Bibliography. 
181 
and Siah-posh in A.D. 1398. The difficulties encountered in getting the 
horses over the Kafiristan Hills are well described. Timiir observes : “ The 
infidels of this country were as strong as the giants of the people of Aad; 
they go all naked: they have a peculiar language hitherto unknown which 
is neither Persian, nor Turkish, nor Indian, and know no other than this : 
but for the inhabitants of some neighboaring places, who are found there 
by chance, and having acquired their language can act as interpreters, 
no one could understand them. Their kings are known as Oda and 
Odachouh.” On the Siah-posh men promising to abjure idols and 
embrace the Mahomedan religion, Timur gave them clothes and encour¬ 
aged them with affectionate speeches. But these wretches, whose 
hearts were as black as their garments, fell on one of his regiments, which 
they almost annihilated. Timur’s army then put to death a large number of 
the Kafirs, carrying away women and children. They built towers on the 
top of the mountain and end of the bridge, with the heads of the traitors 
who had never bowed the head to adore the true God. 
Timur ordered to be engraved in marble the history of his action, 
month of Ramadan, A.D. 1398, and he added the peculiar “ epocha ” which 
this people used. 
The pillar so inscribed gave the greater pleasure to Timur, as these 
people had never been conquered by any king, not even by Alexander the 
Great. 
Caouc is mentioned as a town of the Ketuers which Timur rebuilt. 
Besides the words above quoted, he gives no specimens of the language 
as then spoken. 
Tomaschek. — Central*Asiatische Studien ; I, Sogdiana , 1877. II, Die 
Pamir-Bialekte, 1880. Published in the Sitzungsberichte, Imperial Aca¬ 
demy, Vienna. —Has 3 curious ancient maps of the countries which bound 
Kafiristan north and east and west. The Kalasha dialect is the bridge 
between the cultivated Arnya * and rough west Kafir dialects. It has 
many traces, though rough, of the old Yeda dialect. The book has inter¬ 
esting remarks tracing some of the Kalasha and Bashgall words to their 
origin. 
Tomaschek.— Art. in Enc. Ersch. and Gruber, 1882 (quoted by Mons. 
G. M. Capus in “ Le Kafiristan et les Kafirs Siah-p ouches.” Ketue Scienti- 
fique, 1889). —The Kafir is a Prakrit language; it has a predilection 
for nasal vowels, “aspirations et cerebrals,” with one peculiarity, viz ,, 
# Arnya, the language spoken in Chitral, Yassin. 
