Between the north-west frontier of our Indian Empire and the Pamirs there is a tract of mountainous country inhabited by many different nationalities, speaking many different tongues. The Pāmirs themselvesare a polyglot region. Taking Zēbāk, for instance, the district round it is the home of no less than four distinct speeches— one West-Iranian, Persian, and three East-Iranian, Wakhī, Shi ghī, and Ishkāshamīī. These last belong to the same Aryan group as Paksbtō. To the south-east of the Pāmirs we come to the Burushaskī spoken in Hunza and Nagar, a language of Scythian stock, whose immediate affinities have not yet been identified. South-east, again, of the Burushaskī area we come to Bāltistān, where another Scythian language, the Tibeto-Burman Bāltī, is the vernacular. In the valley of Kāshmīr;, there is Kāshmirī, and in the lower reaches of the Jhelum and in the Murree Hills, Chhibhālī, both of which are Indo - Aryan, and can be traced up to ancient Sanskrit. West of the Chhibhālī tract lies the British district of Hazara, of which the principal language is a form of Western Panjābī. Crossing the Indus we come to the Northern Pakhtō dialect of Pakshtō spoken in Peshawar, Ṣwāt, and Bajaur. West of Bajaur, beyond the Kunar River, we come to Laghmān. North of Laghmān lies Kāfiristān, through which we again reach the Pāmirs.
X. Pisaca = ’Ωμοφάγος.
