MACEDONIANS IN PAKISTAN (11)
PART OF THE BOOK “SELECTED PAPERS FOR MACEDONIA”
BY SLAVÉ KATIN
At the Himalayas, in the easternmost part of Pakistan, lives a tribe that differs from all those around. They are tall and have blond hair. They have their own autonomous country called Hansa or Najza-Kut and speak Burushasky language and considered themselves Macedonians, descendants of Alexander. The Macedonian public first learned about them in 1992 through contact show on MTV. Macedonians from Australia, America and Canada have long manifested interest in them and this summer an exploration team was sent to collect initial data on the spot.
According to the book by Canadian John Tobin “People of Hansa” in the constitution of this Himalayan country it is written that they are descendants of Alexander of Macedon and his generals. Their flag is red, with golden eight-ray sun. More recently they’ve adopted Islamic religion, but they keep their old traditions.
The book THE MACEDONIANS IN PAKISTAN “Diary of Colonel Lorimer” published in Norway in 1934 contains a fund of words of this people. German Sanskrit expert Dr. Hermann Berger published a study in 1935 in which he says that the language of the Hansa, burushasky language, resembles Basque by its melody.
On the other hand, the Basque language has its emphasis on the third syllable from right to left, just like the Macedonian has, and Dr. Olga Lukovic-Pjanovic, after thirty years working at the Sorbonne, wrote that the Basques ‘speak Serbian’, referring to the Cvijic’s thesis from 1937 according to which the “Serbian” language from the region of Veles has most archaic words. Dr. Herman Berger rejected the possibility of similarity of that language with the Greek language.
Recently, Mr. Ilija Casule of Australia has started to study the words contained in “The Diary of Colonel Lorimer.” In doing that he has selected about 200 words that he groups as mainly Macedonian, Vlach to some extent, little Albanian and rarely Greek. Dr. Lydia Slaveska has established more similarities of a multitude of these words based on etymological analysis. Ilija Casule, for example, indicates that there are words preserved only in the current Macedonian language with the same meaning: ‘rmbam, baram (working, looking)...
According to the statements of our Macedonians in Toronto, John Tobin picked nearly 1,000 words that the Macedonians understood. However, when he tried to present his findings in Athens fifteen years ago as a new proof of the origin of Alexander of Macedon pursuant to his tongue preserved in the offspring at the Himalayas, he didn’t return from Greece where he died suddenly the day he was to present his work.
Among the Macedonians at the Himalayas stayed a TV crew from Sweden that broadcast a show in 1982 in which the Macedonians of Sweden recognized the Macedonian dance, music, instruments and costumes. In 1988 the Swedish TV presented a new film (with comparisons) titled “Folk From the Balkans” which recorded a parallel between the show recorded in Himalayas and a show recorded in Macedonia, in Istibanja, in the region of Kocani, with the local folklore club. The similarities were striking.
The first Macedonian team went among people who consider themselves descendants of the Macedonians of Alexander of Macedon in July 1995, at its own expense. The collected footage is yet to be explored by folklorists, linguists and other experts and then eventually a specialized expedition is to be sent. The first impression of the travels of Steve Pliakes causes interest.
For example, blue-eyed and blue-haired (blondes) at the Himalayas are compared with the original written materials. Macedonians in ancient times were described as blond and tall in original written material (Plutarch, Quintus, Curtius Ruf). Alexander himself had blond hair, even golden, and he had blue eye, while his military commander Erigey had almost white hair. In the description of Curtius Ruf of the Macedonians before entering India, they are described as being tall so that several of nations there couldn’t reach their shoulders, which is a relative notion. Anthropological measurements of the bones of Peonies in the Republic of Macedonia speak of relatively tall people for that time (161-171 cm or even more).
Steve Pliakes and Michael A Dimitri encountered an interesting symbolism – sun and a rosette of flowers of Geranium. The Geranium flower is placed in the circle, in the middle of the sun on the golden Casella containing the bones of Philip of Macedon in Kutlesh (Vergina), and it is an accompanying element almost everywhere in Macedonia together with the suns. This flower, in the shape of a typical Macedonian rosette, is also a solar symbol.
With various stylizations it could be seen in the closed and inaccessible to the public warehouses of the Museums of Macedonia in Skopje, on at least 130 stone steles. Dances that the two visitors saw, according to the description of Pliakes, resemble the Macedonian folk-dance “Teskoto” or other dances recorded by the Swedish TV.
According to the written documents, the Kalasha or Kalash, are an Indo – Arian indigenous people residing in the Chitra District of the Khyber – Pakh tunkhwa province of Pakistan. They are considered unique among the people of Pakistan.
They are also considered to be Pakistan’s smallest ethnoreligious group, and trade-tionnally practice what authors characterise as a form of Animism During the mid-20th century an attempt was made to force a few Kalasha villages in Pakistan to convert to Islam, but the people fought the conversion and, once official pres sure was removed, the vast majority resumed the practice of their own reli gion. Nevertheless, some Kalasha have since converted to Islam religion, de spite being shunned afterward by their community for having done so.
The term is used to refer to many distinct people including the Väi, the Či ma-nišei, the Vântä, plus the Ashcun - and Tregami -speakers. The Kalash are considered to be an indigenous people of Asia, with their ancestors migrating to Chitral valley from another location possibly further south, which the Kalash call “Tsiyam” in their folk songs and epics.
They claim to descend from the armies of Alexander III of Macedon (Alex ander the Great) who were left behind from his armed campaign, though no evidence exists for him to have passed the area. They are also considered by some to have been descendants of Gandhari people.
Alexander III of Macedon (the Great) is the great one for his successors, the present day Macedonians, and the great one for every nation in the world. He created and left as heritage the philosophy of bringing together nations, cultures, religions…Hence, Alexander is a great challenge for numerous re searchers, scientists, travel-writers, translators, journalists and ordinary mortal beings, who treat him with respect, love, and strong faith in the past, the presence, and the future. The neighbouring Nuristani people of the ad ja-cent Nuristani (historically known as Kafiristan) province of Avganistan once had the same culture and practised a faith very similar to that of the Kalash, differing in a few minor particulars.
The first historically recorded Islamic invasions of their lands were by the Ghaznavids in the 11th century while they themselves are first attested in 1339 during Timur’s invasions. Nuristan had been forcibly converted to Is lam in 1895–96, although some evidence has shown the people continued to practice their customs. The Kalash of Chitral have maintained their own sepa rate cultural traditions.
To be continue
By Slave Nikolovski-Katin
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