r\ 



146 



E. B. Shaw — On the QhalcTtah Languages. 



[No. 2, 



as plainly towards India, as those on the north do towards that greater 

 Persia which comprises all Persian- speaking races from the Jaxartes to the 

 mountains of Kurdistan. 



But further, as the discovery, in undisturbed soil, of a skeleton with 

 all its parts lying together in their proper relative positions, proves to the 

 geologist that the body of which it is the remains must have been deposited 

 there at, or soon after, death, and consequently that the habitat of the 

 living animal must have been near ; similarly the present position of the 

 Bard and Ghalchah tribes on either flank of the speech-parting Range 

 of Hindii-Kush, — bound together by dialectic ties, and yet attached also in 

 the same way to the neighbouring nations, the Persic limb lying towards the 

 Persian side, the Indie limb towards the Indian side, — would seem to shew 

 that the early home of their unity cannot have been far off. Had they 

 divided asunder in some distant land, what probability was there of their 

 coming together again in one locality, and of their finally taking up relative 

 positions precisely corresponding with their respective linguistic affinities ? 



The connection of the Ghalchah hill-tribes with the Badakhshis and of 

 these again with the Tajiks or Iranian population of Central Asia, is so plain 

 that it is recognised by all the natives of those regions. On the other hand 

 the Bards, whose languages are classed as decidedly Indian or Sanskritic by 

 Br. Leitner, extend from the axis of the Hindii-Kush Range down to and 

 across the Indus. In the valleys of Guraiz and Tilel they overlap or inter- 

 mingle with the Kashmiri race, from which again an unbroken chain of dia- 

 lects has been traced out by Mr. Brew # through the outer Himalaya valleys, 

 connecting by a gradual passage the Kashmiri with the Hindi spoken in the 

 plains of India. 



It is not alone in the extreme eastern section of the Hindii-Kush that 

 a speech-parting of the kind described above exists. . If, as is probable, 

 the Siahposh Kafirs are merely unconverted Bards, they are matched on 

 the north by the Ghalchah inhabitants of the valleys of Minjan, Sanglich, 

 &c, and the linguistic water-parting coincides with the geographical one ? 

 at least as far west as the Khawak Pass above Kabul. 



Thus in the same way that, philologically, the Indian and Persian 

 tongues have been traced back through ancient writings into such mutually 

 resembling forms of speech as to imply original unity ; so, geographically, 

 we can at the present day follow up from either end a chain of Indie and 

 Persic tribes until we find the last links of each fixed close together on the 

 flanks of the Hindii-Kush Range, and connected with one another by linguis- 

 tic ties. 



Whether this distribution is of so early a date as to indicate the line 

 of the original migrations of the Aryans on their way to India I leave to 

 * See his "Jumrnn and Kashmir", p. 467* 



