at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.
Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a
numerous priesthood--"Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs,"
--and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the
theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the
people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no
man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and
morals it is impossible to write.


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