Publisher's Synopsis
Kalasha is a language spoken by three thousand speakers in the three Kalash Valleys of Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur in Chitral, Pakistan. Kalasha is also spoken by an estimated eight hundred people in the nearby former Kalash Valleys of Urtsun and Jinjoret. Those people have been reported to all be converted to Islam, but they still speak Kalasha in their homes. Gul Sharakat who has been conducting her own research by interviewing Kalasha speakers throughout Pakistan estimates there are fifteen thousand Kalasha speakers altogether. It is known that Kalasha is an old language, definitely two thousand years old and probably four thousand years old. Georg Morgenstierne says in his books that Kalasha has been spoken "for thousands of years." Morgenstierne describes them as "among the first wave of Indo-Aryan Immigrants." Rudyard Kipling wrote in "The Man Who Would Be King" "These women are whiter than you or me. . . . It's a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful." These people are said to be descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.
