THE ANTIQUITIES OF SIND WITH HISTORICAL OUTLINE

Sind is a land of sepulchers and dust, of ‘holy’ shams and ‘holy’ humbugs, when the good old times under Hindu rule gave way to Muhammadan domination, the principal concern of its rulers seems to have been for the selfish pleasures of the living and the glorification of their dead. It has been a country very fruitful in the production of 'pirs’ or holy men, and, though some of these have, no doubt, been earnest disciples of the Prophet, many more have made it a cover for base and selfish motives. It notoriously swarms with sanctified beggars and impostors, and contains, according to the current saying, no less than 100,000 tombs of saints and martyrs, besides ecclesiastical establishments, which, under the Talpurs, absorbed one-third of the entire revenue of the state save upon the coast, it is not a very desirable country to sojourn in the intense heat for the greater part of the year, its disagreeable ‘dust storms and dreary aspect, the difficulty of procuring supplies, and the troublesome means of locomotion.’ It has been compared to Egypt, inasmuch as it is a dry and almost rainless country, the length of which is traversed by a single great river, the Indus, whose waters, especially at the seasonal inundations, are made to irrigate the land and produce cereal and other crops in abundance. Its present great system of irrigation canals, which are taken off the mainstream, on the extreme north of the province, are spread a network of artiness over the whole surface of the country, converting vast desert wastes of fine alluvial deposit into rich productive soil. The book is illustrated profusely to delineate the subject properly.