The Throne of Solomon
golapish, one of the silver coronets the young women wear, and
some silver buttons in the bazaar. The ladies of Kalar wear
also little silver pendants all round the edges of their short
coatees, but there were none in stock, and the bazaar—a row
of nine or ten huts—was not properly open, reserving its
activities for two days in the week. To have a bazaar and four
baths turned Lahu almost into a town, although its grass-grown
hilly lane, with a water and ducks meandering down it, and the
houses dotted about accidentally, some whitewashed, some
neatly caulked of wood and mud, and some just logs one on
the other, made it look more than ever like a Devonshire
village that had got itself mixed up with Swiss chalets, and
been filled with inhabitants whose taste in dress was not yet
spoilt by the industrial age.
Here too, however, as at Rudbarek, the feeling of an old
and civilized prosperity still lingered. It must have had many
centuries of unbroken tradition behind it from very early times.
The town of Kalar was destroyed by the Mongols in die early
thirteenth century, but rebuilt and walled in A.D. 1346, and
continued under its native rulers—a family called Padhusban—
from the end of the seventh century until A.D. 1595, when Shah
Abbas finally did away with them. Islam came here slowly,
with no shock of war, spread by the proselytizing of 'Alid
refugees. The Arab governors could only rule in harmony
and conjunction with the native lords; and as late as the tenth
century these mountain people were still " pardy idolaters and
partly Magians." In the bazaar of Lahu I bought a silver coin
belonging to one of these native princes of the eighth century,
with a Zoroastrian fire-altar on tie reverse side.
We now visited the Mound of Kalar, which is barely half an
hour from Lahu in a north-easterly direction. It stands in the
open plain with nothing near it except another small mound
called Golegombe, and is about thirty feet high and 550 or so
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