Kalash tribe: Beads and other decorations

Kalash tribe: Beads and other decorations

1Sperber Glavind, Brigitte, 1990. Kalash: Dresses, Body Decorations and Textile Techniques. In Proceedings of the Second International Hindu Kush Cultural Conference, 

The Kalash women wear many strings of beads. They are considered very beautiful and they are relatively costly in the shops, so it gives high status to wear many. A woman with few wears maybe 60 rows of beads. A woman having many wears maybe 150…

Red beads dominate – the best from glass of Venetian origin. The red chains sometimes have stripes of white beads that are rarer in the shops.

The women combine several chains of the same combination of colors - with "bridges" from carved bone or decorated tin pieces - into broad "sashes", that are highly treasured.

The long beads with transverse holes - the sotki - are also very much appreciated. They are used in pairs with the chains and cowries upon the head-dresses.

The elder women also wear chains of small black beads, which seem to have been more used before. Maybe they were more readily available in the shops before, as the choice in the shops decides a lot:

In the last two years blue, yellow and green clear beads have come to the shops. They now decorate the head-dresses and the heaps of necklaces around the women's necks.

Also other new things from the shops may result in new ideas for decorations:

In 1983 all young women had to wear garlands of key chains hanging from their belts ending in a little cloth bag (for hair pins, sitjin'non etc.) thrust into the belt. These chains are also used upon the shu'shut.

Many kinds of hair pins are introduced and are at once used in rows above the forehead.

Brass rosettes decorate the headdresses and also sometimes the top of the dresses.

Buttons decorate the head-dresses and are named the word for beads:

The white shirt-buttons are called ''round beads'' and the very big ones - preferably from uniforms - are called "coat-beads" (with the word "coat"). Also uniform badges are very popular decorations among the Kalash women.

Of course the Kalash women also like to wear bangles, fingerings, earrings, and maybe a nose ring anything of beauty.'

The Kalash women also decorate the skin of their faces: 

Traditionally the red dye Rang is used close to the eyes.

Shing is also very popular:

The horn from a goat is burned on the fire. Then it is rubbed in water against a piece of slate to a paste, which can be smeared on the face

 - Either just making the upper half black or patterned 

- Frequently goat's horn designs above or around the eye brows. 

As the goat is sacred. 

The symbols of the family goddess jestak's are also popular designs.

Somewhere I read that the function of this face-paint is to conceal the beauty of the Kalash women from outsiders.

The opposite is true: A woman painted with shing becomes even more beautiful.

Shing is also very good for headaches - smeared on the forehead, it helps immediately. Small babies are often, smeared with shing on the crown - probably as a cure for pain, if they cry.

In the spring the girls pick special lucerne -like weed.  It is crushed between stones, and the green juice is allowed to fermentate in the mid-day-sun for a couple of hours. 

Then the juice can be used as emerald green face-paint. As this juice is thinner than the shing, the painted designs become very fine - creating beauty for the flowering Joshi.

The women also tattoo themselves: 

Tattooing fell into disuse for some years, but last year it again became the highest fashion:

Most of the small girls as well as many younger women were tattooed on their faces last year - typically a V symbolizing goat's horns and jestak symbols.

The tattoo is made with a mixture of:

"Barley sprouts, Juice from some small twigs, Indigo, Black mulberries and Soot from the pot."

This mixture is painted in a thick layer upon the skin in the design to be made. Then it is pricked into the skin with 3 fine thorns 30 times in each fine dot.

When it bleeds more color is added.

The place must not be washed for 3 days. Later is becomes red and swollen, and later again dark blue.

Nowadays the Kalash women sometimes get lipsticks from outsiders. They are used almost everywhere on the face except the lips. Also nail lacquer is fine for face decorations - maybe in many dots under the eyes.

This "fashion" has been adapted from the Muslims, who paint the bride this way. The ingenuity of the women is never ending.1