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Although their origins are unknown, it is claimed that the Burusho people "were indigenous to northwestern India and were pushed higher into the mountains by the
movements of the Indo-Aryans, who traveled southward sometime around 1800 B.C."[4]
Prior to the modern era, the area in which most Burusho now live was part of the
princely state of
Hunza under the
British Raj, until becoming part of Pakistan.[12]
Culture
The Burusho are known for their rich music and dance culture, along with progressive views towards education and women.[13]
Longevity myth
A widely repeated claim of remarkable longevity of the Hunza people[14] has been refuted as a
longevity myth, citing a life expectancy of 53 years for men and 52 for women, although with a high standard deviation.[15] There is no evidence that Hunza life expectancy is significantly above the average of poor, isolated regions of Pakistan. Claims of health and long life were almost always based solely on the statements by the local mir (king). An author who had significant and sustained contact with Burusho people, John Clark, reported that they were overall unhealthy.[16]
Jammu and Kashmir
A group of 350 Burusho people also reside in the
Indian union territory of
Jammu and Kashmir, being mainly concentrated in Batamalu, as well as in Botraj Mohalla, which is southeast of
Hari Parbat.[8] This Burusho community is descended from two former princes of the British Indian princely states of
Hunza and
Nagar, who with their families, migrated to this region in the 19th century A.D.[8] They are known as the Botraj by other ethnic groups in the state,[8] and practice
Shiite Islam.[17]Arranged marriages are customary.[18]
Since the
partition of India in 1947, the Indian Burusho community have not been in contact with the Pakistani Burusho.[19] The
Government of India has granted the Burusho community
Scheduled Tribe status, as well as
reservation, and therefore, "most members of the community are in government jobs."[8][17] The Burusho people of India speak
Burushashki, also known as Khajuna, and their dialect, known as Jammu & Kashmir Burushashski (JKB), "has undergone several changes which make it systematically different from other dialects of Burushaski spoken in Pakistan".[17] In addition, many Jammu & Kashmiri Burusho are multilingual, also speaking
Kashmiri and
Hindustani, as well as
Balti and
Shina to a lesser extent.[17]
Other
Y-DNA haplogroups reaching considerable frequencies among the Burusho are
haplogroup J2, associated with the spread of agriculture in, and
from, the neolithic
Near East,[26][27] and
haplogroup C3, of East Eurasian male origin and possibly representing the patrilineage of
Genghis Khan. Present at lower frequency are haplogroups
O3, also of East Eurasian male lineage, and
Q Siberian male origin,
P,
F, and
G.[27] DNA research groups the male ancestry of some of the Hunza inhabitants with speakers of
Pamir languages and other mountain communities of various ethnicities, due primarily to the M124 marker (defining Y-DNA haplogroup R2a), which is present at high frequency in these populations.[31] However, they have also an
East Asian genetic contribution, suggesting that at least some of their ancestry originates north of the Himalayas.[32] No Greek genetic component among the Burusho have been detected in tests.[33][34]
Influence in the Western world
Healthy living advocate
J. I. Rodale wrote a book called The Healthy Hunzas in 1948 that asserted that the Hunzas, noted for their longevity and many
centenarians, were long-lived because they consumed healthy
organic foods, such as dried
apricots and
almonds, and had plenty of fresh air and exercise.[35] He often mentioned them in his Prevention magazine as exemplary of the benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle.
Dr. John Clark stayed among the Hunza people for 20 months and in his 1956 book Hunza - Lost Kingdom of the Himalayas[36] writes: "I wish also to express my regrets to those travelers whose impressions have been contradicted by my experience. On my first trip through Hunza, I acquired almost all the misconceptions they did: The Healthy Hunzas, the Democratic Court, The Land Where There Are No Poor, and the rest—and only long-continued living in Hunza revealed the actual situations". Regarding the misconception about Hunza people's health, Clark also writes that most of his patients had malaria, dysentery, worms, trachoma, and other health conditions easily diagnosed and quickly treated. In his first two trips he treated 5,684 patients.
^
abWest, Barbara A. (19 May 2010).
Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. p. 139.
ISBN9781438119137. Another, more likely origin story, given the uniqueness of their language, proclaims that they were indigenous to northwestern India and were pushed higher into the mountains by the movements of the Indo-Aryans, who traveled southward sometime around 1800 B.C.E.
^Hunzai, A. N. N., Burushaski Research Academy, & University of Karachi. (2006). Burushaski Urdu Dictionary - Volume 1 / بروشسکی اردو لغت - جلد اول (الف تا څ). Bureau of Composition, Compilation & Translation, University of Karachi. ISBN: 969-404-66-0
Archive.org
^Berger, Hermann (1985). "A survey of Burushaski studies". Journal of Central Asia. 8 (1): 33–37.
^
abcdMunshi, Sadaf (2006). Jammu and Kashmir Burushashki: Language, Language Contact, and Change. The University of Texas at Austin. pp. 4, 6–.
^Hall, Lena E. (28 October 2004). Dictionary of Multicultural Psychology: Issues, Terms, and Concepts. SAGE. p. 12.
ISBN9781452236582. Among the Burusho of India, the parents supposedly negotiate a marriage without consulting the children, but often prospective brides and grooms have grown up together and know each other well.
^Ahmed, Musavir (2016).
"Ethnicity, Identity and Group Vitality: A study of Burushos of Srinagar". Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies. 3 (1): 1–10.
doi:10.29333/ejecs/51.
ISSN2149-1291. The community has no contact with their Burushos of Gilgit-Baltistan since 1947, when partition of India and Pakistan necessitated the division of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir. No participant was ready to move to Hunza/Nagar if provided a chance.
^Kivisild, T.; et al. (2003), "The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations", The American Journal of Human Genetics, 72 (2): 313–32,
doi:
10.1086/346068,
PMC379225,
PMID12536373
^
abR. Spencer Wells et al., "The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (28 August 2001).
Underhill, Peter A. (2015), "The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a", European Journal of Human Genetics, 23 (1): 124–131,
doi:
10.1038/ejhg.2014.50,
PMC4266736,
PMID24667786