Publisher's Synopsis
This is part of project to translate Winnie-the-Pooh into other languages. The idea is children need to learn to read at an early age and the best way to teach them to read is to provide reading materials that they find interesting. Since Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book world-wide, translating this book into the different languages of the world will be conducive to teaching children to read in those languages.
Kalasha is a language spoken by six to seven thousand people in Pakistan. Most of them are in the three Kalash Valleys of Chitral, in Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur.
There are also some Kalasha speakers in the former Kalash Valleys of Urtsun and Junjoret.
There are Kalash Communities in the major cities of Pakistan including Peshawar and Karachi.
A persistent question is where do the Kalash and their religion come from.
The prevalent theory is it came from the Greeks. When the armies of Alexander the Great crossed the area in 327 BC, he left some Greek Culture and some Greek DNA there. This explains the European appearance of the Kalash people who do not look at all like the surrounding peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The problem with this is the histories of Alexander the Great show that he encountered people who made strange wooden coffins that were clearly the burial sites of the Kalash People. Thus, they were already there.
A second theory is the Kalash and the Chitralis were among the first wave of European Aryan invaders who came from the North four thousand years ago. They made a wrong left turn at Jalalabad and got stuck up in the mountains of Chitral, whereas the main body of the invaders went down into India and got absorbed into the masses there.
