also called DARD, PISACA, OR PISACHA LANGUAGES,
group of closely related Indo-Iranian languages spoken
in Pakistan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. They are often divided
into three subgroups: Kafiri, or Western; Khowari, or Central
(spoken in the Chitral district of northwestern Pakistan); and
the Eastern group, which includes Shina and Kashmiri.
(Some scholars use the term Dardic to refer only to the Eastern
subgroup of languages and use the name Pisaca to refer to the
group as a whole.)
The exact position of the Dardic languages within the Indo-Iranian
language family has been a matter of dispute among scholars.
Some scholars believe the languages to stem from an undifferentiated
stage of Indo-Iranian; others believe the Eastern and Khowari
groups to be Indo-Aryan, with the Kafiri subgroup being separate.
Kashmiri is the only Dardic language that has been used extensively
for literary purposes. Except for Shina, the languages
of the Eastern subgroup have been radically changed by the influence
of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken farther south. The Dardic
languages differ from the other Indo-Iranian languages in their
sound systems and in the preservation of a number of words lost
in India and Iran after the time of Vedic Sanskrit.