There are differences of opinion as to whether the Kalash have or had the same   
   religion as the Nuristanis and whether they are the same people. The   
   similarities between them are that they both do not bury their dead but put   
   their dead in wooden boxes    
   above ground, and both sit on small wooden stools and do not sit on the ground.   
   However, Richard Strand who has been studying these peoples for the last fifty   
   years, suggests that these people are different. The Nuristanis all speak   
   Iranian Languages of which there are five varieties or dialects. However, the   
   Kalash speak an Indic    
   Language. Richard Strand believes the Nuristanis arrived at their present   
   location in year 1000 AD when Mahmud of Ghazni swept through the lower areas   
   but the Kalash arrived thousands of years before that.   
   George S. Robertson in “Kafirs in the Hindu-Kush” reprinted by Ishi Press   
   ISBN 4871873781, considers the Kalash to be different from the Siaposh Kafirs.   
   He writes on page 4:   
   “The third day after leaving Chitral found me and my Kafir friends at the   
   village of Utzun, a community of Kalash Kafirs who, as will be explained   
   subsequently are not the true independent Kafirs of the Hindu Kush but are but   
   an idolatrous tribe of    
   slaves subject to the Mehtar of Chitral and living within his borders. The   
   village of Urtzun numbers thirty or forty domiciles which are perched on the   
   top of a conical rock 700 feet high in the middle of fields which lie in an   
   amphitheatre of hills. The    
   villagers were friendly and carried themselves with an independence that   
   surprised me, for my experience of Kalash Kafirs was that they were a most   
   servile and degraded race. They however informed me that the Urtzun differed   
   from all the other Kalash in    
   having a strong infusion of Bashgal Valley blood in their veins and were   
   consequently allied with the true Kafirs.”    
   However, this village of Urtzun is not the village of the Kalash that we think   
   of today. Urtsun is a village and a valley near Jinjoret where all the people   
   converted to Islam within the last one hundred years.   
   On page 51, Robertson finally meets what we today call the Kalash:   
   When we got to Bomboret, we found Shermalik's brother and three companions   
   there. They had gone to meet us at Urtzun but hearing of our change of march   
   they had changed their direction also and hurried to join us. They reported   
   that everything was    
   satisfactory when they left Kamdesh some days previously.   
   In the evening, the Mehtar Jao provided a Kalash dance for our entertainment.   
   The music consisted of feeble pipes supplemented by cat-calls. The appearance   
   of the witch-like old woman dancing heavily their peculiar polka dance-step   
   singly or in pairs was    
   strange almost weird. They wore their national costume, a tunic, not unlike   
   that worn by the Siah Posh women, but much longer and a peculiar and very   
   effective cloth cap reaching to the shoulders and sewn all over with cowrie   
   shells. Sometimes they    
   danced in pairs side by side with arms round another's waists, at others they   
   formed in a line, each woman's right hand on her neighbour's left shoulder and   
   her left arm round the waist of the woman on the other side of her. Then led   
   by a woman carrying    
   a spear, the whole line edged round a group of men which surrounded the   
   musicians, and helped them by a monotonous chant in time with the drums, and   
   by a rhythmic slapping of hands. One or two men were with the women in the   
   line. What pleased the Mehtar    
   Jao best was a dance of little boys, who bobbed about like corks with the   
   ordinary Kalash step enlivened so as to be almost unrecognizable.   
   We can plainly understand that Robertson was witnessing the dance of the   
   Kalash women of Bumboret, as no other women dance like that. However, he says   
   “They wore their national costume, a tunic, not unlike that worn by the Siah   
   Posh women.” We    
   believe that the Kalash Kafirs are the same people, not people unlike the Siah   
   Posh.   
   When I was in contact with Richard Strand, I asked him about this. He said   
   that George Robertson made a number of mistakes and this was one of them. I   
   keep hoping that Richard Strand will write a book explaining all this.   
   Charles Masson (1800–1853) was the pseudonym of James Lewis, a British East   
   India Company soldier and explorer. He was the first European to discover the   
   ruins of Harappa near Sahiwal in Punjab, now in Pakistan.   
   Charles Masson was in the service of the East India Company as a soldier whose   
   heart and mind lay in the curiosities of the east.   
   He deserted the East India Company and for years traveled incognito in the   
   regions of Baluchistan , Afghanistan and the Punjab and consequently wrote   
   this book of his 14 year sojourn in these forbidden lands from 1826 to 1839,   
   before he was finally    
   killed.   
   He also traveled and mentions in the book "Narrative of various journeys in   
   Balochistan, Afghanistan, the Panjab and Kalat 1826-1838" about Kalash people   
   and also quotes from earlier works including Babur's biography where they were   
   first mentioned as    
   Kaffirs of Siah Posh.    
   I will consider reprinting the entire four volume work, not just this one   
   chapter, depending on the reception of this reprint.    
   I wish to thank M. Bugi Ansari for providing the links and the suggestion that   
   I reprint this book.   
   Charles Masson in this book cites “The Honorable Mr. Elphinstone, in the   
   Appendix to his admirable work on Afghanistan, has included an account, as   
   given by one of his agents, Mulla Najib, of the singular and secluded people   
   known to their Mahomedan    
   neighbors as the Siaposh Kafrs, or black-clad infidels, and who inhabit the   
   mountainous regions.”   
   However, then Charles Masson states: “It is pretty certain that Mulla Najib,   
   who is still alive, never ventured into the Siaposh country, as I believe he   
   pretended.”   
   So, apparently Charles Masson simply did not believe the information related   
   by  Mountstuart Elphinstone. However, as you will see from Appendix C which I   
   have attached, the description of the Kafirs and their customs is entirely   
   accurate and only a    
   person who had actually been there and seen them could possibly have been able   
   to related in such detail their customs and practices.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)