[It was to this country that the Tibetans came by way of Yasin and Darkot. Then across the 3,800-metres-high saddle of Broghal, they reached Wakhan, the home of Tajik and Kirghiz herdsmen. Here in the bleak and wind-scoured landscape where the Oxus River is but a piddling stream, the Tibetans established a large garrison to stake out their claim to the land.]
By Salman Rashid*
Until the beginning of the 8th century CE,
Baltistan was a country inhabited by the Indo-European Shin tribe. This was a
time when the superpowers of the region were China and Tibet, both vying for
supremacy in High Asia. Only shortly before, the Chinese had ousted the
Tibetans from what is now the Chinese province of Xinjiang. But then the T’ang
Dynasty was briefly interrupted by the New Zhou Dynasty (690-705) and Chinese
imperial aspirations were laid low for the time being.
Emboldened by the situation, the Tibetans
began to expand westward. They annexed Ladakh and following the Sindhu River
reached Baltistan. For the next five decades this country remained under their
firm control. Intermarriages between the new comers and the original tribes
were common to such an extent in the next fifty years that there arose a race
of a fine mix of Aryan and Tibetan blood — the current people of Baltistan. It
was for this reason that an anthropologist of the mid-twentieth century called
Baltistan ‘a living anthropological museum’.
The original Shina, the language of the Shins
that sounds so very like Kashmiri and Punjabi, was almost completely swamped
out of existence by Tibetan. Modern Balti, spoken over most of Baltistan, is therefore
an archaic form of Tibetan. Shina continues to hold out in pockets across the
country, however.
Aside: until some years ago Balti was under
threat. Then one proud Balti — and he has my deepest gratitude — Hussain
Singghe, worked very hard to revive the old Tibetan script. It is now coming
back into vogue and signs in the streets of Skardu and Khaplu are frequently
written in the old script.
Not content with holding Baltistan alone, the
Tibetans expanded westward. They took Gilgit and advancing along the Ghizer
River, went up the Yasin valley. The head of this valley, north of the little
village of Darkot, is blocked by a huge mass of snowy mountains. In their midst
there hangs a glacier among several others which can be traversed due north to
reach what we now know as Upper Chitral.
 |
| The Bam-e-Dunya — Roof of the World |
The icy grip of the Darkot Glacier gives way
in the north to an area that suddenly reminds one of the title Bam-e-Dunya —
Roof of the World — that the high Pamirs are known by. Here on the fringe of
the Pamirs, the landscape consists of rolling downs, lakes and peaks which,
after the jagged towering crags of the Yasin valley, seem deceptively low
giving one the impression of being on the roof. The rock wall to the north is
cleaved by a saddle that has for a very long time been known as the Broghal
Pass.
It was to this country that the Tibetans came
by way of Yasin and Darkot. Then across the 3,800-metres-high saddle of
Broghal, they reached Wakhan, the home of Tajik and Kirghiz herdsmen. Here in
the bleak and wind-scoured landscape where the Oxus River is but a piddling
stream, the Tibetans established a large garrison to stake out their claim to
the land.
Time went by and far away in the east, China
was once again peaceful under the brilliant new T’ang king Xuanzong. Turkestan
was in control and the Chinese knew that their adversaries, the Tibetans, had
annexed Baltistan and maintained a garrison in the high Pamirs. If they were
permitted to remain in this region, the hardy warriors of the Tibetan highlands
were very likely to attempt to sneak into Turkestan by, in a manner of
speaking, the back door.
That was not acceptable. And so in the winter
of 746-747 the capital of Chang’an (Xian on modern maps) saw a flurry of
meetings between the emperor and one of his most able generals, Kao Hsin-Chih.
Interestingly, the general was not Chinese but Korean. If the western border
was to be secured, the Tibetans, it was resolved, needed to be routed from
their Wakhan strongholds. General Kao, so the emperor ordained, was to lead a cavalry
division, ten thousand strong, mounted to the man, into the vast tundra of the
Pamirs to overthrow the Tibetans.
And as the snows of winter gave way to the
verdure of spring in the year 747, the emperor’s army gathered under the
watchful eye of General Kao Hsin-Chih in the fortress of Chang’an.
Published in The Express Tribune,
September 27th, 2011.
* The author is Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, and author of nine travel books [The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Sea Monsters and the Sun God: Travels in Pakistan, Salt Range and Potohar Plateau, Prisoner on a Bus: Travel Through Pakistan, Between Two Burrs on the Map: Travels in Northern Pakistan, Gujranwala: The Glory That Was, Riders on the Wind and Deosai: Land of the Giant [all books are available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore]. He is the only Pakistani to have seen the North Face of K-2 and trekked in the shadow of this great mountain. His work - explorations, history, travels - appears in almost all leading publications and on his blog.
* The author is Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, and author of nine travel books [The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Sea Monsters and the Sun God: Travels in Pakistan, Salt Range and Potohar Plateau, Prisoner on a Bus: Travel Through Pakistan, Between Two Burrs on the Map: Travels in Northern Pakistan, Gujranwala: The Glory That Was, Riders on the Wind and Deosai: Land of the Giant [all books are available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore]. He is the only Pakistani to have seen the North Face of K-2 and trekked in the shadow of this great mountain. His work - explorations, history, travels - appears in almost all leading publications and on his blog.
