1876.] 



E. B. Shaw— On tie Ghalchah Languages. 



145 



other set of terminations (those of the Past Tenses) which are very peculiar 

 in Wakhi and Sarikoli. 



Thus, to sum up, we have discovered similarities between the two groups 

 of dialects, as regards the noun declension , 1st in the mode of expressing the 

 Genitive (by simple apposition), 2nd the Dative (by the affix or, er), 3rd 

 the Accusative (a negative resemblance), 4th the Instrumental and Ablative 

 (by means of a termination an in addition to the appropriate pre- or post- 

 positions, which themselves are in two instances alike). The Nominative 

 can afford no evidence either way. Only in the remaining prepositions and 

 post-positions used with the cases can no resemblance be traced, as well as in 

 the special terminations which give a plural sense. Thus by far the greater 

 part of the noun declension in Ghalchah has parallels amongst the Dardu 

 dialects. 



Again in the conjugation of the verb, we have seen that 5 out of the 6 

 personal terminations of the Future Present Tense are similar in Dardu 

 (Shina) and in Ghalchah ; while the Wakhi Infinitive meets with a pretty 

 close parallel in Kalasha (Dardu), and both its forms seems to be the 

 same as those of the Shina (Dard) dialect, merely dropping the final vowel 

 of these. 



The resemblances therefore cover pretty nearly half the inflections of 

 the Wakhi verb ; and the differences occur in the remaining set of personal 

 terminations (used for the Past Tenses), as also in the Participles. 



The resemblances in the vocabulary represent the most simple and 

 organic ideas (see Comparative Table). 



This radical similarity between the Ghalchah and the Dardu groups of 

 languages, so far as it goes would seem to show that the present local con- 

 nection of these two groups cannot be the result of movements starting 

 from opposite quarters and meeting accidentally in the present homes of the 

 tribes in question. If Ghalchahs and Dards were offshoots detached respect- 

 ively from the Persic and Indie races at a period when the languages of those 

 two races had already assumed their present distinct types, they could 

 scarcely, in their isolated valleys, severed from one another by snowy ranges, 

 have worked back their dialects in the direction of primitive unity. This 

 would have been reversing the natural course of events. 



We must therefore suppose that the ancestors of the Ghalchahs and 

 Dards at one time lived together and spoke much the same language, 

 although their dialects have since diverged ; and although that divergence is 

 precisely of such a nature as to bring one group into the Persic class and the 

 other into the Indie, notwithstanding a strong mutual resemblance. The 

 water-parting of the Hindu-Kush range which divides Ghalchahs from Dards, 

 also forms the speech-parting between the Persic and Indie tongues ; and the 

 long valleys on the south of that range contain a trail of Aryans pointing 



