European fathers and
Native mothers, and this might be cited in corroboration of Marsden's
reference to the Sanskrit _Karana_, but I suspect the coincidence arises
in another way. _Karana_ is the name applied to a particular class of mixt
blood, whose special occupation was writing and accounts. But the prior
sense of the word seems to have been "clever, skilled," and hence a writer
or scribe. In this sense we find _Karani_ applied in Ibn Batuta's day to a
ship's clerk, and it is used in the same sense in the _Ain Akbari_.
Clerkship is also the predominant occupation of the East-Indians, and
hence the term Karani is applied to them from their business, and not from
their mixt blood. We shall see hereafter that there is a Tartar term
_Arghun_, applied to fair children born of a Mongol mother and _white_
father; it is possible that there may have been a correlative word like
_Karaun_ (from _Kara_, black) applied to dark children born of Mongol
father and black mother, and that this led Marco to a false theory.

[Major Sykes (_Persia_) devotes a chapter (xxiv.) to _The Karwan
Expedition_ in which he says: "Is it not possible that the Karwanis are
the Caraonas of Marco Polo? They are distinct from the surrounding
Baluchis, and pay no tribute."--H. C.]

[Illustration: Portrait of a Hazara.]

Let us turn now to the name of Nogodar. Contemporaneously with the
Karaunahs we have frequent mention of predatory bands known as
_Nigudaris_, who seem to be distinguished from the Karaunahs, but had a
like character for truculence. Their headquarters were about Sijistan, and
Quatremere seems disposed to look upon them as a tribe indigenous in that
quarter. Hammer says they were originally the troops of Prince Nigudar,
grandson of Chaghatai, and that they were a rabble of all sorts, Mongols,
Turkmans, Kurds, Shuls, and what not. We hear of their revolts and
disorders down to 1319, under which date Mirkhond says that there had been
one-and-twenty fights with them in four years. Again we hear of them in
1336 about Herat, whilst in Baber's time they turn up as _Nukdari_, fairly
established as tribes in the mountainous tracts of Karnud and Ghur, west
of Kabul, and coupled with the Hazaras, who still survive both in name and
character. "Among both," says Baber, "there are some who speak the Mongol
language." Hazaras and _Takdaris_ (read _Nukdaris_) again occur coupled in
the _History of Sind_. (See _Elliot_, I. 303-304.) [On the struggle
ag