Journal of the Society of Arts : Volume XLVIII, No. 2480 [‎684r] (17/24)

June x, 1900.]
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.
like all simple people, have given titles to the
months descriptive of their occupations at
different times of the year; and, much as the
English labourer talks of sowing-time, har
vest, and hay-harvest, the nomad speaks of
lambing-time, mare-milking season, and the
slaughtering season. The Kirghiz are well
acquainted with the stars, by which they steer
their path in the desert, as well as using them
to calculate time. The same solar year, with
twelve months named after the zodiacal signs,
is in use among all agriculturists, the months
having in Tashkent alternately thirty and
thirty-one days, while the last month has in
ordinary years only twenty - nine, with an
extra day every four years. In other cities,
another system is adopted, rather less regular,
and containing one month of thirty-two days
and two of twenty-nine—a method common
to agriculturists in Persia as well as Central
Asia, and in the former country also used by
Government in the assessment of taxes. A
rhyme, resembling our own “ Thirty days hath
September,” is commonly used in both coun
tries to keep the different days of the month
in the memory. There is also the ordinary
Mussulman calendar, consisting of a lunar
year, used in all religious documents and by
the educated classes generally, and since the
Julian calendar has been introduced by the
Russians, great confusion has inevitably
ensued.
Such, briefly, are the conditions of life and
main characteristics of the people of Russian
Central Asia, who, bytheir incorporation into the
great Russian Empire, have acquired an import
ance which could never have been theirs while
they remained broken up into a number of petty
States. Never, since the short period of the
ascendency of Genghis Khan, has Central
Asia been united under a homogeneous rule.
1 have not time to enter into details of the
methods adopted by Russia in managing this
vast territory, but it is sufficient to say that
her rule, though quasi - military, is on the
whole beneficent ; and that although she
makes little attempt to civilise, she partly, no
doubt for that very reason, succeeds in securing
the peace of her new, and at first unwilling,
subjects. An unswerving policy, merciless to
all signs of revolt, coupled with very little inter
ference in their lives and habits, is the golden
key of Russia in her dealings with the con
quered ; and with this she has not only
opened the gates of Central Asia for herself,
but has effectually locked them against every
other Power.
5&S
The question of communications is one which
is never absent from the schemes of Russia.
What she has already done to link the far
distant parts of her possessions to their sove
reign and head cannot be recapitulated in this
paper, nor have I time to describe the mea
sures which are being taken in Central Asia
itself. It is enough to say that Russian lines
made by Russians for Russia now run longi
tudinally across Asia, from Moscow to the
China sea, from Batum in Transcaspia to the
western gates of the Chinese Empire, and to
the Herat province, the key of Afghanistan,
which is the outwork of India. New lines will
soon join her present Trans-Caspian system
with the European-Russian railways and thus
provide alternative routes to the present incon
venient transhipment across the Caspian. The
importance of these railways in a practically
riverless country does not need to be empha
sized, and the rate at which these lines are
carried out, especially that through Kusk south
wards, shows what importance Russia attaches
to railway communications.
DISCUSSION.
The Chairman said Mr. Colquhoun had so closely
confined himself to ethnographical and geographical
information that it was rather difficult to discuss the
paper, without touching upon some of those larger
questions which he had judiciously avoided, though
he felt sure he held very decided views upon them.
He had referred in one place to a proverb which
showed that at one time the country from Tashkent
to the Sea of Aral was thickly inhabited, and said
there was no explanation of how those towns fell into
decay. It appeared to him that the greater part of
Central Asia belonged to the comparatively rainless
belt which stretched right across Asia and Africa, and
that the secret of its fertility and prosperity was
largely a matter of irrigation. He imagined that in
such countries, irrigation had always been the affair
of the Government, and he would ask if it was not
the case that after the first prosperous period of
Mussulman conquest, few Governments had been suffi
ciently energetic and permanent to maintain those
systems of irrigation by which the country was at one
time made prosperous and populous. The practical in
terest in the question of Central Asia arose from the
necessity which was laid on Great Britain to fulfil her
responsibilities and maintain her position in India, and
from the probability that the constant advance of
Russia across these regions, and her gradual ab
sorption of these various tribes must, sooner or later,
lead to a conflict for supremacy in Asia between
Russia and England. These feelings were at the
back of all their minds when these questions were
discussed, and could not be suppressed. For this