Medidas de densidad Análisis del volumen libre (FFV):

example, the peop l e of Chilas are always angry and if

someone from here goes to Chilas they will develop the same

h a b i t But the huk will never change because the soil is

always the same, the land is always the same. Huk comes

especially from the water though. Everybody in a village

-the men, the women, young, old- all have the same huk. It

is like this : here we are gentle and polite, but on the

Chilas side they are more hot-headed and aggres s i v e ."

Although villagers were not precise about how huk might pass into and b e t w e e n people, neve r t h e l e s s , h u k a p p e a r e d to express a sense of relationship to the land, with land being presented as internalized and integral to the constitution of self and collective identity. Like the a g r a r i a n rhythms described in Chapter 6, h uk appears to be actively e mbodied in Gulmit. Indeed, the concept of huk will prove significant in u n d e r s t a n d i n g local e xplanations of female i n f e r t i l i t y which sometimes allude to a bride's failure to adjust to the huk of her new marital home (Chapter 7).

Wakhi ethnic identity is also rooted in the history of more distant lands. The Wakhi are said to be of ancient Iranian stock from the Tajikistan region of Central Asia. They are speakers of Wakhi, an Indo-Iranian dialect sometimes referred to in the older literature as G a l a c h a (Shahrani 1979:40). The terms Wakhi, or Wakhani, have also been used to refer to the indigenous p o p ulation of Wakhan, an area of the Pamirs which became part of Afghanistan when the boundaries between Russia, Afghanistan, the British Indian Empire and China were laid down in 1895 (ibid. p. 37). Today, the Gojali W a k h i often hark back to their origins in the Pamirs. Indeed, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, a number of W a k h i have begun working to re-establish links w i t h the W a khi of Tajikistan through the recently formed 'Wakhi-Tajik Cultural Society* (see below).

For centuries, the Wakhi of Wakhan were repeated victims of w a r a n d o p p r e s s i o n as t h e y b e c a m e c a u g h t b e t w e e n m o r e powerful neighbouring states and ongoing battles to control taxes, the local slave trade and commercial trade routes to Chinese Tashkurgan. Shahrani (1979) suggests that w i t h the formation of the Wakhan Corridor in 1895, the Wakhi suffered p e r s e c u t i o n by A f g h a n O f ficials and loss of the b e n e f i t s asso c i a t e d with passing trade caravans. As a result, they began to move south into what is now the Northern Areas of P a k i s t a n d u ring the early part of this c e n t u r y . Backstrom & ^adloff (1992)^ too, suggest that the Wakhi of Gojal probably settled

in the area a r o u n d the b e g i n n i n g of the century. Oral h i s t o r i e s and historical accounts of the Wakhi t h e m s e l v e s somewhat contradict these views, however, for they suggest that W a k h i m i g r a t i o n into Gojal o c c u r r e d some c e n t u r i e s e a r l i e r .

O lder W a k h i estimate, from their k n o w l e d g e of h i s t o r i c a l stories, that the Wakhi came to Gojal around 300 years ago. Some say that Wakhi pasto r a l i s t s e n t e r e d upper Gojal and mo v e d south towards the Burusho villages of Hunza; although some Wakhi may have become integrated into Burusho lineages, it is thought that most failed to settle and c o n t i n u e d to look for new land. Oral h i s t o r y has it that G u l m i t was founded by three Wakhi brothers, Mahmud, Choshimbi and Bori. Some older men say the name of the b r o t h e r s ' father was Azar Jimshid, an Iranian who travelled first to Gilgit and then to C e n t r a l Hunza, others say the n ame of t heir p r i n c i p a l ancestor as Mamu Singh or Sharel. The structural relationship b e t ween the lineages of Mahmud, Choshimbi and Bori w i l l be described in the section on kinship below.

The following historical account was also related to me by a group of elderly men and suggests that the Wakhi were w e ll- established in Gojal at least by the nineteenth century. The story tells of how the Wakhi Mir of Gojal was killed by the Mir of Hunza resulting in the Gojalis becoming subjects of the Burusho Mir of Hunza.