I keep misspelling Afghanistan. It seems to be a 'hard error' a la the
inflections of lay and lie. It's not that I don't know better ...
Anyway. I said vis-a-vis how you get to Tajikistan from the Swat
valley:
> I have no idea exactly where it is, and a more
> > westerly approach (via or west of the Afghan
> > 'panhandle') seems more
> > logical, but my knowledge fails here.
> VA: This is called the Wakkan or Wakkhan corridor.
My National Geographic Atlas labels the Afghan panhandle as 'Vakhan'
(as a geographic term). Transliteration between differing scripts
makes for much confusion (Did we transliterate Piotr Ilych T's last
name into Devanagri, and then transliterate it to English?). Wakk[h]an
is close enough to be sure we are speaking of the same place.
On further scrutiny (I had to take off my glasses and put my eyes
right up next to it, after upping the wattage of light shining on the
atlas), this atlas gives the river name 'Ab-e Vakhan' (macrons over
both A's) flowing thru this panhandle, then gives, in parentheses
"Oxus"! Aha! The Amu Darya! I've located Bishkent! Blue ink on green
makes for a poor contrast.
For a while, the Ab-e Vakhan is labelled the Pyandzh, along the border
with Tajikistan. Some considerable distance downstream, there is a
town of this name. Just after the town of Pyandzh on the river
Pyandzh, you come to another river, the Vakhsh -- which superficially
looks like a reflex of "Vakhan"; all of this is in Tajikistan. My eyes
fail me in finding where it officially becomes the Amu Darya, but I
would think certainly by Uzbekizstan.
> > The media has been giving us lots of stuff about this part of the
> > world. The pattern for the past several thousand years seems to be
> > mountain-dwelling warriors always ready to sweep down from
> > Afghanistan into the Indus valley and points east.
> VA: But remember that invasions occur once in a while but peaceful
> migrations take place all the time. After the Islamic invasions
even,
> people have moved from the Indus plains into Afghanistan - in fact
> the Hindu community of Afghanistan (decimated in recent years and
> months) was drawn from Multan. Gypsies are a prime example of a
> community that moved in a direction opposite to that indicated by
you.
The 'Hinduism religious continuum' (starting from Vedic times,
assimilating various strata) used to reach west to Persia, but has now
been forced back to the eastern border of Pakistan, much as the
'Christian religious continuum' (excluding the recent expansion of
Russian Orthodoxy) reached clear to the court of Kublai Khan
(Nestorians, mainly), but has now been forced back to the Caucasus
(should we mention the other eastern outlier of Christendom, the
Thomas Christians of India?).
> > Another thing you notice on current television. With lots of these
> > Afgans, if you gave them a shave and a haircut, and put them in
> > jeans and T-shirts, they would look perfectly in place on any
> > European or North American street.
> VA: With the Pakhtoons and some Hazaras - yes.
Pakhtoons. CNN says 'Pashtuns'. 'Pashtoons' sounds like animated
features from Warner Bros. starring Bugs Bunny). (Humm. Mel Blanc
doing CNN correspondant Kamal Hyder's accent in a cartoon; think of
Speedy Gonzalez or Pepe LePew transplanted to Kandahar).
> > I wonder just how long it's been since Iranian displaced
> > Indic in this part of the world.
> VA: Do you mean language or culture?
Linguistically. It's clear Indic was displaced from certain areas in
antiquity, and probably, even more recently.
> Linguistically, the area has always been Iranian although
> Indic languages might have been used for
> religious purposes.
Not always Iranian. The Hindu Kush seems to be an apallingly difficult
place to live in without modern (or at least, iron-age) technology.
[..]
> Many of my own ancestors came over from these regions in the last
> century. They were offered a choice between death and Islam and they
> chose to flee to India.
>
> Vishal
Religious refugees make for interesting populations. Here in the
United States, you get assimilated, and without losing your religion,
you lose interest in the politics of the nation your forbears
originally fled. Old Country politics are unAmerican. With my
ancestors, they variously fled Norwegian and Scottish poverty and in
once instance, the Imperial Austrian draft; only one ancestor was
religious, and he was the 2-year-old son of a Mormon convert who went
from London straight to Utah.