THE HALF SMILE 145
military support. He launches into a description of the character of the
people of Sind, and to explain the land, he turns to "a History of Dahar,
son of Chach" (Ta'rikh-i Dahar-i Chach), which is "well ·known to the
common people in the land of Sind."^31 It is Chachnama, Mahru notes,
that is the "story of treachery and betrayal" of the Sindhi people. Mahru
then details the plot of the daughters of Dahar to take revenge on
Qasim. Mahru's account hues closely to the details in Chachnama but
with one telling change: he omits the monologue of the daughter and
instead concludes that the women represent the "trickery, betrayal, and
lies are the habits of the people of Sind."3^2 Mahru ignores the ethical
subjecthood of the daughters and reduces their act to on~ of a trans-
gression against the central authority. For Mahru, the women's lie is a
historical precedent for the character of the people of Uch; it allows
him to articulate a historical critique of noncompliance to his stately
authority.
Qasim's death is also repeated in the local chronicles of Sind's past
that were written in the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,
as well as in the late-eighteenth-century social history Tuhfat al-
Kiram. All of these texts either refer.ence or reproduce the Chachnama
account, with some minor changes. (Qani' in Tuhfat al-Kiram, has the
women crushed under the feet of elephants.) These references do not
reproduce the moral condemnation of Mahru.
British colonial accounts of Sind's history also include this, story. In
1861, Thomas Hood penned a versification of the story in The Daughters
of King Daher, where "in the dark eyes of the Indian maids / A subtle
smile grew."^33 Hood reduces the women to Oriental romantic sub-·
jects with conniving half smiles, at the mercy of a despotic Muslim
king.
While medieval and colonial accounts reduced the women of
Chachnama to romantic and transgressive subjects, they were differ-
ently recuperated as resistors in Sindhi nationalist discourses in the
twentieth century. During my visits to Hyderabad and Thatta, I had
many cha~ces to sip tea and speak about Sind's glorious pasts with
those who keep that cultural memory alive. Chachnama was often in-
voked, as were Muhammad bin Qasim and Raja Dahar. Yet three
women from Chachnama-Dahar's wife, Queen Ladi, and Dahar's
daughters Suria and Primal-carry equal weight in the ~ultural