The descent charter of the people of Açharê't (the açhar'îta or S'îng) begins with the ancestor maCô'k, who was driven out of cilâs in the Indus Valley in a power struggle, and branches out to encompass the various agnatic descent groups of today. The charter down through one line of each descent group (indicated by the plural ending -ê' or the Pashto word x'êl ‘troop') or inheritance group (kumb'a or kô'r ‘house', also a Pashto word) is shown below.

The transition from native pre-Islamic to Pashto Islamic forms is evident in the 8th to 7th ascending generations of the diagram below (ca. 1820-1840 AD). It is currently fashionable to replace the native plural ending -ê' of the eponymous ancestor's name with the Pashto word x'êl ‘troop' (from Arabic). Thus, the baDîlê' ‘The Sledgehammers' [a name borrowed from Kâmviri] become baDîl x'êl ‘Sledgehammer's Troop(er)', the gôbanêkê' ‘The gôbanô'ks' become gôbanêk x'êl ‘gôbanô'k's Troop(er)', etc.

The discrepencies between this version of the descent charter and those reported by Alberto Cacopardo in his important forthcoming book Gates of Peristan (co-authored with his brother Augusto) indicate, aside from true loss of knowledge, a possible competition for "genealogical hegemony" among agnatic groups, with concomitant claims for inheritance and social superiority. Similar claims for the authenticity of one group's version over another's occur among the Kom and, undoubtedly, among the other ethnic groups of the region. In pre-Islamic Nuristân there was the institution (e.g., among the Kom) of the n'om Zu˜ vilâli ‘Name-Wailing Recitress', certain women who cried out a dead man's pedigree at his funeral. They were the main repositories of genealogical history, and their public performances probably checked the tendency for discrepant versions to proliferate. With the advent of Islâm, the "kâfir" funerary rights were swept away along with the rest of the former religion, and these women were relegated to silence. Since then, genealogical knowledge among the Kom has been kept mostly by interested men of various descent groups, and the tendency toward a proliferation of versions for political reasons has apparently increased.

In this and subsequent descent diagrams the scale on the left indicates the number of generations above that of current young adults (generation "0" = 1980 A.D.) in the longest generational line. Corresponding dates are, of course, rough approximations to reality; they are calculated based on a generation of 20 years, which accords well enough with observed rates in the region.

* Author's informants, August, 1985.
** Author of the genealogy discussed in Cacopardo & Cacopardo (forthcoming).