Furthermore.....
On the mountainsides of the Himalayas and the Indian Caucasus and under Pakistani and Afghanistan jurisdiction lives a tribe whose people call themselves Kalash. They claim to be the descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers who for various reasons were left behind in the depths of Asia and could not follow the Great General in his new conquests. Having no contact with the outside world for almost 23 centuries, they are quite different from any other neighboring nations. Light complexioned, and blue eyed in the midst of dark skinned neighbors, their language, even though it has been affected and influenced by the many Muslim languages of nations that surround the Kalash tribe, still incorporates vocabulary and has many elements of the ancient Greek language. They greet their visitors with "ispanta" from the Greek verb "ασπάζομαι" (greetings) and they warn them about "heman" from the ancient Greek noun "χειμών" (winter). These indigenous people still believe in the twelve Olympian gods and their architecture resembles very much the Macedonian architecture (National Herald, “A School in the Tribe of Kalash by Greeks", October 11, 1996).
Michael Wood, the British scholar in his
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (p.8), quotes the following statement made by a Kalash named Kazi Khushnawaz:
Long long ago, before the days of Islam, Sikander e Aazem came to India. The Two Horned one whom you British people call Alexander the Great. (sic) He conquered the world, and was a very great man, brave and dauntless and generous to his followers. When he left to go back to Greece, some of his men did not wish to go back with him but preferred to stay here. Their leader was a general called Shalakash [Seleucus]. With some of his officers and men, he came to these valleys and they settled here and took local women, and here they stayed. We, the Kalash, the Black Kafir of the Hindu Kush, are the descendants of their children. Still some of our words are the same as theirs, our music and our dances, too; we worship the same gods. This is why we believe the Greeks are our first ancestors...