Burushaski-Texte aus Hispar: Materialen zum Verstandnis einer archaischen Bergkultur in Nordpakistan.

• Author: Bashir, Elena
• Position: Book Review

Burushaski-Texte aus Hispar: Materialen zum Verstandnis einer archaischen Bergkultur in Nordpakistan. By HUGH VAN SKYHAWK. Beitrage zur Indologie, vol. 38. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 506, plates. [euro]148.

This book is an invaluable addition to the textual materials available on Burushaski, a language spoken in Hunza and Yasin (Pakistan, Northern Areas), which is still regarded as a linguistic isolate. There are two main dialects of Burushaski: Hunza, with a sub-variety spoken in Nager, and Yasin. Textual materials on the Hunza dialect were collected and published by D. L. R. Lorimer in the first half of the twentieth century (1938), and later by Berger (1998). Berger (1974) and Tiffou and Pesot (1989) have published much rich material on the variety of Burushaski spoken in Yasin. Until the current volume, however, the Burushaski of Nager has not been represented by textual materials. Moreover, scholars have long recognized the collection of texts in as many dialectal variants of Burushaski as possible to be an important desideratum, both for the possibilities of internal reconstruction that may be afforded, and for the cultural material that will be contained in texts. The current collection of texts will help fill the gap in textual materials in the Nager variant.

Burushaski-Texte aus Hispar is both a linguistic and an ethnographic study of the village of Hispar, which lies four kilometers from the Hispar glacier, off the right bank of the Hunza River above the town of Baltit, about 452 km, from Hunza along the Karakoram Highway. The eighty-two plates include ten maps and diagrams at varying scales of Hispar and its surrounding area, eight architectural diagrams of construction details of a traditional Hispar house, two detailed village plans showing lands belonging to various clans, a genealogical table of the main clans of Hispar, forty-six colored photographs illustrating the geographical setting and agricultural practices of Hispar, and fifteen colored photographs of the reciters of the texts in the book. This sort of visual material has not accompanied previously published text collections.

The book includes twenty-one texts, distributed as follows: three texts on the settlement history of Hispar; two on the agricultural year and systems of time reckoning, including discussions of major festivals; fifteen texts on spirit beliefs and the shamanic cult; and one three-part narrative consisting of episodes in the...