'GAZETTEER OF PERSIA. VOLUME II' [‎101r] (206/706)

gtlan
189
This unsatisfactory state of things is further aggravated by another
evil—usury. In many districts of Gilan the peasantry are heavily in
debt to their landlords, who exact a usurious rate of interest, from 25
to 40 per cent, being the lowest figure upon each loan. Money thus lent
is frequently lost. A succession of bad crops plunges the labourer into
difficulties; he is unable to pay, and when reduced to great straits, deserts
the village to elude the pursuit of his creditors. In a thinly populated
province like Gilan, where the supply of labour is already far below the
demand, the practice alluded to must necessarily operate as a serious check
to agriculture, and it follows, as a natural consequence, that, in districts
where both the landlords and tenants are in pecuniary embarrassments, the
collection of the mdlldt is attended with great difficulty and with a certain
amount of oppression.
Many thousands of labourers come from the Khalkhal districts of the
west side of the Talish mountains for the winter, but return to their
homes in the spring as they cannot endure the climate in the summer.
The Gilanls are far from ill-looking; they are not so ruddy as the natives
of the higher provinces, and persons of a dark, almost of a black, com
plexion are oftener to be met with than among these. They are by no
means deficient in size or muscular strength.
The population is estimated variously at 150,000 to 200,000 souls, but
there are very few data for a correct estimate and it is very difficult
to form an idea of the probable number on account of the peculiar nature
of the country. The dense forest which covers it, by concealing from the
view of the traveller the habitations of the people, except such as are
immediately in his line of route, precludes his forming any estimate from
what comes under his observation, and there are no public records to which
to refer.
The language of Gilan proper is the Gilek, a dialect of Persian, which is
spoken with great rapidity and is less sonorous than the Persian uf other
parts. The language of the Talish district, which bounds Gilan on the north
is another dialect of Persian, and it has been ascertained to contain much
more Pahlavi than either the Gilek or the language of Mazandaran. Of
twenty substantives, which Abbot noted of the Gilek, only two varied from
the modern Persian ; in the same number of words and of the same meaning
in the Talish language there were only nine which corresponded with the
Persian either exactly or approximately ; the greatest difference in the
former dialect appears to be in the verbs and in the pronunciation.
In Gilan gipsies are more numerous than elsewhere. They preserve
the characteristics of their race as in other parts of the world. Fortune-
telling is the occupation of the women. They live in little camps formed
of miserable tents in which they migrate from the hot to the cold country
according to the season. The donkey is their companion, and his master
is the professional vendor of pots and pans. In features and habits they
differ but little from their brethren in the West, and like them they have
preserved in their language the trace of Hindustani origin. In the Persian
they are called Kauli, which word is supposed to denote a connection with an
origin from Kabul.