on a misconception, but accepted the term as a convenient way of designating the difficult, diverse, and largely unknown Karakoram between Kashmir and the Hindukush Range. This usage of the term is curiously parallel to the Sanskrit usage, where it connoted nonspecific ferocious outsiders living in the mountains beyond the borders of the region. Leitner's Dardistan, in its broadest sense, became the basis for the classification of the languages in the north-west of the Indo-Aryan linguistic area (which includes present-day eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and Kashmir). George Abraham Grierson, with scant data, borrowed the term and proposed an independent Dardic family within the Indo-Iranian languages. However, Grierson's formulation of Dardic is now considered to be incorrect in its details, and has therefore been rendered obsolete by modern scholarship. Georg Morgenstierne, who conducted an extensive fieldwork in the region during the early 20th century, revised Grierson's classification and came to the view that only the "Kafiri" (Nuristani) languages formed an independent branch of the Indo-Iranian languages separate from Indo-Aryan and Iranian families, and determined that the Dardic languages were unmistakably Indo-Aryan in character.Due to their geographic isolation, many Dardic languages have preserved archaisms and other features of Old Indo-Aryan. These features include three sibilants, several types of clusters of consonants, and archaic or antiquated vocabulary lost in other modern Indo-Aryan languages. Kalasha and Khowar are the most archaic of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, retaining a great part of Sanskrit case inflexion, and retaining many words in a nearly Sanskritic form. For example at’hi "bone" in Kalasha is nearly identical to asthi in Sanskrit and ašrú "tear" in Khowar is identical to the Sanskrit word. French Indologist Gérard Fussman points out that the term Dardic is geographic, not a linguistic expression. Taken literally, it allows one to believe that all the languages spoken in Dardistan are Dardic. It also allows one to believe that all the people speaking Dardic languages are Dards and the area they live in is Dardistan. A term used by classical geographers to identify the area inhabited by an indefinite people, and used in Rajatarangini in reference to people outside Kashmir, has came to have ethnographic, geographic, and even political significance today. Classification George Morgenstierne's scheme corresponds to recent scholarly consensus. As such, Dardic's position as a legitimate genetic subfamily has been repeatedly called into question; it is widely acknowledged that the grouping is more geographical in nature,