PREFACE. 
T the latter end of my two years’ duty in Chitral, in 
March 1898, I prepared, during the short periods of 
leisure at my disposal, a vocabulary of 1,744 sentences from 
English into the Bashgali Kafir dialect and portions of a 
short grammar, with the aid of two of the most intelli¬ 
gent Kafirs of Kamdesh and the Bashgal Yalley who 
could be obtained, viz., Slier Malik and Gul Mir (a man 
with at least one alias), both of whom are well known 
to Sir George Robertson. 
The services of Taman Khan, an intelligent Chitrall, 
were secured to assist in these translations. No bond fide 
Kafir, conversant with either Urdu, Persian or Pushto, 
or in fact any language except his own and a little Chitrall, 
was available. Both the Kafirs employed knew a few 
words of, but could not converse at all readily in, Urdu, 
and had a very useful knowledge of Chitrall. Taman 
Khan understood Urdu and Persian well. 
Before commencing this task I had studied the 
Khowar or language of Chitral. As the Kafirs mix more 
freely with Chitralls than with any other race, those 
residing in the eastern portion of Kafiristan pick up a 
certain amount of the Chitrall language, and several of 
their idioms—(in the Bashgali dialect at all events)—are 
identical with those of the Chitrall or Khowar. Every 
one of the sentences now published [except 12 taken from 
other sources marked (^[)] was taken down by me per¬ 
sonally ; some were frequently gone over, on successive 
days, to insure as much accuracy as possible. 
