alled Chitral, the latter
being situated about 47 m. from the main watershed of the range of the
Hindu Kush, which divides the waters flowing down to India from those
which take their way into the Oxus. Chitral is an important state
because of its situation at the extremity of the country over which the
government of India exerts its influence, and for some years before 1895
it had been the object of the policy of the government of India to
control the external affairs of Chitral in a direction friendly to
British interests, to secure an effective guardianship over its northern
passes, and to keep watch over what goes on beyond these passes. This
policy resulted in a British agency being established at Gilgit (Kashmir
territory), with a subordinate agency in Chitral, the latter being
usually stationed at Mastuj (65 m. nearer to Gilgit than the Chitral
capital), and occasional visits being paid to the capital. Chitral can
be reached either by the long circuitous route from Gilgit, involving
200 m. of hill roads and the passage of the Shandur pass (12,250 ft.),
or (more directly) from the Peshawar frontier at Malakand by 100 m. of
route through the independent territories of Swat and Bajour, involving
the passage of the Lowarai (10,450 ft). It is held by a small force as a
British outpost.

The district of Chitral is called Kashgar (or Kashkar) by the people
of the country; and as it was under Chinese domination in the middle
of the 18th century, and was regarded as a Buddhist centre of some
importance by the Chinese pilgrims in the early centuries of our era,
it is possible that it then existed as an outlying district of the
Kashgar province of Chinese Turkestan, where Buddhism once flourished
in cities that have been long since buried beneath the sand-waves of
the Takla Makan. The aboriginal population of the Chitral valley is
probably to be recognized in the people called Kho (speaking a
language called Khowar), who form the majority of its inhabitants.
Upon the Kho a people called Ronas have been superimposed. The Ronas,
who form the chief caste and fighting race of the Chitral districts,
originally came from the north, but they have adopted the language and
fashions of the conquered Chitrali.

The town of Chitral (pop. in 1901, 8128), is chiefly famous for a
siege which it sustained in the spring of 1895. Owing to complications
arising from the demarcation of the boundary of Afghani