Kalasha

Balanguru – a Kalasha village in northern Pakistan described

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1592 balanguru web

It is book review week here on Lingoblog! Today, we are bringing you a review of “Balanguru: mennesker og myter i en kalashalandsby i Hindukush [Balanguru: people and myths in a Kalasha village in Hindukush]”.

When I was a student and studied linguistic anthropology in Amsterdam, taught by the anthropologist Johannes Fabian (now 82 years old), one of the tasks that we got as students was that we all had to read an anthropological monograph of our own choice. An ethnographic description of a tribal group’s nature. Thus, while we read the book, we were instructed to be particularly aware of what the anthropologist wrote about language. Did they learn the language to be able to communicate with the natives? … ↪

Culture and language of the Kalasha

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kalashabook

Denmark has a special connection with the Kalasha people in northern Pakistan. The Danish scholar of religious sciences Halfdan Siiger visited the Kalasha people in 1948, and he wrote a book – not yet published – about their religion. Later, the anthropologists Mytte Fentz and Svend Castenfeldt undertook field work in the Kalasha valleys. They wrote several articles and books about their observations, in particular Myth Fentz’s wonderful book The Kalasha: Mountain People of the Hindu Kush, published in Denmark at Forlag Rhodes.

The Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus possesses a lot of objects from the people, including some gand’aw, or wooden sculptures of ancestors. In addition, Copenhagen linguist Ida Mørch and Jan Heegård visited the area and studied … ↪