INTRODUCTION. 



Ormuri or Bargista is the language of a tribe which calls itself Baraki ; but 

 which its neighbours call Ormur. Similarly, they themselves call their language 

 Bargista, while among others it is commonly known as Ormuri. According to 

 Ghulam Muhammad Khan,' the Barakis claim to be Sayyids, and to be descended 

 from one Mir Barak. They are said to have come to their present habitats at some 

 unknown time from Bran, and to have settled first in the L/Ogar valley, south of 

 Kabul, and subsequently also at Kaniguram in Waziristan where they now have 

 some four or five hundred houses. When the Afyans conquered the country, the 

 Ormurs took to trading, and in pursuit of their calling wandered far and wide. 

 There are thus at the present day a f-ew villages of them in the Pesawar district, 

 but here they have abandoned their language and talk P'sto. In some villages of 

 the Logar valley they speak Persian, while in a few other villages of the same 

 locality — Leech mentions the village of Barak — they have retained their own form of 

 speech, which is also spoken in Kaniguram. 



The above is the account given by Ghulam Muhammad Khan. Two earlier 

 writers agree on the whole with what he says, but state that the tribe is of Arab 

 origin. Lieutenant R. Leech (J.A.S.B., vii, 1838, pp. 727 ff) gives a short vocabu- 

 lary and a few phrases of the language, and remarks as follows : — 



' The Barakis are included in the general term of Parsiwan or Tajak ; they 

 are original inhabitants of Yemen whence they were brought by Sultan Mahmud 

 of Ghazni : they accompanied him in his invasion of India, and were pre-emi- 

 nently instrumental in the abstraction of the gates of Somnath. There are two 

 divisions of the tribe. The Barakis of Rajan in the province of Lohgad, who 

 speak Persian, and the Barakis of Barak, a city near the former, who speak the 

 language called Baraki ; Sultan Mahmud, pleased with their services in India, 

 was determined to recompense them by giving them in perpetual grant any part 

 of the country they chose ; they fixed upon the district of Kaniguram in the 

 coimtry of the Waziris, where they settled. ******* 'phe Barakis of this 

 place, and of Barak alone speak the Baraki language. 



We receive a warning from the study of this Vocabulary, not to be hasty in 

 referring the origin of a people merely from the construction of their language ; 

 for it is well known that the one now instanced was invented by Mir Yuzuf who 

 led the first Barakis from Yemen into Afghanisthan ; his design was to conceal 



' See pp. 5, 6 of his Grammar. 



