The Road to Oxiana (39 page)

Since leaving the Oxus plain we had risen about 6000 feet, and the colours of this extraordinary valley with its cliffs of rhubarb red, its indigo peaks roofed in glittering snow and its new-sprung corn of harsh electric green, shone doubly brilliant in the clear mountain air. Up the side-valleys we caught sight of ruins and caves. The cliffs paled. And there suddenly, like an enormous wasps' nest, hung the myriad caves of the Buddhist monks, clustered about the two giant Buddhas.

A Frankish house with a tin roof beckoned to us from a bluff across the river. The Governor was away; but his deputy, an asthmatic porpoise in blue pyjamas, seemed perturbed by our arrival without notice and telephoned to Kabul to announce it. We walked out on to a balcony, looking down on the bright green fields, the grey-blue river lined with viridian poplars, and the red earth paths where the peasants were driving their animals—and then looking up to find the two Buddhas, a mile off, peering in at the balcony as if they were paying an afternoon call. A sheet of yellow-and-violet lightning fell from the clouds. A shiver ran down the valley, followed by a gust of rain. Then the tempest broke and shook the house for an hour. When it cleared, the indigo mountains were powdered with new snow.

Shibar
(c. 9000
ft
., 24
miles from Bamian
),
June 9th
.— I should not like to stay long at Bamian. Its art is
unfresh. When Huan Tsang came here, the Buddhas were gilded to resemble bronze, and 5000 monks swarmed in the labyrinths beside them. That was in 632; Mohammad died the same year, and the Arabs reached Bamian before the end of the century. But it was not until 150 years later that the monks were finally extirpated. One can imagine how the Arabs felt about them and their idols in this blood-red valley. Nadir Shah must have felt the same 1000 years later when he broke the legs of the larger Buddha.

That Buddha is 174 feet high, and the smaller 115; they stand a quarter of a mile apart. The larger bears traces of a plaster veneer, which was painted red, presumably as a groundwork for the gilt. Neither has any artistic value. But one could bear that; it is their negation of sense, the lack of any pride in their monstrous flaccid bulk, that sickens. Even their material is un-beautiful, for the cliff is made, not of stone, but of compressed gravel. A lot of monastic navvies were given picks and told to copy some frightful semi-Hellenistic image from India or China. The result has not even the dignity of labour.

The canopies of the niches which contain the two figures are plastered and painted. In the smaller hangs a triumph scene, red, yellow, and blue, in which Hackin, Herzfeld, and others have distinguished a Sasanian influence; but the clue to this idea comes from Masson, who saw a Pahlevi inscription here a hundred years ago. The paintings round the larger head are better preserved, and can be examined at close quarters by standing on the head itself. On either side of the niche, below the curve of the vault, hang five medallions about ten feet in diameter which contain Boddhisatvas. These figures are surrounded by horse-shoe auras of white, yellow, and blue, and their hair is tinged with red. Between each medallion grows a triple-branched
lotus; at least we supposed it to be that, though in other surroundings it might be taken for an ecclesiastical gas-bracket upholding three glass globes. The next zone above is occupied by a pavement in squares out of perspective, and the zone above that by a wainscot of Pompeian curtains finished with a border of peacocks' feathers. On top of this come two more rows of Boddhisatvas, seated against auras and thrones alternately, the thrones being decked with jewelled carpets. Between these stand large cups on stems, resembling Saxon fonts and sprouting cherubs. The topmost zone overhead is missing. The colours are the ordinary fresco colours, slate-grey, gamboge, a rusty chocolate-red, a dull grape-tint, and a bright harebell blue.

The subjects suggest that Persian, Indian, Chinese, and Hellenistic ideas all met at Bamian in the Vth and VIth centuries. It is interesting to have a record of this meeting. But the fruit of it is not pleasant. The only exception is the lower row of Boddhisatvas, which Hackin says are older than the rest. They achieve that air of repose, graceful but empty, which is the best one can expect of Buddhist iconography.

The chambers in the cliff preserve a similar record of contemporary architectural ideas. The monks were obliged to give some form to their ceremonial interiors. But of all conventions available to them, the inside of the Indian stone dome must surely have been the least suited to reproduction in monolith. Yet here they carved it, with its massive pendent brackets, its heavy criss-cross beams, and its inept little cupola. The Sasanian influence produced more sensible results. One spacious hall bears an extraordinary resemblance to the dome-chambers at Firuzabad, and its mouldings, breaking into bows or something of the sort on top of the squinches, may tell how Sasanian stucco was originally applied. Other caves show domes resting on circular and octagonal walls, some elaborately carved, and one
bearing an arabesque frieze which might be a prototype of that in the Friday Mosque at Kazvin, erected six centuries later. But the most remarkable connection with Mohammadan architecture, proving how directly it borrowed the inventions of the fire-worshipping past, is contained in a square cave where the dome rests on four squinches composed of five concentric arches each. This most unusual device, with the addition of another arch, reappears in a mausoleum at Kassan in Turkestan, which was built in the XIVth century.

The French archaeologists have left the caves in good condition, repaired the painted plaster, added staircases where necessary, and put up sensible notices in French and Persian to guide those who have not had the chance of studying their published reports:
“Groupe C
;
Salle de Réunion”
,
“Groupe D
;
Sanctuaire
,
influences iraniennes”
, etc.

The Kabul road, after we rejoined it, still kept company with a last small tributary of the Kunduz, which led us up towards the Shibar pass, out on to bare hills where the corn was still but a sprinkle of green on the brown earth. There we met a man who said the road on the other side of the pass was blocked by a landslide. It was too late to reconnoitre it. We have therefore returned to the village of Shibar, a desolate group of houses under the naked peaks.

This morning at Bamian, Christopher was scrambling eggs with his dagger when the fire gave out, and he asked the Curate to fetch some more wood. He asked again. He then prodded the man with the dagger. Now at Shibar the Vicar and he wanted to share our room. We said it was not big enough. Unused to such treatment, the Curate gave us a lecture. No doubt, he said, we had our own Frankish customs. But in Afghanistan he begged us to realise, everything depended on friendship. If he did things for us, it was because we were his
friends, not because we told him to do them. He was a guard in government employ, not our servant. For the rest of the journey he hoped we should be good friends, so that he
could
do things for us. And so on.

It is not our fault we have no servant. We have tried to engage one at every town since Herat, and in each case have been told by the authorities that the guards they supplied would act as servants. Thus in bullying the Curate we have only taken the authorities at their word. Nevertheless, his speech abashed us.

The villagers provided a concert after dinner.

“Only Afghanistan, Persia, England, and India make good music”, said the Vicar.

“What about Russia?” Christopher asked.

“Russia? Russian music is absolutely rotten.”

Charikar
(5300
ft
., 74
miles from Shibar
),
June 10th
.—Not one landslide but a dozen prevented us from reaching Kabul tonight. We are only forty miles away, and already an iron bridge has announced the zone of civilisation surrounding the capital. Here, in this caravanserai, we have dined off a table and sat on chairs, and have remembered, suddenly, that our journey is nearly over. The last week has been a busy one. The getting up at four, cooking porridge over a wood fire, ordering food for our meagre picnic outfit in its battered Persian tin, seeing the lamps are filled in case of a night in the open, jumping out to fill the water-bottles at every spring, cleaning our boots every other day, and rationing the men with cigarettes to keep them happy, have become an automatic routine; and the thought that tomorrow it will cease leaves us flat and a little melancholy.

The Shibar pass is 10,000 feet high, and we were near the snow-line before we left the last trickle of the Kunduz,
as it started on its long journey to the Oxus and the Sea of Aral. Five minutes later another trickle started on a journey to the Indus and the Indian Ocean. Geography has its excitements.

A mile beyond the pass we reached the first landslides, heaps of liquid mud and pebbles concealing large rocks. Here a gang of proper roadmen had been set to work. But at the second and more formidable set of obstacles, ten miles further on, I found only a few bewildered villagers puddling about like children, and had myself to act as foreman in order to put some method into their operations. The crops below the road, already half destroyed by the rivers of mud, were now menaced by a further spate, and poor frantic women rushed out from the village with sickles to save what remained for hay. The villagers regarded it as their duty to clear the road; but not so a party of muleteers who happened to come along and were greeted, on protesting against being forced into this labour, by a rain of blows from Seyid Jemal and by the sight of the Vicar aiming at them with his gun. They complied in terror.

The river, the new river, running down to India, was fringed with pink roses and white spiraea. The valleys grew richer. Groves of walnuts stood about the villages, where Indian merchants in tight gay turbans were sitting in their shops. And then, like a blow in the face, came the Charikar iron bridge.

Kabul
(5900
ft
., 36
miles from Charikar
),
June 11th
.—From Herat to Kabul we have come 930 miles, of which forty-five were on horseback.

A winding hill-road brought us down from the Charikar plateau to a smaller plain inside a ring of mountains;
running water and corrugated iron glinted among its trees. At the entrance to the capital the police deprived the Vicar and the Curate of their rifles, to their great distress; but being in turbans, no one would believe they were government servants. We drove to the Foreign Office, where hot-red English ramblers were climbing over iron railings; to the hotel, where there was writing-paper in each bedroom; to the Russian Legation, where they had had no answer to M. Bouriachenko's telegram; to the German shop, where they refused to sell us hock without a permit from the Minister of Trade; and finally to our Legation, where the Minister, Sir Richard Maconochie, has asked us to stay. It is a white house, dignified with pillars and furnished as it would be at home, without any mosquitonets or fans to remind one of the Orient. Christopher says he finds it peculiar to be in a room whose walls aren't falling down.

Opinion at the Legation agrees on the silliness of refusing the Russian diplomats in Kabul transit visas through India. Even if they go as far towards the frontier as Jelallabad, the Government of India sends in official complaints. The result is a sort of gentlemen's agreement between the two Legations and the Afghan Government that the English shall not travel in the north of the country and the Russians in the south. That is why the authorities at Mazar could not allow us to the Oxus, though they would not admit such a reason lest it appear a limitation of their sovereignty. We were lucky to have got as close as we did, particularly as it appears that Haji Lai Mohammad, who bought the car, and our chauffeur Jamshyd Taroporevala, spread a tale that we were Secret Service agents engaged in map-making. Next time I do this kind of journey, I shall take lessons in spying beforehand. Since one has to put up with the disadvantages of the profession anyhow,
one might as well reap some of its advantages, if there are any.

British diplomacy in Kabul just now hangs on the Minister's roses. At the King's birthday party, on June 3rd, they were in full flower, and the Afghans, who are all rose-lovers, had never seen such big formal blooms. Next morning, visiting cards from the Minister of Court were fluttering from the finest trees; they had been left by his gardener in the night. Now all the other ministers want cuttings too, and are also in a turmoil over the peonies, which have been promised them for next year.

Magnificent as the formal roses are, I yet prefer an Afghan tree which stands by the gate in front. It is fifteen feet high and covered with such a profusion of white blossoms that hardly a leaf is visible.

Kabul
,
June 14th
.—Uneventful days.

The garden here is too pleasant to leave, full of sweet-williams, canterbury bells, and columbines, planted among the lawns and terraces and shady arbours; it might be England till one notices the purple mountain behind the big white house. The total establishment is ninety persons; at tennis this evening there were six uniformed ball-boys for one game. People complain, though I have never wanted to, that our embassies and legations, relying on Lord Salisbury's despatch, think it their duty not to help visitors. This legation might exist for no other purpose, for all the visitor can see. And not only the English visitor. Americans who come here generally get into trouble of some sort, and having no legation of their own, ask assistance of ours, which they receive.

Ghazni
(7300
ft
., 98
miles from Kabul
),
June 15th
.—The journey here occupied 4½ hours, along a good hard road through the Desert of Top, which was carpeted with irises.

The famous “Towers of Victory” stand 700 yards apart on the way to the village of Rozah: a pair of octagonal star-shaped stumps, each seventy feet high and now roofed with a tin hat to prevent further decay. Vigne, who sketched them in 1836, shows that their circular superstructures were more than twice as high again. They were built as minarets, commemorative rather than religious, for the ground gives no evidence that there was ever a mosque in the neighbourhood. It was a Sasanian habit to build such towers, and after the coming of Islam the Persians kept it up, till about the XIVth century. The minarets at Damghan and Sabzevar, and many of those at Isfahan, are similarly isolated.