The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.214

v1.c15.214

Speakers of the two great sections of Āryan languages, Irānians and Indo-Āryans, were thus brought into contact; and as a result of some such contact, whether at this period or at some earlier date, we find a group of mixed languages still surviving where they might be expected, in the transitional zone between the Hindu Kush and the Punjab, that is to say, in the Kābul valley, Chitrāl, and Gilgit. These Piçācha languages, as they are called, were once more widely spread: the Greek forms of place-names, for instance, seem to show that they prevailed in N.W. India in the fourth century B.C.; but at the present time they are merely an enclave in the Irānian and Indo-Āryan domains.