Fashion 5: Headdress (es) of Kalasha Women [The major Headdress: Kupas]

The major Headdress: Kupas

Kalasha women wear one of the most elaborate and ornate serpent style headdresses called kupas. Kupas is the major headdress of women, the most conspicuous part of the culture (also to George Robertson in 1889). This type of headdress or 'kupas' is similar in style and decoration to the headdresses worn by Kalasha women when they were first photographed in the early twentieth century; see for example the images held by the Pitt Rivers Museum taken by Reginald Schomberg in the 1930s.

Kupas is a woolen headdress hanging down the back, covered with eight to ten rows of cowrie’s shells or chakash (cakas), with two rows folded upward on each side of the Kupas, and other tail decorations. It is similar to the perak headdress worn by women in the Ladakh region, as documented by Aggarwal in her very interesting article, The Turquoise Headdress of Ladakh (2005:57).

As noted by the late curator Haberlandt in 1906 (Gerlach 1971: vii) the Kalasha adornment is also thoroughly a jewellery of nature, produced and collected from natural surroundings and species of animals, trees, birds and flowers. 

Put together by women using high level of skill and labor over days and months using bone, feathers, seeds, plant materials, sea shells, coral beads and local cloth material from spinning and weaving from hair of the local goat and sheep. Kupas is an ornate headdress very heavily decorated with cowries’ shells, beads, bells, buttons, metal ornament chamas, feathers, flowers (gamburi) and with mountain pheasant feather plumes called cheish. Kupas holds an important position in Kalasha culture, worn on all important ceremonies, festivals and during periods of mourning. The little girls get their first kupas in a ceremony during the winter festival chaumos. 

Its front corners are named singoiak, from sing meaning horn, which may have some relation to the horned cap worn by women in Bashgal Valley in Nuristan before their conversion in 1895-96. 

The earlier kupas had no folds on the sides, but in 1956 one Kalasha woman had the idea of rolling the edges of her kupas upward to rest it more firmly on the head and soon it became a fashion and part of the tradition (Sperber 1996: 378-9). 

Apart from this change the kupas is conservative; it looks the same on the oldest photographs and now.

At a closer view another change though has come: The traditional home spun and rang-dyed yarn for the tuft is no longer considered as beautiful as brilliantly red synthetic knitting yarn either from the shop or from an unraveled sweater bought second hand in Chitral. Sperber (1996) notes that the character of the kupas is ceremonial and solemn (378-9). 

The small 3-4 years old girls receive their first ku'pas at a celebration during the winter festival Chaomos and are then considered true Kalash.

Generally every woman makes her own kupas. A woman can only weave a new kupas before joshi (the spring festival) in the month of May. Sperber (1996) has also pointed out the use of kupas during death of close relatives, and further states, if a person dies, all women of the same clan take off their shu`shut, and only wear kupas until the end of the mourning period, two days before the next festival (378-9).

 During the death of a close relative, females also take off the kupas for three days to bare their heads as a sign of deep grief. On death of her husband a widow removes everything from her kupas other than cowries. And when a woman dies most of the decorations are removed from her kupas other than cowries and distributed among other women. A woman is also buried with her kupas. Perhaps that is the reason the Kalasha coffins lying open in the burial grounds had cowries’ shells in many of them.1

Fabrication:

Normally every woman makes her own kupas. Mothers though love to make them for their daughters - even if the daughter is adult but maybe busy with her own small children - giving work is a sign a love.

The warp is made from home spun and dyed rather thick single threaded wool set in the lowest hole of the loom. It consists of stripes made from 4 threads of each color: (Dark Brown - Blue - DB -Mauve - DB - M) x 7.

The weft is fine thread of the natural dark color with inserted colored soumak borders in each end. The material becomes warp faced.

The warp loops are left rather short (about 12 cm) and are made into fringes according to color. Then the fringes are bound in the lish border, which strengthens the edge of head dresses, belts and trousers.

The spinning and weaving work lasts 7 days. The 7 blue lines are made to separate the 7 lines of cowries and border the middle seam of stitches. Doing this seam and the front seams lasts 1 day.

Then the cowries are attached one by one in 7 lines, it takes 2-3 days to do this work. The cowries come from Karachi via the bazaar in Peshawar brought by migrant tradesmen. Before being attached, it is necessary to make a hole on top of the shell. The small cowries are considered most beautiful (and the big ones may he stitched on a worn out kupas, the woman tries to sell to tourists). The cowries are also used on the hats and in the necklaces of the small children, as they protect against evil eyes. About the use on the women's head dresses, the women tell, that it is just "dastur" - custom.

Finally the rest of the decoration is done: The tufts, the shield design in the middle of the lower part, brass rosettes, small and big buttons (called coat-beads), badges from the border police and rows of beads and bells like on the shu`shut.

As mentioned earlier, the tail end of a kupas headdress has multiple decorations, including a shield design sewn in the middle of the decorations called kera. Darling notes that traditionally shield design was reserved for ley moch or man-killer rank, in Bashgal Valley. Later this was given to a woman in Bumburet Valley who killed a bad spirit and achieved the rank of man-killer. She was the first jamili (clan daughter) permitted to wear the shield symbol on her kupas (Darling 1979: 178). 

Shield design:

The shield is an important design on the wood carvings in the temples (it was earlier used in combat - some few still exist). Before it was used on male clothing as a sign of "hero-warrior" status (acute Peter Parkes). 

The shield design is also important on the head-dresses: "It was adopted by the Kalash women after being earned by a famous female demon-killer ….. some 8 generations ago …. The “4-cornered" arrangement of cowry-shells ... indicates festal rank of owner's ancestor" Peter Parkes). 

An old Kalasha story relates how a daughter of the prestigious Baramouk clan from Bomboret Valley became the first woman to earn the right to wear a kera on her kupas “a tiriweri (bad spirit) inhabited the bashali which is a special building where women go during menstruation and to give birth. The tiriweri had been eating babies, but the woman put a halt to its evil by carefully plotting against it and then killing it. For her skill and courage the community made her lay-mach.

H Noor Jan (1990): "Ten years ago this inner circle of cowries (surrounded by white buttons) could only be worn by the daughters of a big man. The other women had two circles of buttons instead.

It was also only a big man’s daughter, who could wear the tshish (the bundle of straw stems with the blue feathers of the mountain pheasant in the top) upon the right corner of their ku'pas at festivals.

 “My father was a big man: He made a Biramor (merit feast), he knew many songs. My daughter could also wear it: My husband is a big man too. He has killed two Nuristani robbers in fighting. He has made a BiraMor, where he gave 1000 female goats to the people. Nowadays everyone wears it started 10 years ago. Our customs are disappearing“2

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 14-17