Yes it does sound slightly outlandish, it appears that they pagans only survived on the Pakistani side of the border:
http://www.gowanusbooks.com/kafirs.htm
I’m afraid I don’t have any good cites as the information comes from a BBC history programme shown a few years ago where a historian traced the route of Alexander’s army. Along the way he encountered this particluar tribe.
Wow!
From MC’s cite:
Sounds like their favorite Greek god was Dionysos! (Well, he’s my favorite too!)
Quick answer, Yes.
Slightly longer answer with validation:
I’m a member of a Kemetic (Egyptian) temple, which as you may guess, worships the Egyptian pantheon. The methods are mostly reconstructionist, from texts that have survived, with a little added influence of traditional african religion.
There are also many examples of reconstructionist Helenic/Asataru groups, that I have yet to dig the urls for.
BrainGlutton, Kafiristan (one f; this is in Asia, not Africa) used to be partly in Afghanistan and partly on the side that became Pakistan. In 1893, after the Durand Line was drawn the Afghan king ‘Abd al-Rahmân made the Kafirs on his side of the line convert to Islam and then he renamed it Nuristan. Note: Luristan is a different place entirely. Luristan is in western Iran and it means the land of the Lur tribe. The remaning part of Kafiristan on the Pakistani side is still inhabited by people called Kafirs, an ethnic group whose self-designation is Kalash. This is a mountainous area. I wonder how well the people have managed to keep their old culture in a world of aggressive modernization, four-wheel-drive, and expanding fast-food franchises. Maybe being in the mountains has slowed the deterioration of their culture somewhat, but that border area of Pakistan is rife with Kalashnikovs and mujahidin ruffians ever since the 1980s. As for the Kafir people being descended from Alexander the Great’s armies, come on :rolleyes: Everybody in that region wants to claim descent from them. The claim probably got started because the Kafirs have light skin, green eyes, and light brown hair, like Europeans. What they are is descended from Aryans who entered that area earlier than 1500 B.C. The language they speak is a Dardic language, which is a branch of Indo-Iranian. There’s nothing Greek about them. For that matter, the Pashtuns of Afghanistan claim they’re descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Yeah, right, and my mom is the Queen of Romania.
Thank you for the info, Jomo Mojo. So, relating this to the OP, have the Kafirs practiced a pagan religion continuously since ancient times? And what is its nature? (Not Greek, I presume.)
There’s no question that their pagan religion has been practiced continuously from ancient times. I don’t know anything about it really but the Dionysian orgiastic side of it (quoted above) sounds fascinating. I wonder how much any of that survives in the present. The pressures on them to drop that must be dreadful.
I have a friend who worships Norse gods.
And just this week, misnomer ‘Norse’, a.k.a. Ásatrú or Forn Siðr was recognised in Denmark as being an official religion, meaning they can perform marriages, funerals and such.
Link to their homepage.
Links to data on the decendents of alexander’s people?