The Wakhi language, as represented in particular bythose of its dialects that are spoken in Afghanistanand the Soviet Pamirs, has been described in moredetail than any other Iranian language of the areathat has virtually no written tradition. As early asthe middle of the last century scholars beganstudying the language on the basis of mostly shortor fragmentary glossaries and collections of textsand additional material became available during thethirties and fifties of the present century. Duringthe sixties and seventies, two Leningrad Iranists,A. L. Grünberg and I. M. Steblin-Kamenskij, workedintensively on Pamirian Wakhi and the kind of Wakhispoken in Afghan Badakhshan. Their researchculminated in the publication of a rich collectionof orally transmitted songs, fairy tales, proverbs,and texts of ethnographic interest, accompanied by adetailed analysis of Wakhi grammar and acomprehensive glossary. The material collected byGrünberg and Steblin-Kamenskij like that publishedby G. Buddruss and in some older articles by Russianscholars, conforms on the whole to what one wouldexpect to find in an exclusively oral tradition.Apart from the usual kinds of fairy tales and songswe find also a kind of popular poetry unique toWakhi.