Digital Rare Book:
The Man who would be King and other stories
By Rudyard Kipling
Published by Doubleday Page & Co., New York - 1907

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The story:
The narrator, a journalist, encounters two ruffianly-looking adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, who announce that they are off to Kafiristan in the mountains of Afghanistan to make themselves Kings. Some two years later, on a hot summer's night, Carnehan creeps into his office, a broken man, crippled and in rags, and tells an amazing story. They had indeed made themselves Kings, persuading the local people that they were gods, mustering their army, asserting their power over the local villages, and planning to build a Nation. But Dravot had tried to take a wife; terrified, she had bitten him until he bled, and he was seen to be "Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!" The people, led by the priests, had turned against them, dropped Dravot from a high bridge to his death, and crucified Carnehan with wood splinters. Carnehan is carrying Dravot's head, and his golden crown, in his bag. He hobbles away and dies soon after. No sign of head or crown remains.

Background:
Josiah Harlan (1799-1871), 'Prince of Ghor', was an American adventurer who went to Afghanistan and the Punjab where he became involved in politics and military action, later winning the title of Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants. A letter from Mr.R.F. Rosner tells how Harlan, who served as an Assistant Surgeon in the East India Company's Army, was active from 1828 to 1841 as a soldier, spy and governor in the Punjab, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Harlan claimed to have obtained the right to rule a 'kingdom' in the Hindu Kush.

According to David Gilmour, Kipling's story was inspired by the author’s meeting with an unidentified Freemason when he was working as a young journalist in India, which suggests that Harlan’s adventures or a version of them, had been absorbed into Masonic folklore on the North-West Frontier. Kipling would certainly have been familiar with Harlan’s history, just as he would have known of the even earlier exploits of George Thomas, the eighteenth-century Irish mercenary.

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