page_title: William Watts McNair
section_title: McNair and Kipling
hierarchical_section_title: William Watts McNair / McNair and Kipling
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from the biography Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer
context_page_description: William Watts McNair was a British surveyor, the first British explorer of Kafiristan.
context_section_description: McNair's story has been proposed as a model for some of Rudyard Kipling's stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888), and less frequently, Kim (1901).
  In 1882 Kipling returned to India to help edit Lahore's Civil and Military Gazette, a newspaper affiliated with The Pioneer in Allahabad, where Kipling worked from 1887 to early 1889. McNair's expedition was covered by both papers. As noted above, the Pioneer's early article on the expedition was summarised in The Athenaeum in September 1883. And "in 1883 and 1884, there were at least two reports in the CMG of journeys to Kafiristan, one by 'Mr. McNair, of the survey department,' disguised as a native hakim." McNair's lengthy obituary in The Pioneer (reprinted in Howard's Memoir), showed the editors' familiarity with McNair's accomplishments.
  In a 1988 reprint of "The Man Who Would Be King," Hugh Haughton wrote, "There was in fact one precedent for the duo's daredevil journey, and in composing the story I suspect that Kipling may have drawn upon the account of a visit to Kafiristan made by W. W. McNair, which was read to the Royal Geographical Society in December 1883. McNair, an officer in the Indian Survey, disobeyed government orders forbidding Europeans to cross the frontier without permission, and made his way to Kafiristan disguised as a Muhammedan hakim, or native doctor."
  "The conditions of McNair's journey," Edward Marx argued, "exhibit some striking similarities to those of Kipling's story, and certain details in McNair's account, as well, might have suggested ideas to Kipling, such as the 'antique seal' McNair brought to the Society's meeting, which he was inclined to think Egyptian." McNair noted that "the men shave the whole of the head, except a circular patch on the crown, where the hair is allowed to grow"; Dravot "shaved his head into patterns." Kipling's story follows McNair's description of the Kafirs as "incessantly engaged in petty warfare with the Mahommedans" but "exceedingly well disposed towards the British." "As regards their religion," McNair writes, "one Supreme Being (Imbra) is universally acknowledged. . . . Priests preside at their temples, in which stones are set up, but to neither priests nor idols is undue reverence paid." In Kipling's story the men encounter "half a dozen big stone idols . . . the biggest—a fellow they call Imbra." McNair's account, "give or take a few chiefs, is entirely consistent with the depiction of the Kafirs' arms and military abilities in Kipling's story, down to the matchlocks," Marx argued. "A final resemblance between McNair's account and Kipling's story is his abrupt departure from the country, precipitated by the arrival of an informant who was likely to alert authorities to McNair's identity, an eventuality that, as he had noted earlier, would likely have resulted in his death."
  Of Syed Shah, Keay wrote, "probably he actually was a syed or Mohammedan holy man; such a profession, entailing a good deal of travel, would have particularly recommended him to the Indian Survey; he was in fact being trained with a view to joining that most select corps of native travellers known to history as The Pundits. Since the 1860s these men, under the auspices of the Indian Survey, had been making secret route surveys beyond the northern and north-western frontiers; much of what was now known of the routes through the Western Himalayas and into Central Asia—and nearly all of what was known of Tibet—was the result of their work. Operating under code names or initials— the Mullah, the Havildar, A.K., etc.—they included Buddhists and Hindus as well as Mohammedans; C23, otherwise the horse-dealer Mahbub Ali in Kim, was inspired by what Kipling could glean of their activities."
caption: Rudyard Kipling
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