The Kashmiri people (Kashmiri: कॉशुर, کشُر Koshur) are a Dardic ethnic group living in the region of Kashmir who speak the Kashmiri language. Kashmiri is "a Northwestern Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European language family."[5] which is also known as Koshur and hence are classified as a Dardic people.History :-
Originally, the Kashmiris were mostly Buddhist, Hindu, and Pagan. Islam was introduced by Sufi saints from Central Asia, Hazrat Bulbul Shah of Anatolia being the most prominent of them. Prince Rinchin of Ladakh, a Buddhist who was living in Jammu & Kashmir at the time came under the influence of Saint Bulbul Shah and converted to Islam. Later on after the defeat of the Hindu ruler Suhadeva by Dulchu, Suhadeva fled Kashmir, and Rinchin became King of Jammu & Kashmir and adopted the name Malik Saduruddin. Eventually the majority of Kashmiris adopted Islam and became Muslim, although there are still small communities of Hindus and Sikhs living in the Kashmir Valley, the former being known as Kashmiri Pandits.. Due to the large Kashmiri diaspora during The 1947 War, at least 6% of Pakistanis claim Kashmiri ancestry.
Kashmiri People are from Dardic ethnic group:-
The Dards (Devanagari: दारद, Perso-Arabic: دارد) are a group of people defined by linguistic similarities, and not common ethnicity, predominantly found in Eastern Afghanistan, in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir and in the Northern Areas and North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The term Dard is due to Herodotus who described a land of the Dardikae in the areas forming northeastern Afghanistan
Origin :-
Parpola (1999) identifies "Proto-Dardic" with "Proto-Rigvedic" , suggesting that the Dards are the linguistic descendants of the bearers of proto Rigvedic culture ca. 1700 BC, pointing to features in certain Dardic dialects that continue peculiarities of Rigvedic Sanskrit, such as the gerund in -tvī (p. 189).
Moreover, the Dard people are mentioned in the Vishnu Purana.[1] They now occupy the area called Dardu, supposed by Herodotus to be the Dadicæ. As such, during Swati rule, the Dard people were dominantly Hindu and frequent small scale jihad against Dard might have been a routine. Dards of of Dras, Gilgit, Skardu, etc., embraced Islam after the Muslim invasion of India during the 14th century A.D. whereas the Dards of Da, Hanu, Bema, Darchik and Garkon did not accept this and gradually later accepted Buddhism.