“ ACTA ORIENTALIA EDIDERUNT SOCIETATES ORIENTALES DANICA FENNICA NORVEGIA SVECIA CURANTIBUS LEIF LITTRUP, HAVNIÆ HEIKKI PALVA, HELSINGIÆ ASKO PARPOLA, HELSINGIÆ TORBJÖRN LODÉN, HOLMIÆ SAPHINAZ AMAL NAGUIB, OSLO PER KVÆRNE, OSLO WOLFGANG-E. SCHARLIPP, HAVNIÆ REDIGENDA CURAVIT CLAUS PETER ZOLLER LXXIX Contents ARTICLES STEFAN BOJOWALD: Zu einigen Beispielen für den Wegfall von „H“ in der ägyptischen Sprache .................................................................. 1 STEFAN BOJOWALD: Zu den Schreibungen des ägyptischen Wortes „cwH.t“ „Ei“ .................................................................................... 15 ILIJA ČAŠULE: New Burushaski etymologies and the origin of the ethnonym Burúśo, Burúśaski, Brugaski and Miśáski ........................ 27 HONG LUO: Whence the Five Fingers? A philological investigation of Laghukālacakratantra 5.171‒173ab as quoted in sMan bla don grub’s Yid bzhin nor bu ...................................................................... 73 MICHAEL KNÜPPEL: Zwei Briefe Philipp Johann von Strahlenbergs an Curt Friedrich aus den Jahren 1723 und 1724 ............................ 111 RAJU KALIDOS: Caturviṃśati-Mūrti forms of Viṣṇu Additional notes on Daśāvatāra and Dvādaśa .................................................... 133 REVIEW ARTICLE CLAUS PETER ZOLLER: “Pagan Christmas: Winter feast of the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush” and the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ ...... 163 BOOK REVIEWS KNUTSON, JESSE ROSS. Into the twilight of Sanskrit Court Poetry. The Sena Salon of Bengal and Beyond, reviewed by Stella Sandahl ..... .379 Acta Orientalia 2018: 79, 163–377. Copyright © 2018 Printed in India – all rights reserved ACTA ORIENTALIA ISSN 0001-6438 REVIEW ARTICLE “Pagan Christmas: Winter feast of the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush” and the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ Claus Peter Zoller University of Oslo Der Urknall der Modernisierung vollzog sich mit dem … Auszug aus der Welt der polytheistischen Kulturen Aleida Assmann (2013: 94)1 The review part of this review article concerns this publication: Cacopardo, Augusto S. Pagan Christmas: Winter Feasts of the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush. London: Gingko Library, 2016. 314 pp. Abstract As can be seen, the title and subtitle of the book under review are part of the title of the following review article. A normal book review 1 ‘The big bang of modernization took place with the exodus from the world of polytheistic cultures.’ This translation and all other translations from non-English languages into English are mine until stated differently. 164 Claus Peter Zoller starts with some sentences describing what the book is about, followed by a discussion what the reviewer particularly likes about the book, and then followed by bringing up anything the reviewer dislikes about it. This is then rounded up with some general observations and appraisals. This strategy is also a broad guideline for the first third of the following text. However, the text also oversteps considerably the boundaries of a standard book review for the following reasons: Augusto Cacopardo defines his ‘Peristan’ 2 as a culturally quite coherent area extending through the high mountains from northwestern Afghanistan throughout the northern regions of Pakistan to the southwestern border of Tibet.3 The traditional cultures of this ‘Peristan’ have Indo-Iranian and even Indo-European roots, yet they are, in his opinion, remarkably little affected by the high civilizations of India and pre-Islamic Iran.4 However, it is important to understand that ‘Peristan’ has, on the one hand, indeed preserved archaisms not found elsewhere in South Asia, but due to strong influence of Islam it has also simultaneously lost, or preserved only sporadically, cultural traditions still authentically preserved e.g. in the Indian Himalayas. Cacopardo’s analysis of the Kalasha winter feasts has a strong historical-cultural dimension and he repeatedly refers to cultural parallels in the Himalayas (see section 7. ‘The Hindus of the Himalayas’, pp. 235ff.). His observations on these parallels – which are absolutely justified – nevertheless also caused me to trespass the boundaries of a book review and extend it considerably into a review article. Since the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ enclose in my view a significantly larger geographical area than envisaged by the Cacopardo Brothers,5 the following article presents also very many data not found or discussed in the publication under review. In order to keep a clear overview of this long review article, it has been 2 ‘Land of the fairies’. 3 See the map 2016: x. 4 Note, however, that, even though Cacopardo’s book is an ethnography of the traditional pagan culture of the Kalasha people, he nevertheless speaks repeatedly also about Islam for no reason other than the massive and imposing presence of this Abrahamic religion right at the doorsteps of the Kalasha world of idolatry. Thus, even though Islam is not the focus of Cacopardo’s publication, it is integral part of the ethnographic description and will thus be addressed in the present review article. 5 I refer here to both brothers because of their joint publication from 2001 in which this concept is discussed and explained. “Pagan Christmas” and the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ 165 divided into four main sections. However, ‘Section I’ only follows after the ‘Preliminary remarks’ and the ‘Opening’: Preliminary remarks Opening Transcription Impact of Islam on Kalasha culture Section I Here follows, divided into a number of subsections, the book review of Augusto Cacopardo’s book on the Kalasha winter feast čawmós (Sanskrit caturmāsa ʻperiod of 4 months’ or cāturmāsyá ‘name of three sacrifices at the beginning of the 4-month period’) under a comparative perspective. The outline of Section I largely follows the delineation of Cacopardo’s book. 6 The succession of a number of topics, questions etc. discussed by him has been used both for a critical appraisal as well as repeatedly as starting points for own, partly quite long deliberations, however always guided by the question regarding the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’. Section II This section throws a rather short look at the caturmāsa ‘4 months celebration of death’ in the Kathmandu Valley by looking for parallels with the Kalasha winter feast čawmós and for other ‘Peristan culture’ features. The end of Section II is also the end of the book review. Section III This section deals with additional religio-cultural characteristics of ‘Greater Peristan’. They are not mentioned or discussed in Cacopardo’s book, yet many of them do exist also in Dardistan and Nuristan. 6 This is reflected in the fact that in this section the headings of most subsections are copies quoted from Cacopardo’s book and therefore set into quotation marks. Headings without quotation marks are always mine. Note also that footnotes found inside quotes of Cacopardo and of other authors are by default mine, as long as not explicitly stated differently. 166 Claus Peter Zoller Section IV This section deals with the question of prehistorical linguistic, cultural and religious traces mainly found in ‘Greater Peristan’ (and only sometimes also in the meanstream religion from the Vedas to modern Hinduism). ‘Prehistoric traces’ here means mainly traces from cultures of speakers of Austro-Asiatic Languages and traces going back in periods before the arrival of speakers of Old Indo-Aryan dialects in northern South Asia. However, such traces are occasionally also dealt with in the other sections.7 Keywords: Kalasha winter solstice festival (čawmós – Sanskrit cāturmāsyá), origin of the Kalasha god Baḷimạín, Kathmandu caumāsa (Sanskrit cāturmāsyá8) “4 months celebration of death”, pre- Vedic religion, Proto-Indo-European religion, paganism, polytheism, theory of Outer and Inner Languages. Preliminary remarks Besides a critical assessment of Cacopardo’s (C) book, the aim of the present text is to present cultural and linguistic data, which are meant to demonstrate the thesis that those cultural and linguistic features that are seen as characteristic for ‘Peristan’ are, in fact, geographically more widely present than maintained in the publications of the Cacopardo Brothers. C argues (p. 23) 9 that the Kalasha “… culture represents … the very last example of a complex that, until the eighteenth century, was spread throughout the Hindu Kush/Karakorum, from the valleys of Afghan Nuristan to the north- 7 This review article quotes data from a sizeable number of languages, which predominantly belong to Indo-Aryan and Austro-Asiatic. Since it is not possible to provide background information on them within a review article, the interested reader is requested to consult for instance Jenny and Sidwell (2014) for Austro-Asiatic and Cardona and Jain (2003) for Indo-Aryan. I do not regard Nuristani as a separate branch within Indo-Iranian. Useful information on Nuristani languages is for instance available at the “nuristan.info” website of Richard Strand. 8 Even though the Kalasha term is found in Turner sub cāturmāsyá- (4742), the phonetic and semantic distinction from OIA caturmāsa ‘period of 4 months’ (4616) is not completely clear in the respective reflexes. 9 An abbreviation “(p. xyz)” means throughout this essay “(Cacopardo 2016: xyz).” The same practice is followed when I quote successively over an extended section from just one author. “Pagan Christmas” and the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ 167 east of Kabul, to the borders of Kashmir and the Tibetan plateau.” The