Bibliography, 
177 
the west, which traverses Pich,* a country of Kafiristan, When I took 
Chigar Serai the Kafirs of Pich came to their aid, men who were great 
drinkers of wine; they fear neither God f nor man, and are heathenish 
in their customs.” Pauthier says: “ the Bacian of Marco Polo and Pich 
of Baber are probably one and the same,” 
Pritchard, J. C Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 
1844, Volume IV, Chapter XII, Section V. Of the Sidh Posh or Kafirs of 
the Hindu Kush, —Their language is nearly allied to the Sanscrit. The 
Laghmani or Dehgani language is said to be a Kafir dialect. The Siah- 
posh, judging from their language, “ belong to the Indian race, and the 
language which has long been a learned and dead language in Hindustan is 
still preserved in a peculiar dialect among the mountaineers of the Hindu 
Caucasus. 
There is strong evidence that the Sanscrit language, or a peculiar 
modification of it, was the idiom of the ancestors of the Kafir race. 
He gives a vocabulary of 23 words of the Siah-posh, which very much 
resemble the Sanscrit. Twenty of the words are the same as those in my 
vocabulary of sentences. 
This book quotes a communication by Ritter to the Berlin Geographi¬ 
cal Society, May 1839, “ Einige ethnographische Mittheilungen fiber 
die Siah Posh von Alexander Burnes ” printed in the “ Monatsbericht fiber 
die Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft ffir Erdkunde. ; ’ 
In the latter paper are some remarks by Professor Bopp on specimens 
of the Siah Posh language. 
De Quatrefages. —Histoire generale de la race humaine, Paris, 1889. 
—He classifies the Siah-posh as— 
Trunc, blanc ou caucasique. Eamille, Hindoue. 
Branche, Aryane. Groupe, Mamogi. 
Rameau, Indo-Europeen. 
Raverty, Captain H. G. — On the languages of the Siah-posh Kafirs. 
— Journal , Asiatic Society, Bengal, 1864, p. 267. —Disagrees with Dr. 
* Pich, is believed to be Kama in modern maps. 
t Colonel Yule says the Pashais, though now Mahomedans are reckoned among the 
aboriginal tribes of the country, which the Afghans are not. 
N 
