TheNuristani languages, known earlier asKafiri languages, are one of the three groups within theIndo-Iranian language family, alongside theIndo-Aryan andIranian languages.[1][2][3] They have approximately 214,000 speakers, primarily inNuristan andKunar provinces in northeastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa'sChitral District in Pakistan. The region inhabited by theNuristanis is located in the southernHindu Kush mountains and is drained by theAlingar River in the west, thePech River in the center, and theLandai Sin andKunar rivers in the east. More broadly, the Nuristan region is located at the northern intersection of theIndian subcontinent and theIranian plateau.
The Nuristani languages were not described in literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region wasKafiristan, due to the pre-Islamic religious practices of its residents, but this term has been abandoned in favor of Nuristan ("land of light"), after the region's inhabitants were converted to Islam.
Katë, also calledKati,Kamviri, orKamkata-vari, is the most-spoken Nuristani language, at 150,000 users. It includes theWestern,Northeastern, andSoutheastern dialects.
Prasun, also calledVasi-vari, is used by 8,000 speakers. Prasun is considered the most divergent member of the group, featuring a distinct grammar andphonology.
Ashkun, also calledAshkunu orSanu-viri, is used by 40,000 speakers. Although Ashkun shares commonalities with other Nuristani languages, it has some sound changes that are not shared by any other member.
Nuristani Kalasha, formerly known asWaigali, is used by 12,000 speakers. It is rather closely related toTregami andZemiaki. Nuristani Kalasha is distinct fromKalasha-mun, which is an Indo-Aryan language.
Zemiaki is used by 500 speakers. It is so far the smallest Nuristani language known to exist. Local traditions confirm a historical link with Nuristani Kalasha.
Map of attested and hypothetical ancient Indo-Iranian dialects.Nuristani languages are displayed in yellow, situated between the Iranian (in green) and Indo-Aryan languages (in orange).
Nuristani languages areIndo-European, ultimately descending fromProto-Indo-European. The prehistory of Nuristani is unclear, except that it apparently split off from the rest of the Indo-European languages as part of theIndo-Iranian branch.
TheProto-Indo-Iranian language of the late 3rd millennium BCE represents the reconstructed ancestral language that the Nuristani languages share withSanskrit andAvestan as their common origin. This makes Nuristani languages closely related to Indo-Iranian languages likeHindustani andPersian, and more distantly related to other Indo-European languages likeLithuanian andIcelandic. Its classification within the Indo-Iranian branch was debated until recent scholarship settled its position as a third branch, distinct fromIndo-Aryan orIranian, though extensive Indo-Aryan influence can be detected.
Proto-Nuristani is the reconstructed ancestral language of all the modern-day Nuristani languages, representing the latest point at which they were still unified as a single language. Proto-Nuristani began breaking off into distinct languages around the 8th century BCE. The influences from surrounding Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages onto early Nuristani languages have been highly complex, due to different patterns of migration and settlement by various Nuristani-speaking tribes throughout their history.[4]
The Nuristani languages continued their development as the primary languages of the Nuristani peoples, who maintained a history of interaction with surroundingIndo-Aryan peoples and later theAfghans, who became dominant in the area. In the 1890s, the region ofNuristan was finally incorporated intoAfghanistan due to geopolitical pressure.[5] Today, ethnicNuristanis make up over 99% of the population ofNuristan.[6] The Nuristani languages are spoken by about 78% of the total Nuristani population, and by 84% of villages.[6]
Today, Indo-AryanDardic languages likeKhowar,Pashai, andKalasha-mun, andEastern Iranian languages likeMunji,Sanglechi, andYidgha are natively spoken in the neighboring regions of Nuristan, leading to language contact.Dameli, a neighboring Indo-Aryan language, has a significant amount of vocabulary borrowed from Nuristani languages and thus was previously classified as a Nuristani language. However, themorphology and thepronominal system of Dameli are characteristically Indo-Aryan, leading to its re-classification as Dardic.[7]
Much of the Nuristani lexicon traces back to theProto-Indo-Iranian language of the late 3rd millennium BCE (compare theAshkunćës—"markhor hair" and theMarathikes—"hair"). Due to the relative isolation of theNuristan region until the turn of the 20th century, the Nuristani languages were thought to have retained some inherited words from the ancientIndo-Iranian religion, predatingHinduism andZoroastrianism. However, recent research on Nuristanitheonyms shows robust semantic and linguistic correspondences withIndo-Aryan religious terminologies, which points to a significantpost-Vedic Hindu influence on Nuristani theology and religious vocabulary.[8] Remnants of inherited Indo-Iranian elements may have survived in somePrasun theonyms with hitherto unknown etymologies.[8] In contrast, there is no trace of any Zoroastrian influence on Nuristani vocabulary, suggesting that Nuristani languages were not widely spoken in areas where Zoroastrianism was practiced.[9]
Nuristani-speaking peoples have since long participated in enduring social contact with Indo-Aryan speakers, leading to a large number of early Indo-Aryan loanwards and relative semantic closeness among the shared cognates between Indo-Aryan and Nuristani languages.[10] There have been important historical exchanges between the Nuristani religious practices and earlier forms of Hinduism. For instance, theKatëIndrë may be linked to the Hindu deityIndra, from which it derives the Katëindrõ—"rainbow" ("Indra's bow") andindrëṣ—"earthquake" ("Indra's impulse).[11][12]
Middle Indo-Aryan languages likeGandhari have shared a broader cultural and linguistic milieu with Nuristani languages for many centuries in theGandhara region. In addition, Nuristani languages borrowed words for "law" and "judge" from the IranianBactrian language around the 1st century CE, suggesting some degree of contact with Bactrian-speaking state institutions, possibly theKushan Empire.[13]
The most recent influx of loanwords into Nuristani is fromPersian andPashto, since the incorporation ofNuristan Province into Afghanistan in the 1890s.
The chart below compares some basic vocabulary among the modern-day Nuristani languages.
^Morgenstierne, G. (1975) [1973]. "Die Stellung der Kafirsprachen" [The position of the Kafir languages]. In Morgenstierne, G. (ed.).Irano-Dardica (in German). Wiesbaden: Reichert. pp. 327–343.
^Strand, Richard F. (1973). "Notes on the Nûristânî and Dardic Languages".Journal of the American Oriental Society.93 (3):297–305.doi:10.2307/599462.JSTOR599462.
^Strand, Richard F. (2023). "Kâmboǰâs and Sakas in the Holly-Oak Mountains: On the Origins of the Nûristânîs". In Cacopardo, Alberto M., and Augusto S. Cacopardo, eds., Roots of Peristan: The Pre-Islamic Cultures of the Hindukush/Karakorum. Serie Orientale Roma, n.s. 37, Part II: 781–808. Roma.
^Strand, R. (2010).Nurestâni Languages. Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition
^ab"Nuristan Provincial Profile"(PDF). Archived from the original on 7 October 2010. Retrieved14 September 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Bashir, Elena (2007). Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.).The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge. p. 905.ISBN978-0415772945.'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which[..] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
^abHalfmann, Jakob (2023). "Nuristani Theonyms in Light of Historical Phonology".Roots of Peristan, Rome, Italy: 350.
^Halfmann, Jakob (2023). "Nuristani Theonyms in Light of Historical Phonology".Roots of Peristan, Rome, Italy: 320.
^Strand, Richard F. (2022). "Ethnolinguistic and Genetic Clues to Nûristânî Origins".International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction.19:267–353.
^Strand, Richard F. (2016)."inrʹo˜" in Nûristânî Etymological Lexicon.
^Strand, Richard F. (2016)."inrʹaṣ" in Nûristânî Etymological Lexicon.
^Buddruss, G.; Degener, A. (2017).Materialien zur Prasun-Sprache des afghanischen Hindukusch. Vol. 2: Grammatik [Materials on the Prasun language of the Afghan Hindu Kush. Vol. 2: Grammar] (in German). Harvard Oriental Series 80. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. pp. 437–438.
Decker, Kendall D. (1992).Languages of Chitral. In:Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan 5. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.ISBN4-87187-520-2.
Grjunberg, A. L. (1971).K dialektologii dardskich jazykov (glangali i zemiaki). Indijskaja i iranskaja filologija: Voprosy dialektologii. Moscow.
Jakob Halfmann (2023).Lād "law": a Bactrian loanword in the Nuristani languages, inBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom.
Degener, Almuth (2002). "The Nuristani Languages". In Sims-Williams, Nicholas (ed.).Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 116. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 103–117.
Fries, Simon; Halfmann, Jakob; Hill, Eugen; Hübner, Denise (2023). "From noun to future tense: The functional diachrony of the l-future in the Nuristani languages and its typological background".STUF – Language Typology and Universals.76 (1):53–85.doi:10.1515/stuf-2023-2002.
Kuz'Mina, E.E.; Mallory, J.P. (2007). "The genesis of the dards and nuristani".The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. pp. 307–320.doi:10.1163/ej.9789004160545.i-763.90.
Rybatzki, V. (2013). "Vocabularies from the middle of the 20th century from Afghanistan Part one: Iranian, Nuristani and Dardic materials I.".Acta Orientalia.66 (3):297–348.doi:10.1556/aorient.66.2013.3.4.JSTOR43282518.
Rybatzki, Volker (2013). "Vocabularies from the middle of the 20th century from Afghanistan Part one: Iranian, Nuristani and Dardic materials II".Acta Orientalia.66 (4):443–469.doi:10.1556/aorient.66.2013.4.6.JSTOR43282530.
Strand, Richard F. (2022). "Ethnolinguistic and Genetic Clues to Nûristânî Origins".International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction.19:267–353.
Richard Strand's Nuristân site — linguistics and ethnography of Nuristân and neighboring regions, collected and analyzed by a leading scholar on Nuristân
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