balochracehistor00damerich

A HISTORICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL SKETCH 11
other Iranian nomads, such as the Bakhtiarls of the
present day. They have brought with them a language
of the Old Persian stock, with many features derived from
the Old Bactrian rather than the Western Persian, and
have intruded into a region which was always in ancient
times regarded as part of India, and not of Persia, and
which, both before and after the Mohammedan conquest,
was peopled by Indian tribes—Bajputs, Jatts, and Meds.
But the Baloches still retain their brachycephaly, although
Afghans to the north, Indians to the east, and Arabs to
the south and on the Persian Gulf are all dolichocephalic.
The Arabs have a mean cephalic index of from 74 to 76,
and the Afghans about the same. The natives of India
have a still lower index. Twenty-three castes of the North-
West Provinces, as given by Mr. Eisley, average 72*8, and
seven of the Punjab 73 'l. 1 Mr. Bisley gives the index for
the Baloches as 80, but this is misleading, as his figures
include several Baloches from Lahore and the neighbour-
hood, where they have long been assimilated by their
Indian surroundings, and have lost all their national
characteristics. Taking only the Baloches of the Trans-
Indus districts as fairly representative of the race, I find
the mean index to be 81*5. This is most remarkable, as
no cephalic index approaching 80 is to be found throughout
Northern India for two thousand miles, till we reach the
Thibetans of the Darjlling Hills or the aboriginal tribes
beyond Chittagong.
The Tajiks of different parts of the Iranian plateau
have an index varying from 81 to 84, the Darwazis 81*4,
and the Ghalchas 85. The figures given by M. de Ujfalvy
for Bakhtiarls, Kurds, and Gilanis are 88, 86, and 84,
although these are based on too small a number of cases
to be altogether trustworthy. The index of the Bombay
Parsis, who have kept distinct amid their Indian neigh-
bours, is 82-3. The curve for 60 Tajiks given by M. de
1 Kisley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal,' vols. i. and ii. : Anthro-
pometric Data.