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Brahui, Malto, Kurux: The histories and the unsettling futures of the North Dravidian languages
A language that is said to have existed when the Aryans arrived in 1500 BCE, a language that may have formerly been 'Scythian' or the speech of the Iranian nomads, a language credited to be the vernacular of the Indus Valley Civilisation, and one that generously enriched Greek, Latin and Hebrew vocabularies — the Dravidian languages boast a rich history. Although often associated with Southern India, the Dravidian language family includes 27 languages, spoken by 220 million people across South Asia and beyond. Yet, their existence beyond Southern India attracts little attention.
Spanning centuries of history and transcending national boundaries, the North Dravidian languages present one of the most compelling cases of linguistic diversity and growth. This is a look at their uncertain origin and the contested future of this northern subgroup of Dravidian languages.
In the book The Dravidian Languages (2015), American linguist Sanford B Steever argues that the Dravidian language family is the fourth or fifth largest language family in the world. While its speakers in India are primarily concentrated in the southern and central belts, these languages are also spoken in other South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
'Speakers of Dravidian languages have been shaping civilisations in India, Southeast Asia, and beyond for over 2,000 years through contributions to literature, art, architecture, philosophy, and religion,' says Steever in an interview with
British missionary Robert Caldwell was the first to use 'Dravidian' as a generic name for the major language family. 'The new name was an adaptation of a Sanskrit term dravida…which was traditionally used to designate the Tamil language and people, in some contexts, and in others, vaguely the south Indian peoples,' notes Indian linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti in The Dravidian Languages (2003). He added that adopting 'Dravidian' would allow 'Tamilian' to signify what was uniquely Tamil.
Interestingly, the Dravidian language family is also found in scattered pockets of northern India and western Pakistan. The origin of Dravidian languages, according to Italian linguist Cavalli Sforza, was in the western India. Explaining the expansion, Sforza wrote, 'It could be also in the South Caspian…or in the northern Indian…'
'Several scholars have maintained, without definite proof, that Dravidians entered India from the northwest over two millennia before the Aryans arrived there around 1500 BCE,' he wrote. 'Still, there is no archeological or linguistic evidence to show actually when the people who spoke the Dravidian languages entered India.'
He, however, suggests, 'it is best to consider Dravidians to be the natives of the Indian subcontinent who were scattered throughout the country by the time the Aryans entered India around 1500 BCE.'
The Dravidian language family has four subgroups: South Dravidian with Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil among others, South-Central Dravidian with Gondi, Manda, Telugu etc; Central Dravidian consists of languages such as Naiki, Parji and North Dravidian had Kurux, Malto and Brahui. Of these, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu have established traditions of written literature and are recognised as scheduled languages by the Constitution of India.
According to Krishnamurti, the first branch to split off from the Proto Dravidian family was the North subgroup, comprising Kurux, Malto, and Brahui. This proposal has largely been accepted in academic and linguistic circles. Masato Kobayashi, professor of Linguistics at the University of Tokyo, tells 'The fact that Kurux, Malto and Brahui share past forms with the suffix -k/-g made scholars believe that these languages branched off first from the rest of Dravidian.'
Subsequently, Central Dravidian emerged with languages like Kolami, Parji, followed by Proto-South, which further split into South-Central, comprising Telugu, Kuwi, and Southern, which includes Tamil and Tulu. 'It is probable that Proto-North Dravidian separated from the parent speech at a time when Central and South Dravidian were still at least in loose contact,' reckons researcher Suresh Kolichala in The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia (2016).
The North Dravidian language subgroup is distinguished from the other Dravidian languages by various phonological, morphological, and lexical features. 'For example,' notes Steever, '…Kurux shares 73% of its Dravidian-sourced words with Malto, but only 12% with Tamil and 14.5% with Telugu. This indicates Kurux's close kinship with Malto.'
North Dravidian languages include Brahui, Malto, and Kurux. The 1981 Census, which required a language to have at least 10,000 speakers to be listed, mentioned Malto and Kurux as non-scheduled languages while omitting Brahui as it had no speakers living within the Indian Union.
Kurux goes by several names, including Kurukh/Oraon/Dhangar/Uraon/Kisan. 'Oraon appears to be a 'clan' name, Dhangar is the name of Kurux spoken in the Terai in Nepal, Kisan is spoken by a subset of Kurux speakers, involved in agriculture,' explains Steever. It is spoken by approximately two million people across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, where it reached through a group of migrant labourers.
Notable in its grammar is a distinction between men's speech and women's speech, 'one which is also present in Malto,' writes Steever. He elaborates, 'Kurux has a set of 'interfemale' forms which are used only between women in a speech event; elsewhere, general forms are used.' The interfemale forms for 'I eat' and 'we eat' are mo:xen and mo:xem, respectively. The corresponding general forms are mo:xdan and mo:xdam, respectively, used when women speak with the other gender. 'This feature is interesting because it is not shared even by Malto, and is considered to have developed independently,' adds Kobayashi.
Malto, however, is regarded as the 'closest relative' of Kurukh, 'like Spanish and Italian', says Kobayashi. Kurux and Malto share a great number of cognate words and grammatical similarities. Steever adds, 'In these two languages (and Brahui), certain main clauses now tend to precede subordinate clauses, unlike in Kannada or Tamil where main clauses follow their subordinate clauses.'
Malto, classified as the northernmost of Dravidian languages in India, is spoken by nearly 100,000 people in the Rajmahal hills of Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura, and Odisha. Kobayashi says, 'Hillman might be a more accurate name for Malto, especially because it is spoken in the Rajmahal Hills, with each village having its own dialect. It is much more diverse than Kurux.' Pockets of Malto speakers are also found across the border, in Bangladesh.
According to Steever, Malto has at least three dialects (Kumarbhag, Malpaharia, and Sawriya) distinguished on the basis of phonology, morphology, and lexicon. He explains that the Malpaharia and Kumarbhag varieties show far greater affinity with each other than the Sawriya variety. This, his study suggests, 'reflects the social rankings among the three, in which Kumarbhag is rated highest and Sawriya lowest.' Malpaharia, meanwhile, has adopted the cultural and linguistic traits of Kumarbhag. The language retains the common Dravidian vowel system of 10 vowels — five short and five long.
Historically, the hostile terrain of the Rajmahal hills in Bihar seldom attracted migrants, leaving Brahui speakers alienated from outsiders till the end of the eighteenth century. Over time, the speakers got acquainted with neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages such as Odia and Bengali. Yet, Malto remains a non-literary language and lacks official status.
Brahuis first emerged in the seventeenth century when, in reaction to Mughal pressures, they participated in the Brahui Confederacy, or the Khanate of Kalat (a political entity), in close alliance with the Baloch and Dehwars. Later called Kalat State, the Khanate was absorbed into modern Pakistan in 1948 after some 250 years of semi-independent existence. Its speakers, thus, are found in Balochistan, neighbouring Afghanistan, and pockets of Turkmenistan.
The conventional spelling, according to linguist Josef Elfenbein in The Dravidian Languages (2015), is brahoi, which 'designates both tribal group and language.' According to Elfenbein, 'The Brahuis, never a very close-knit group, migrated northwest from the Central Deccan in India across Gujarat and into Sindh in many waves from about 800-1100 CE. Afterwards, they entered the Kalat highlands.'
What is surprising, as per Krishnamurti, is that every language is separated from Brahui by over 5,000 years, including its closest 'sisters' Kurux (by 5,505 years) and Malto (5,874 years). Kurux and Malto are shown to be closer to Tamil than to Brahui. The farthest of Dravidian languages, Brahui has traditionally been written in Perso-Arabic and 'might well constitute its own subgroup, the first to branch off from the Dravidian proto-languages,' says Steever. Several other scholars hold the view that Brahui is not related to any other Dravidian language.
'However, the absence of any old Iranian loanwords in Brahui works against [this] proposal,' argues Kolichala. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary is Balochi, coming from the west only around 1000 CE. Based on existing evidence, Brahui appears to belong to the North Dravidian branch. 'Members of the Brahui speech community now identify as Muslim, but we cannot say whether their forebearers follow Hindu-adjacent religious practices or tribal religious practices,' opines Steever.
While there exists census data for Brahui from pre-Partition India, it is ridden with confusion. Elfenbein regrets that since Brahuis customarily describe themselves as Baloch to outsiders, an estimation of the exact number of Brahui speakers is difficult. According to Steever, the confusion stems from the ambiguous use of both Balochi and Brahui: 'Both terms refer to social groups, such as tribes and tribal configurations, and to languages. Census takers and other researchers need to distinguish between the two senses.'
Citing data from 1996, Elfenbein concludes that there are about 700,000 Brahui tribesmen, mainly in Pakistani Balochistan and in Afghanistan. Of these, 100,000 were primary speakers of Brahui in Pakistan, while 300,000 spoke the Iranian language Balochi as their primary language and Brahui as their secondary. 'The speakers use both languages every day, but consciously keep them apart. Even so, the mutual influence of the two languages on each other is evident.'
Surrounded by Indic and Iranian languages for many centuries, Brahui is said to have only 10 per cent of Dravidian words, 20 per cent Indo-Aryan, 20 per cent from Balochi, 30 per cent from Perso-Arabic, and 20 per cent of unknown origin. The first known work, in Brahui, is Tuhfat al- 'aja'ib (Gift of Wonders), composed by Malikdad Gharsin Qalati, a poet at the court of Nasir Khan I (1749-95), Khan of the Kalats. As per Steever, 'A new system for transcription, called Brolikva, has been devised to write down Brahui.' He explains that it is a Roman-based script with diacritic features, such as the use of a macron for vowel length. 'Brolikva has a greater graph-to-sound fidelity than Perso-Arabic script, but tradition may slow the adaptation of the newer script.'
Brahui speakers today are found in the urban cities of Pakistan — Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Larkana. This geography has led many to believe that Dravidian languages once covered all of South Asia. Such a belief, according to Steever, has led to the conjecture that Dravidian was the language of the Indus Valley Civilisation. The presence of Brahui in the highlands of southwestern Pakistan is also cited as a determining factor in associating the Indus Valley Civilisation with Dravidian.
However, the lack of archaeological evidence of a southward migration from the Indus Valley area and the absence of Harappan artifacts in the south have invalidated such theories.
'Brahui has been written down over the past few centuries, but, as far as I can tell, it has not developed as the administrative language of any government,' opines Steever. Kurux and Malto, refreshingly, get some official recognition in Jharkhand in education and local government jobs. 'Still,' says Steever, 'Kurux has some way to go before recognition as an official or administrative function.'
Both the origins and future of the North Dravidian languages remain shrouded in mystery.
Further reading:
The Dravidian Languages by Sanford B. Steever
The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia edited by Elena Bashir, Hans Henrich Hock
The Dravidian Languages by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
Nikita writes for the Research Section of focusing on the intersections between colonial history and contemporary issues, especially in gender, culture, and sport.
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