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Imra
Imra ( Kamkata-vari: ''Imro'') was the chief creator deity of the Nuristani people before their conversion to Islam. Imra was believed to be the creator of the earth. With his breath, it was believed, he created the three other main deities of the pantheon: Mon, Gish and Bagisht. Etymology The name of the deity is considered a reflex of Indo-Iranian Yama. The name ''Imro'' or ''Yum'' in Kamkata-vari is thought to derive from a borrowing of Sanskrit ''Yama-rāja'' "King Yama" via a Middle Indo-Aryan form ''*Yam(a)rāy(a)'' with the characteristic northwestern sound change of ''j'' to ''y''. It is likely a cognate of the Bangani title ''Jim Raza'' 'god of the dead'. He is also known as ''Mara'' "Killer, Death", a term derived from the Prasun language. Cognates of Kamkata-vari ''imro'' are found in other neighboring languages: Waigali ''yamrai'', Kalash (Urtsun) ''imbro'', Ashkun ''imra'' and Prasun ''yumr'a'' - all referring to a "creator god".{{cite book , last=Minahan , fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuristani People
The Nuristanis, formerly known as Kafiristanis, are an ethnic group native to the Nuristan Province of northeastern Afghanistan and Chitral District of northwestern Pakistan. Their languages comprise the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian languages. The Nuristanis reside mainly in the northeast of Afghanistan and northwest of Pakistan; between the Pashtun tribes of Kunar, Kalash in Pakistan's Chitral, and Tajiks of Badakhshan in the north. In the mid-1890s, after the establishment of the Durand Line when Afghanistan reached an agreement on various frontier areas to the British Empire for period of time, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan conducted a military campaign in Kafiristan and followed up his conquest with forced conversion of the Kafirs to Islam; the region thenceforth being known as ''Nuristan'', the "Land of Light". Before their conversion, the Nuristanis practiced a form of ancient Hinduism. Non-Muslim religious practices endure in Nuristan today to some degree as folk customs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moni
Moni or Mone ( Kamkata-vari: ''Mone''/''Mune''), also known as Mandi (from Prasun) was, after Imra, the second-most important god in the pre-Islamic pantheon of the Nuristani people. With his breath, Imra created Moni and Gish. Moni was believed to be a divine prophet, whom Imra selected to fulfill his behests. Nearly every village had a temple devoted to Moni. Etymology The name of the deity is said to have been derived from a borrowing of Sanskrit ''Mahādeva'', a title ascribed to the god Shiva Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions within Hindu ..., who is similar to Moni in most aspects, such as the bow, bull, and destroyer of the cattle of demons.Halfmann, Jakob. "Nuristani Theonyms in Light of Historical Phonology". In: ''6th Indo-European Research Colloquium'', 2022. OI: http:// ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Gish
Gish or Great Gish ( Kamkata-vari: ''Giṣ''/''Gaviṣ'') was the most popular god of Nuristani mythology and received the greatest amount of attention among the Siah-Posh Nuristani of Bashgul. Every village of Bashgul had one or more shrines dedicated to him. In the Nuristani pantheon, Gish ranked next to Moni who was said to be the chief prophet of Imra. Both Moni and Gish were created by Imra by his breath. Gish was the war-god. His earthly name was Yazid, and he is stated to have killed ''Ali'', ''Hasan'' and ''Husain'' and nearly every famous Muslim known to the Nuristani. Countless bulls and billy goats were sacrificed each year to him and the drums were beaten in his honor for fifteen continuous days, every spring, by the Nuristani slaves. Etymology According to Richard Strand, in his ''Nuristâni Etymological Lexicon'', it is related to the Sanskrit word ''gavíṣ''/''gaviṣá'' "desire for cows; eager", an epithet of Indra (with which he is functionally equivalent), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuristan
Nuristan, also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan (Dari: ; Kamkata-vari language, Kamkata-vari: ), is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It is divided into seven Districts of Afghanistan, districts and is Afghanistan's least populous province, with a population of around 167,000. Parun serves as the provincial capital. Nuristan is bordered on the south by Laghman Province, Laghman and Kunar Province, Kunar provinces, on the north by Badakhshan Province, Badakhshan province, on the west by Panjshir Province, Panjshir province. The origins of the Nuristani people traces back to the 4th century BC. Some Nuristanis claim being descendants of the Greek occupying forces of Alexander the Great. It was formerly called Kafiristan ( ps, ) ("Land of the Infidels") until the inhabitants were Forced conversion#Islam, forcibly converted from an Animism, animist religion; a form of Historical Vedic religion, ancient Hinduism infused with local var ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamkata-vari Language
Kamkata-vari (') is the largest Nuristani language. It contains the main dialects Kata-vari, Kamviri and Mumviri. Kata-vari and Kamviri are sometimes erroneously reckoned as two separate languages, but according to linguist Richard Strand they form one language. The Kamkata-vari language is spoken by 40,000–60,000 people, from the Kata, Kom, Mumo, Kshto and some smaller Black-Robed tribes in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are dialectal differences of the Kamkata-vari speakers of Pakistan. The most used alternative names for the language are ''Kati'' or ''Bashgali''. Classification It belongs to the Indo-European language family and is in the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. Dialects There are four main dialects: Eastern Kata-vari, Western Kata-vari, Kamviri and Mumviri. The last two are sometimes erroneously defined as separate languages. Eastern Kata-vari and Kamviri are commonly both referred to as ''Shekhani'' in Chitral. Status Literacy rate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kalasha-ala
Waigali (') is a language spoken by about 10,000 Nuristani people of the Waigal Valley in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The native name is ''Kalaṣa-alâ'' 'Kalasha-language'. "Waigali" refers to the dialect of the Väy people of the upper part of the Waigal Valley, centered on the town of Waigal, which is distinct from the dialect of the Čima-Nišei people who inhabit the lower valley. The word 'Kalasha' is the native ethnonym for all the speakers of the southern Nuristani languages. Kalaṣa-alâ belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is in the southern Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. It is closely related to Zemiaki and to Tregami, the lexical similarity with the latter being approximately 76% to 80%. It shares its name with Kalaṣa-mun, spoken in Pakistan's southern Chitral District Chitral District ( ur, ) was the largest district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, covering an area of 14,850 km², before split ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-European Deities
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish, have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct. Today, the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Hindi–Urdu, Spanish, Bengali, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in ''The New Yorker'' starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for ''The New York Review of Books''. His most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels '' Rabbit, Run''; '' Rabbit Redux''; ''Rabbit Is Rich''; ''Rabbit at Rest''; and the novella ''Rabbit Remembered''), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both ''Rabbit Is Rich'' (1981) and ''Rabbit at Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent. The term ''"Hindu"'' traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name ''Sindhu'' (सिन्धु ), referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are "''Indus''" (for the river) and "''India''" (for the land of the river). The term "''Hindu''" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today is considered derogatory. The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Askunu Language
''Âṣkuňu'' (') is a language of Afghanistan spoken by the Ashkun people – also known as the Âṣkun, Ashkun, Askina, Saňu, Sainu, Yeshkun, Wamas, or Grâmsaňâ – from the region of the central Pech Valley around Wâmâ and in some eastern tributary valleys of the upper Alingar River in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. Other major places where the language of Ashkun is spoken are Nuristan Province, Pech Valley in Wama District, eastern side of the Lower Alingar Valley in Nurgaram and Duab districts, Malil wa Mushfa, Titin, Kolatan and Bajagal valleys. It is classified as a member of the Nuristani sub-family of the Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken i .... Demographics Current status: There are currently about 40,000 ethnic people who spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Indo-Aryan Languages
The Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Middle Indic languages, sometimes conflated with the Prakrits, which are a stage of Middle Indic) are a historical group of languages of the Indo-Aryan family. They are the descendants of Old Indo-Aryan (OIA; attested through Vedic Sanskrit) and the predecessors of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Bengali and Punjabi. The Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) stage is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BC and 1000 AD, and is often divided into three major subdivisions. * The early stage is represented by the Ardhamagadhi of the Edicts of Ashoka (c. 250 BC) and Jain Agamas, and by the Pali of the Tripitakas. * The middle stage is represented by the various literary Prakrits, especially the Shauraseni language and the Maharashtri and Magadhi Prakrits. The term Prakrit is also often applied to Middle Indo-Aryan languages (''prākṛta'' literally means 'natural' as opposed to ''saṃskṛta'', which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wasi-wari
Wasi-wari (Vasi-vari, Wasi-weri) is the language of the Wasi people, spoken in a few villages in the Pârun Valley (Prasun Valley) in Afghanistan. It also goes by the name Prasun or Paruni. Vasi-vari belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is on the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. Vasi-vari is the most isolated of the Nuristani languages. As far as is known, its speakers are 100% Muslim. Literacy rates are low: below 1% for people who have it as a first language, and between 15% and 25% for people who have it as a second language. Demographics Wasi-wari is a language spoken by the Vâs’i people who are located in the Pârun Valley, known as Vâs’i gul, at the beginning of the Pech River Basin in the Nurestân Province of Northeastern Afghanistan. The Vâs’i refer to the language as Vâs’i-vari or Vâs’i-vare, but it is also known as Prasuni, Paruni, Parun, Vasi-vari, Prasun, Veron, Verou, Veruni, Wasi-veri, Wasi-weri, Wasin-veri, Vasi Vari, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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