Reiske, Indeed, With No Reference To The
Present Subject, Quotes A Passage From Hamza Of Ispahan, A Writer Of The
10th Century, In Which Mention Is Made Of Certain Troops Called
Karaunahs.
But it seems certain that in this and other like cases the
real reading was Kazawinah, people of Kazvin.
(See Reiske's Constant.
Porphyrog. Bonn. ed. II. 674; Gottwaldt's Hamza Ispahanensis, p. 161;
and Quatremere in J. A. ser. V. tom. xv. 173.) Ibn Batuta only once
mentions the name, saying that Tughlak Shah of Dehli was "one of those
Turks called Karaunas who dwell in the mountains between Sind and
Turkestan." Hammer has suggested the derivation of the word Carbine from
Karawinah (as he writes), and a link in such an etymology is perhaps
furnished by the fact that in the 16th century the word Carbine was used
for some kind of irregular horseman.
(Gold. Horde, 214; Ilch. I. 17, 344, etc.; Erdmann, 168, 199, etc.;
J. A. S., B. X. 96; Q. R. 130; Not. et Ext. XIV. 282; I. B. III.
201; Ed. Webbe, his Travailes, p. 17, 1590. Reprinted 1868.)
As regards the account given by Marco of the origin of the Caraonas, it
seems almost necessarily a mistaken one. As Khanikoff remarks, he might
have confounded them with the Biluchis, whose Turanian aspect (at least as
regards the Brahuis) shows a strong infusion of Turki blood, and who might
be rudely described as a cross between Tartars and Indians. It is indeed
an odd fact that the word Karani (vulgo Cranny) is commonly applied in
India at this day to the mixed race sprung from European fathers and
Native mothers, and this might be cited in corroboration of Marsden's
reference to the Sanskrit Karana, but I suspect the coincidence arises
in another way. Karana is the name applied to a particular class of mixt
blood, whose special occupation was writing and accounts. But the prior
sense of the word seems to have been "clever, skilled," and hence a writer
or scribe. In this sense we find Karani applied in Ibn Batuta's day to a
ship's clerk, and it is used in the same sense in the Ain Akbari.
Clerkship is also the predominant occupation of the East-Indians, and
hence the term Karani is applied to them from their business, and not from
their mixt blood. We shall see hereafter that there is a Tartar term
Arghun, applied to fair children born of a Mongol mother and white
father; it is possible that there may have been a correlative word like
Karaun (from Kara, black) applied to dark children born of Mongol
father and black mother, and that this led Marco to a false theory.
[Major Sykes (Persia) devotes a chapter (xxiv.) to The Karwan
Expedition in which he says: "Is it not possible that the Karwanis are
the Caraonas of Marco Polo? They are distinct from the surrounding
Baluchis, and pay no tribute." - H. C.]
[Illustration: Portrait of a Hazara.]
Let us turn now to the name of Nogodar. Contemporaneously with the
Karaunahs we have frequent mention of predatory bands known as
Nigudaris, who seem to be distinguished from the Karaunahs, but had a
like character for truculence. Their headquarters were about Sijistan, and
Quatremere seems disposed to look upon them as a tribe indigenous in that
quarter. Hammer says they were originally the troops of Prince Nigudar,
grandson of Chaghatai, and that they were a rabble of all sorts, Mongols,
Turkmans, Kurds, Shuls, and what not. We hear of their revolts and
disorders down to 1319, under which date Mirkhond says that there had been
one-and-twenty fights with them in four years. Again we hear of them in
1336 about Herat, whilst in Baber's time they turn up as Nukdari, fairly
established as tribes in the mountainous tracts of Karnud and Ghur, west
of Kabul, and coupled with the Hazaras, who still survive both in name and
character. "Among both," says Baber, "there are some who speak the Mongol
language." Hazaras and Takdaris (read Nukdaris) again occur coupled in
the History of Sind. (See Elliot, I. 303-304.) [On the struggle
against Timur of Toumen, veteran chief of the Nikoudrians (1383-84), see
Major David Price's Mahommedan History, London, 1821, vol. iii. pp.
47-49, H. C.] In maps of the 17th century, as of Hondius and Blaeuw, we
find the mountains north of Kabul termed Nochdarizari, in which we cannot
miss the combination Nigudar-Hazarah, whencesoever it was got. The Hazaras
are eminently Mongol in feature to this day, and it is very probable that
they or some part of them are the descendants of the Karaunahs or the
Nigudaris, or of both, and that the origination of the bands so called,
from the scum of the Mongol inundation, is thus in degree confirmed. The
Hazaras generally are said to speak an old dialect of Persian. But one
tribe in Western Afghanistan retains both the name of Mongols and a
language of which six-sevenths (judging from a vocabulary published by
Major Leech) appear to be Mongol. Leech says, too, that the Hazaras
generally are termed Moghals by the Ghilzais. It is worthy of notice that
Abu'l Fazl, who also mentions the Nukdaris among the nomad tribes of Kabul,
says the Hazaras were the remains of the Chaghataian army which Mangu Kaan
sent to the aid of Hulaku, under the command of Nigudar Oghlan. (Not. et
Ext. XIV. 284; Ilch. I. 284, 309, etc,; Baber, 134, 136, 140; J. As.
ser. IV. tom. iv. 98; Ayeen Akbery, II. 192-193.)
So far, excepting as to the doubtful point of the relation between
Karaunahs and Nigudaris, and as to the origin of the former, we have a
general accordance with Polo's representations. But it is not very easy to
identify with certainty the inroad on India to which he alludes, or the
person intended by Nogodar, nephew of Chaghatai. It seems as if two
persons of that name had each contributed something to Marco's history.
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