Detail of a wooden spring figure, into the square hole It was put the terminal part of the fountain, almost always in wood, metal rarely, with zoomorphic forms.
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. I
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. II
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. III
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. IV
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. V
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. VI
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. VII
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. VII
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. VIII
LE RAMAYANA RACONTE’ PAR LES MASQUES RAJBANCHI. Paris. Mairie du VIe arrdt Salle du Vieux-Colombier Place Saint-Sulpice. Photo Courtesy of Galerie le Toit du Monde, Paris. IX
Sculptures representing two opposing Rams Heads, architectural elements of the Jestak-han, the temple of the goddess Jestak. Kalash. Chitral, Pakistan.
Cheu, traditional Kalash female dress in sheep’s wool; Kupass typical female hat with cowries; Gringa: spiral shaped, silver female necklace; on hands: Shushtr: female front wool band with cowries and metal pendants; Kalun: red dyed, goat leather shoes. Kalash, Kati. Bumburet, Chitral, Pakistan.
Documentary shot in 1954 by the archaeologist Paolo Graziosi (University of Florence). The Kalash or Kalasha are an ancient and particular population of Pakistan that is radically different, both in culture and in religion, from the other populations of these countries. The members of this population now with less than 1,500 individuals – many of whom have amber skin and light eyes – reside in a limited and almost inaccessible area of the country, in the three small valleys of Birir, Rumboor and Bumburate. Among the many particularities of this ethnic group, there is the fact that thanks to their absolute isolation, they have preserved a religion that is partly pagan and polytheistic.
Photo & Composition by Ethnoflorence
Author:
Paolo Graziosi (documentary in 16 mm film – 1954) / Copyright 1994 University of Florence
*
Tra i popoli dell’Himalaya
(1955)
The images taken by Paolo Graziosi, founder of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory and anthropologist and palethnologist at the University of Florence, were shot on 16mm film, in a remote valley at the foot of the Hindo Kush Himalayan in the summer of 1955 . Graziosi, a member of the victorious Italian expedition to K2 led by Ardito Desio, was in the Chitral valleys, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, to carry out his research on a semi-unknown people: the Kalash, better known as Kafiri, infidels. It was a community of a few thousand people who lived in three beautiful valleys, access to which was however impervious. Geographical isolation had allowed them to keep many of their original traditions, and even Islamization had struggled to penetrate between those gorges and those hard mountain passes. Few travelers had ventured to the Kalash territories, and therefore field research was particularly interesting for Graziosi. An aura of mystery had been creating around the Kalash, and a special curiosity surrounded this people so different physically and culturally from the surrounding Pakistanis and Afghans. The Kalash loved to think they were the descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great’s army who, passing through those territories around 326 BC, would have fallen in love with them to the point of settling there. In reality, the origins of the Kalash are not entirely clear, and certainly Paolo Graziosi was also intrigued by the anthropological enigma. The shots were carried out by Graziosi between August and September 1955, and document traditions and scenes of everyday life today in disuse. From this point of view, the material represents a very rare documentation of the cultural manifestations of the Kalash people, some of which are now definitively lost.
Storyboard and texts: Maria Grazia Roselli
Coordination: Mariano Rossi, Anna Comparini
Editing: Guido Melis
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Original 16mm negatives. developed at the University Multimedia Laboratory
The Kafirs of Hindu Kush is the first book dedicated to the inhabitants of Kafiristan and their animism, providing a classic description of the way of life of the Kafirs before their forced conversion by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan.
LONDON LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Ltd. 16 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1896
*
1952
The Strange Valley of Kafiristan by Qusratullah Shahab
on Pakistan Quarterly January 1952
1960
Satues De Bois: Rapportees Du Kafiristan a Kabul apres La Conquete de Cette Province par l’Emir Abdul Rahman en 1895-96
Lennart Edelberg and A. Daniel Schlumberger Arts Asiatiques
Vol. 7, No. 4 (1960), pp. 243-286 Published by École Française d’Extrême-Orient
*
1961
The Wooden Statue of Dezalik, a Kalash Divinity, Chitral, Pakistan by Paolo Graziosi in Man Vol. 61 (Sep., 1961) Published by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
*
1974
CULTURES OF THE HINDUKUSH
Selected Papers from the Hindu – Kush cultural conference held at Moesgard 1970 edited by
Karl Jettmar
in collaboration with
Lennart Edelberg
1974
**
1984
Nuristani Buildings
by
Lennart Edelberg
Jutland Archeological Society Publications XVIII, 1984
*
1985
Catalogue
of the National Museum of Afghanistan
1931 – 1985
*
2004
The Arts and Societies of the Kafirs of
the Hindu Kush
Max klimburg
2004
on
Asian Affairs
***
Austrian Afghan Society
The Restoration of the Kafir Effigies of the National Museum of Afghanistan
On the Left Kafir Ancestor Figures in the Nuristan collection in the Kabul Museum – 1976 – on the right The chopped statuary of the Kabul Museum
On the left Ancestor figure from the Western Kati Kafirs – on the right Mounted ancestor figure from the Eastern Kati Kafirs in the Bashgal Valley
***
NURISTAN
Glaubige und Kafiren im Hindukush
(Afghanistan)
Max Klimburg und Alfred Janata
Museum fur Volkenrkunde
Wien
****
(3)
A visit to Kabul Museum
(no 4 in the linked 2014’s Ethnoflorence Post – see below)
ETHNOFLORENCE INDIAN AND HIMALAYAN FOLK AND TRIBAL ARTS 