Burusho people

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Burusho people
بُرُشݸ‎
A group of Burusho women in the Hunza Valley, Pakistan
Total population
126,300 (2018)[1]
Languages
Burushaski[2]
Religion
Ismaili Shia and Shia Islam[3][4][5]

The Burusho, or Brusho (

Gilgit–Baltistan in northern Pakistan,[9] with a tiny minority of around 350 Burusho people residing in Jammu and Kashmir, India.[8][10] Their language, Burushaski, has been classified as a language isolate.[11]

History

Although their origins are unknown, it is claimed that the Burusho people "were indigenous to northwestern India and were pushed higher into the mountains by the movements of the Indo-Aryans, who traveled southward sometime around 1800 B.C."[4]

Prior to the modern era, the area in which most Burusho now live was part of the princely state of Hunza under the British Raj, until becoming part of Pakistan.[12]

Culture

The Burusho are known for their rich music and dance culture, along with progressive views towards education and women.[13]

Longevity myth

A widely repeated claim of remarkable longevity of the Hunza people[14] has been refuted as a longevity myth, citing a life expectancy of 53 years for men and 52 for women, although with a high standard deviation.[15] There is no evidence that Hunza life expectancy is significantly above the average of poor, isolated regions of Pakistan. Claims of health and long life were almost always based solely on the statements by the local mir (king). An author who had significant and sustained contact with Burusho people, John Clark, reported that they were overall unhealthy.[16]

Jammu and Kashmir

A group of 350 Burusho people also reside in the

Arranged marriages are customary.[18]

Since the

Burushashki, also known as Khajuna, and their dialect, known as Jammu & Kashmir Burushashski (JKB), "has undergone several changes which make it systematically different from other dialects of Burushaski spoken in Pakistan".[17] In addition, many Jammu & Kashmiri Burusho are multilingual, also speaking Kashmiri and Hindustani, as well as Balti and Shina to a lesser extent.[17]

Genetics

A variety of

Bronze Age migration into South Asia c. 2000 BC, and probably originated in either South Asia,[20][21]
haplogroup L3 (defined by SNP mutation M20) have also been observed from few samples.[30][27]

Other

G.[27] DNA research groups the male ancestry of some of the Hunza inhabitants with speakers of Pamir languages and other mountain communities of various ethnicities, due primarily to the M124 marker (defining Y-DNA haplogroup R2a), which is present at high frequency in these populations.[31] However, they have also an East Asian genetic contribution, suggesting that at least some of their ancestry originates north of the Himalayas.[32] No Greek genetic component among the Burusho have been detected in tests.[33][34]

Influence in the Western world

Healthy living advocate

organic foods, such as dried apricots and almonds, and had plenty of fresh air and exercise.[35] He often mentioned them in his Prevention
magazine as exemplary of the benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. John Clark stayed among the Hunza people for 20 months and in his 1956 book Hunza - Lost Kingdom of the Himalayas[36] writes: "I wish also to express my regrets to those travelers whose impressions have been contradicted by my experience. On my first trip through Hunza, I acquired almost all the misconceptions they did: The Healthy Hunzas, the Democratic Court, The Land Where There Are No Poor, and the rest—and only long-continued living in Hunza revealed the actual situations". Regarding the misconception about Hunza people's health, Clark also writes that most of his patients had malaria, dysentery, worms, trachoma, and other health conditions easily diagnosed and quickly treated. In his first two trips he treated 5,684 patients.

The October 1953 issue of

National Geographic had an article on the Hunza River Valley that inspired Carl Barks' story Tralla La.[37]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Burushaski". Ethnologue. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  2. ^ "TAC Research The Burusho". Tribal Analysis Center. 30 June 2009. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 9 February 2011.
  3. JSTOR 1178560. Archived from the original
    on 5 November 2012.
  4. ^
    ISBN 9781438119137
    . Another, more likely origin story, given the uniqueness of their language, proclaims that they were indigenous to northwestern India and were pushed higher into the mountains by the movements of the Indo-Aryans, who traveled southward sometime around 1800 B.C.E.
  5. ^ Lorimer, D. L. R. (1939). The Ḍumāki Language: Outlines of the Speech of the Ḍoma, Or Bērīcho, of Hunza. Dekker & van de Vegt. p. 13.
  6. ^ Hunzai, A. N. N., Burushaski Research Academy, & University of Karachi. (2006). Burushaski Urdu Dictionary - Volume 1 / بروشسکی اردو لغت - جلد اول (الف تا څ). Bureau of Composition, Compilation & Translation, University of Karachi. ISBN: 969-404-66-0 Archive.org
  7. ^ Berger, Hermann (1985). "A survey of Burushaski studies". Journal of Central Asia. 8 (1): 33–37.
  8. ^
    ISSN 2149-1291
    .
  9. ^ "Jammu and Kashmir Burushaski : Language, Language Contact, and Change" (PDF). Repositories.lib.utexas.edu. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
  10. ^ Gordon, Raymond G. Jr., ed. (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
  11. ^ "Burushaski language". Encyclopædia Britannica online.
  12. ^ Haji, Qudratullah Beg (1980). "Tarikh-e-Ehd Atiiq Riyasat Hunza (English Translation By Lt Col (Rtd) Saadullah Beg, TI(M) psc,)".
  13. ISBN 0-7566-0520-2
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-9802976-6-9
    . Retrieved 12 August 2010.
  15. ^ Tierney, John (29 September 1996). "The Optimists Are Right". The New York Times.
  16. ^ "Hunza - The Truth, Myths, and Lies About the Health and Diet of the "Long-Lived" People of Hunza, Pakistan, Hunza Bread and Pie Recipes". www.biblelife.org.
  17. ^ a b c d Munshi, Sadaf (2006). Jammu and Kashmir Burushashki: Language, Language Contact, and Change. The University of Texas at Austin. pp. 4, 6–.
  18. ISBN 9781452236582
    . Among the Burusho of India, the parents supposedly negotiate a marriage without consulting the children, but often prospective brides and grooms have grown up together and know each other well.
  19. ISSN 2149-1291
    . The community has no contact with their Burushos of Gilgit-Baltistan since 1947, when partition of India and Pakistan necessitated the division of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir. No participant was ready to move to Hunza/Nagar if provided a chance.
  20. PMID 12536373
  21. PMID 16415161
  22. PMID 16400607
    .
  23. PMID 19158816
    .
  24. PMID 21187967
    .
  25. PMID 16893451
    .
  26. ^ a b R. Spencer Wells et al., "The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (28 August 2001).
  27. ^
    PMID 17047675
    .
  28. ^ Underhill 2014.
  29. ^ Underhill 2015.
  30. PMID 11898125
    .
  31. ^ R. Spencer Wells et al., The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity Archived 21 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
  32. S2CID 53541133
    .
  33. PMID 17047675
    .
  34. PMID 11898125
    .
  35. ^ Rodale, J. I. The Healthy Hunzas 1948. Emmaus PA: Rodale Press.
  36. OCLC 536892
    .
  37. ^ The Carl Barks Library Volume 12, page 229

Bibliography

External links
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