balochracehistor00damerich

4 THE BALOCH RACE
Each tuman is made up of several distinct clans, known as
phara (a Sindhi word meaning section or share), and these
are again subdivided into septs known as phalli. 1
The name tuman is from the Turkish tuman, ten thousand,
which appears to have been first used as an apellation of
the nomad tribes of Persia in the time of the Seljuk Sultans.
Among the Baloches it is not so old, and never occurs in
the heroic ballads which relate to the events of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The oldest name for a tribe found
in the poems is bolak, 2 also, like tuman, 3 a word of Turkish
origin (T. buluk, a band or crowd). This word seems
rather to refer to the original clans, and not to the modern
composite tribe or tuman, which is built up of several clans,
connected one with another mainly by acknowledging a
common chief. Within the clan the members are supposed
to be of the same kindred, and as a rule the nucleus of the
tuman consists of a few clans which consider themselves to
be closely connected by blood. These have served as a
centre of attraction for other less powerful or unattached
of assuming the chieftainship. The phagh-logh answers to the Khan-
khel in Pathan tribes. Such sections are the BalachanI among the
Mazaris and the Kaheja among the Bughtis.
1 Among the Marrls the clans are known as takar (from Sindhi
takaru, mountain ?), the septs as phalli, and the smaller subdivisions
as phara (' Balochistan Census Report,' p. 122).
2 This word frequently enters into Turk! place-names in Adharbaijan,
etc., such as Kum-buluK, Kizil-buluk, etc. It is found among
the Afghans (Utman-bolak, near Peshawar), and a clan of Eind
Baloches near Sibi is still called the Ghulam Bolak. It must not be
confounded with the Turk! bulilq, a spring, which also occurs in place-
names.
3 These words tuman and bolak illustrate the Baloch tendency to
shorten final syllables, and throw back the accent to the penultimate
—e.g. :
Tuman from Tuman.
Bolak ,, Buluk.
Pdttan ,, Patlidn.
BdJckhal „ Baqqal.
Jaghdal ,, Jat-gal.