Before their conversion, the Nuristanis practiced a form of ancient Hinduism. Non-Muslim religious practices endure in Nuristan today to some degree as folk customs. In their native rural areas, they are often farmers, herders, and dairymen.
The Nuristanis are an ethnic group native to the Nuristan region of eastern Afghanistan, who speak Indo-Iranian languages, chiefly Nuristani.
Before their conversion, the Nuristanis practiced a form of ancient Hinduism. Non-Muslim religious practices endure in Nuristan today to some degree as folk customs. In their native rural areas, they are often farmers, herders, and dairymen.
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They believed in many deities, whose names resembled those of Iranian and old Vedic sources.
They acknowledged a number of human-like deities who lived in the unseen Deity World (Kâmviri d’e lu; cf. Sanskrit deva lok’a-).
Certain deities were revered only in one community or tribe, but one was universally revered as the creator: the Hindu god Yama Râja called imr’o in Kâmviri.
There is a creator god, appearing under various names, as lord of the nether world and of heaven: Yama Rājan, or Māra (‘death’, Nuristani),or Dezau (ḍezáw) whose name is derived from Indo-European *dheig’h i.e. “to form” (Kati Nuristani dez “to create”)
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