PUSIITU. The term Afghan is applied to a multitude of tribes speaking the samo dialect, the Puslitu or Afghani, but the word it,self has no certain signification, and is borne by many people of very different origin, though the people are raid to call themselves Puslitun. According to Captain Raverty, the people who dwell about Kant and Kandaltar, Sharawak and Pishin, are designated Wr-Pushtun or Afghans; and those occupying the district of Roh, which is near India, are called L'r-Pukhtun or LowerAfghans. Persian is the official language of Afghanistan, but the Puslitu is alike the common tonguo of the un educated people and of the dwellings of the Amis. There are said to be two divisions of the Afghans, termed PusIttun and Pukhtun, who speak Pushtu and Pukhtu respectively ; the Pushtu being the western dialect, with affinity to Persian, and the Puklitu the eastern, with many Sanskrit and Hindi words. The Pushtu is spoken, with slight varia tion in orthography and pronunciation, from the valley of Pishin, south of Kandahar, to Kafiristan on the north ; and from the banks of Helmand on the west, to the Attock, Sindhu or Indus river, on the east, throu,ghout the mountainous districts of Bajawar, Banjhkora, Swat, and 13uner, to Astor, on the borders of Little Tibet, a tract of country equal in extent to the entire Spanish peninsula. Also, throughout thel3ritish districts of the Dehra jat, Banu, Tak, Kohat, Peshawur, and the Sawa or plain of the Yusufzai, with the exception of Dehra Ghazi Khan, nine-tenths of the people speak the Afghan language. Since the invasions of Malunud
of Ghazni in the 11th century, there has been a constant influx into India of Afghans as con querors and settlers, and this has been so great from particular districts, that some tribes have altogether disappeared from Afghanistan. In some localities in India, the Afghan settlers are said to have preserved the Pushtu ahnost in its purity up to the present day, having from the outset married among,st themselves. In some parts of Bundelkhand, and in the territory of the Nawab of Rampur, whole towns and villages may be found in which the Afghan language is still almost exclusively spoken, and is the medium of general communication. Captain Haverty con siders that although in numerous points the Pushtu bears a great similarity to the Setnitic and Iranian languages, it is totally different in construction, and in idiom also, from any of the Indo-Sanskrit dialects. Persian is met with all over Afghanistan ; the great families speak it, and their correspondence is carried on in that tongue ; the people are acquainted with it, but they prefer speaking the Pushtu, the language of their tribes. They have a few works in tins language, but they read Persian authors by pre ference, and have through them formed imperfect ideas of geography, astronomy, medicine, and history ; but these works, full of fictions and de ficiencies, have not materially assisted in develop ing their faculties.—Rucerty's Afghan I,anguagc; Ferrier's Hist. of Afghans, p. 290.