Jesus In India — Page 143
J e s u s i n I n d i a 143 his name to it. After the reigns of David and Solomon, who succeeded Saul, anarchy divided the Jewish tribes, and this continued to the period at which Bouktun Nasr took Jerusalem, massacred 70,000 Jews, and after destroying that city led the surviving inhabitants captives to Babylon. Subsequently to this disaster the Afghan tribe, struck with terror, fled from Judea and settled in Arabia: here they remained some considerable time, but as pasturage and water were scarce, and both man and beast suffered extreme privation, some of the tribe determined to emigrate to Hindostan. The branch of the Abdalees continued to reside in Arabia, and during the caliphat of Aboo Bekr their chiefs allied themselves to a powerful sheikh, by name Khaled ibn Velid, of the tribe of Korech. . . … at the period when the Arabs subjugated Persia the Abdalees left Arabia and settled in this new conquest, establishing themselves in the provinces of Fars and Kerman, and here they remained until Genghis Khan invaded those districts. The tyrannical proceedings of this conqueror weighed with such terrible effect on the population, that the Abdalees quitted Persia and, passing by the Mekrane, Scinde, and Mooltan, arrived in India; but the results of this new migration were not more fortunate, for they were scarcely settled here when their neighbours made war upon, and forced them to leave the plains and inhabit the rugged mountains of Suleiman, considered as the cradle of the tribe, and called by them Kooh- Khasseh. The whole Afghan nation was brought together by the arrival of the Abdalees in the Suleiman mountains, and then consisted of twenty-four tribes, of which, as it has been already observed, Afghan, the son of Saul, was the father: this prince had three sons, named Tsera-Bend, Argoutch, and Kerlen, and each of them was the father of eight sons, who gave their names to the twenty-four tribes. “The following is the manner in which they are classed:—