Fashion 2 : Jewellery and Accessories of Kalasha Men

Jewellery and Accessories of Kalasha Men

A long time ago, maybe only on festive occasions, the Kalash men wore a turban (Distar). On the grave statues it is wound around a pointed thing. Maybe it was a special cap? Maybe it was the top of the hood? A long woolen turban with woven borders (about 200 x 30 cm) was according to Wazir All Shah bought from the Nuristanis and used for dressing a dead man at the funeral. This kind was also used for feasts by men of importance {according to Peter Parkes}. Moor Jan told, that 60 years ago in Birir, the father of the boy, who receives the trousers wears a broad pati (women's belt) with the innermost end upon his head letting the fringes hang down his back and the rest of it wound like a turban.

Now the turban survives only when the small boys receive the traditional trousers, and wound around the head of a dead man - these turbans are made from white cotton cloth from the shop.

A woven hood seems to have been the original ordinary headdress for the men. The elder men still remember, they used it in winter, as it was good, when they went out in the mountains to fetch firewood. It looks like a ku'pas without cowries and beads. Like the ku`pas it is made in one long piece striped lengthwise. This piece was folded in the middle and seamed. Sometimes embroidery of goat's horns was made on the back to symbolize a man of great honour. Some few hoods are still kept in the valleys, but not used any more. In 1974 Peter Parkes saw a few men using undecorated hoods of goat's wool when in the gosht. He also saw, that some baby boys on the Gulparik-day were dressed in small hoods made from sheep's wool striped in grey and white and decorated with embroidery. [Such a cap made in adult size, it is now in Pitts Rivers Museum, Oxford. The Kalash hood resembles the Scythian hood.)1 Although, Robertson (2001) mentions the use of jewellery pieces and ornaments by Kalasha men, in 2011 in all three Kalasha Valleys revealed that it was not observed by men anymore.

Almost all young and old men, however, were wearing Chitrali woolen cap, some decorated with mountain pheasant feather plume cheish and also many with ordinary feathers from various other types of local birds dyed in beautiful colours. The cheish with multiple feathers of the mountain pheasant is a pricy dress item for men nowadays, costing three to four thousand rupees for a small 3-to-4-feather cheish. The more the number of feathers in a cheish the more pricy it gets. It is very interesting to note here, that in the past the cheish was a symbol used only by high ranking men. If a man was a leopard killer, the cheish had 3-feathers or stalks, or if the victim was a man, then the plume, called asemal had nine feathers (Darling 1979: 179). At present, men wear it frequently more as a decoration piece on their caps. Only few men were spotted wearing small cheish with only few feathers during 2011 joshi festival. Khas`ong is a woolen cap used by the shepherd.

In fact, more Kalasha women were observed wearing very heavy cheish as compared to Kalasha men. The Chitrali cap is now used occasionally also by some women upon the shu'shut - they say, it is less heavy, than the ku'pas, and protects against the sun, when they work in the fields). Robertson‘s study gives further clues into men‘s accessories, and notes during a dance of celebration: While their male relations in the dancing crowd were distinguished from the others by wearing bright-colored clothes and all the bravery they possessed, and by each carrying a dancing-axe. They wore gorgeous sham kinkob chappans or long robes [of honor worn on special occasions] and white cloth turbans … In the ears they wore long silver earrings … while the neck was frequently circled by a silver, or what looked like a silver ornament, solid and heavy, such as those worn by Hindu women. If an individual were the proud possessor of two chappans, he wore them both, exposing some of the glory of the one underneath by slipping an arm out of a sleeve of the one above. The waist was girded by a narrow shawl, or the usual metal-studded leather belt of the country, supporting a dagger. (Robertson 2001: 220-21)2 Nowadays the Kalash men in their outfits look like the surrounding Muslims. So many Kalash men of rank wear a "feather" on their cap and in this way emphasize their Kalash identity. This "feather- may either be a dyed eagle-down has also used upon the women's headdresses, or it may be another decoration, like the tshish made from straws, beads and pheasant-feathers. Some big men wear the "feather" always, some men only wear it on festive occasions or when going outside the valleys.

1 Shabnam Bahar Malik, 2015, Traditional Costumes of the Kalasha Kafirs of Chitral, 2 Sperber Glavind, Brigitte, 1990. Kalash: Dresses, Body Decorations and Textile Techniques. In Proceedings of the Second International Hindu Kush Cultural Conference, pp 30-31