Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 343

August, 1931)
GENERAL VIEW
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38. The speakers of Dardic inhabit the wild mountain country lying between the Kabul River and the lower ranges of the North-Western Himalaya on the south, and the Hindukuš and the Mustãy Range on the north. They fall into three groups, the Kāfir, Khowār, and the Dard. Most of the speakers of the languages of the Käfir group (Kf.) dwell in the wild and inhospitable country of Kāfiristān, which is not within the sphere of influence of British India, being subject to the Amir of Afyānistān. Our knowledge of them is therefore limited. We know Bašgali best, as & good grammar has been written by Davidson, and we have a dic. tionary by Konow. On these is based the account given in the LSI., but since that was published additional and important information has been provided by Morgenstierne in his Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan (Oslo, 1926). Before that Report appeared the only speakers of the language known to us were the Kāfir tribe dwelling in the Bašgal valley of Kāfiristān, and it was accordingly called "Bašgali" by English writers. But Morgenstierne has discovered that these Bašgal Kāfirs are comparatively late arrivals in their present seat, having come there only some twelve generations ago from the Ktivi and neighbouring valleys much farther west in Northern Afyanistan. In their ancient home the same tribe of Kåfirs still also persists under the name of Kati, and Morgenstierne (pp. 40ff.) has found that this Kati language is the same as what has hitherto been known as Bašgali. A better name for the whole language would therefore be “Kati," and so it is called by Morgenstierne, but in the present work, to avoid confusion, I have thought it best to adhere to the older and more familiar name. Between the two groups of Katis, and directly south of the Eranian-speaking Munjān, lie the Prēsuns, whose language is known as Veron, Prēsun, or Wasi-veri. It differs considerably from Bašgali,-60 much so that Morgenstierne (p. 47), who calls it Prasun, suspects an un-Aryan substratum. The speakers, in their inhospitable home, were not found to be easy of approach, and our information concerning it is based but on a brief interview with one of them by Morgenstierne, and on the language of one Prēsun shepherd who was enticed from the wilds of his native valleys to Citrāl for the purposes of the Linguistic Survey of India. As its geographical position suggests, Veron possesses more Eranian characteristics than do other Dardic forms of speech, such as the frequent change of d to l; but, on the other hand, it sometimes agrees in phonetio details with the Dard group, where the other Käfir languages differ from it.1 South of the Prēguns dwell the Wai Kāfirs, who speak Wai-alā, closely related to Bašgali. In addition to the information given by the LSI., we have now & further account by Morgenstierne (pp. 42 ff.). Weat of Wai-alā, and immediately to the south of the western section of Kati, lies Aslund (or Ağlun). The LSI. failed to obtain any specimens of it, but Morgenstierne was more fortunate. He was able to show its close relationship to Wai-alā, and to identify it with the “Kāfir " language described nearly seventy years ago by Trumpp in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.' Pagai, a name that is possibly derived from "Piśāca," is the speech of the Dēhgāns of Laymān and of the country eastward as far as the River Kunar, that is to say of the tract between Western Kati, Aškund, and Wai-alā on the North and the Kabul river on the South. It is also called Laymäni and Dēhgāni. Since it was described in the LSI., a valuable addition to our knowledge of it has been made by Morgenstierne (pp. 81 ff.). It has several well. marked dialects, which fall into two groups, an Eastern and a Western. In the Western dialects, usually becomes x, a change that occurs not only in the neighbouring dialects of the Eranian Pašto, but also in the Indo-Aryan Gadi dialect of Western Pahāļi. Tirähi is the language of the people who once inhabited the Tirah country, and who in comparatively modern times migrated to Ningnahär, both in Afyānistān. Thanks to the help of Sir Aurel Stein, a fairly full account of this language will be found in pp. 266 ff. of vol. I, Part i, of the LSI. Before that, all that we knew about it was confined to the few words contained in a short vocabulary by Leech.3 Gawarbati (Gwr.), or Gawar-speech, is the language of the
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