The Lion River

The Muslim tribes used to have a reputation for ferocity; they fell upon each other, as well as upon outsiders, with great enthusiasm, a fact that effectively prevented the exploration of the area and the high passes surrounding it until the late 19^th century. Slave trading and caravan raiding were important sources of income.

Even to their own people, the tribes were savage. Jean Fairley quotes a British officer who tracked down the meaning of the local saying ‘’the father’s basket for the son’’.

‘’When a man became too old to work, his son was supposed to carry him to a precipice above the Indus in a basket and tip him over. There is a legend attached to this saying, related to Alexander the Great. A young man was sadly carrying his father up the cliff in a basket when he heard the old man chuckling. He was remembering, he told his son, how he had taken his own father to the precipice and hurled him over, and now he laughed to think that ‘’in turn your son will put you to death. The father’s basket is for the son, too’’. Clearly such a brave and humorous father could not really be tipped over and his son hid him in a cave high above the Indus. Then Alexander arrived and asked for directions to the ‘’waters of life’’ which, he had heard, were somewhere near by. All the old men had been killed so nobody could tell him, but after consulting his father the young man gave Alexander the answer. ‘’How could he possibly have known?’’ asked Alexander. The father was finally produced. ‘’The custom of destroying the old people must stop at once’’, said Alexander, ‘’for now I see that though courage and strength lies in the body of the young, knowledge and wisdom is to be found only in the heads that are grey’’. The story goes that from that time on the old people were spared, although criminals were still thrown from cliffs into the Indus’.

Jean Fairley, "The Lion River"