DARDIC LANGUAGES, the name of a family of languages spoken immediately to the south of the Hindu Kush, and north of the frontier of British India, includes the group of Kafir languages spoken in Kafiristan, Khowar, spoken in the Chitral country, and the group of Shinn languages, which includes the Shinn of Gilgit, Kohistani, spoken in the Kohistans of the Indus and Swat rivers, and Kashmiri. Of all these Kashmiri is the only one which has received any literary cultivation. The Dardic languages are Aryan by origin, but are neither Iranian nor Indo Aryan. They have developed phonetic peculiarities, and possess almost unaltered and in common use words which in India are seldom found except in Vedic Sanskrit. In each there is a small but unimportant element of Burushaski (q.v.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For the general question of the Dardic languages, Bibliography.-For the general question of the Dardic languages, see G. A. Grierson's The Pisaca Languages of North-western India (1906) ; Linguistic Survey of India, vol. viii. pt. ii. For the different languages of this group see G. W. Leitner, Dardistan (Lahore, 1877) ; J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Calcutta, 188o) ; D. J. O'Brien, Grammar and Vocabulary of the Khowar Dialect (Lahore, 1895) ; J. Davidson, Notes on the Bashgali (Kafir) Language (Cal cutta, 1901) ; G. Morgenstierne, Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan (Oslo, 1926) . (See also INDO-ARYA.N LANGUAGES and KASHMIRI.)