Carved wooden grave effigy of a seated woman wearing double-horned hat, 1880 (c)

Polished and stained wood (possibly lime), made in Kafiristan, 1880 (c).

This wooden figurine was acquired by Lieutenant-General Frederick Roberts during the 2nd Afghan War (1878-1880). Kafiristan (now Nuristan) was a region on the border between Afghanistan and Chitral in British India (now Pakistan). The inhabitants of this mountainous area were pagan and practised a form of shamanism that worshipped several deities and had some similarities with Zoroastrianism. Their Moslem neighbours called them 'Kaffirs' (infidels). Kafiristan itself was the Persian term for 'land of infidels'.

The Kaffirs' religious and cultural practises were almost indistinguishable from the Kalash people of Chitral. The two were not formally separated until the drawing up of the Durand Line in 1893. The 'Kaffirs' on the Afghan side of the new border were persecuted and forcibly converted to Islam in the years that followed and many fled to Chitral to join their Kalash cousins, the descendants of whom live on today in a few isolated communities.

Figures such as these are placed on poles at the side of a grave to indicate the status of the corpse. The dead are not buried by the Kalash as a lack of soil impedes the digging of graves. Bodies are left in wooden boxes on platforms to decompose. Grave figures cannot be erected until a feast has been given by the family of the deceased, and the size of the feast is related to the status of the family and hence the type of figure erected.