Munda Languages

The Munda languages are a group of about two dozen Austroasiatic languages found primarily in eastern India and Bangladesh, although Korku, a form of Munda, is exclusively spoken in a small region of Central India. The Munda languages are thought to be the ancestral tongues of some of the first inhabitants of these regions, many of whom were later pushed out of most of their traditional homelands by later migrants to the area such as the Dravidians and the Indo-Aryans. About nine or ten million people speak some variant of the Munda languages—a number that constitutes less than 1 percent of India’s population.

The Munda languages are the westernmost representatives of the Austroasiatic language family, a category of languages that are mostly found in scattered parts of Southeast Asia and include such disparate tongues as Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese. Like the speakers of the Munda languages (with the notable exceptions of Khmer and Vietnamese), many of these languages are found only in scattered parts of their original territories; most of the extant Austroasiatic languages are frequently associated with marginalized minority groups throughout the region. The most commonly spoken member languages of the Munda family include Santali, Mundari, Ho, Juray, Korku, Sora, and Kharia.

History and Classification

Not much is known about the early history of the Munda languages, though they likely originated somewhere in the vicinity of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. Today, other than the distantly related Khasi language spoken by the Khasi people in the Meghalaya region of far eastern India, the Munda languages are the only remnants of the once well-represented Austroasiatic language group in the Indian subcontinent.

Paul Sidwell and Roger Blench have suggested that the origins of the Austroasiatic language began in the area of the Mekong River, a major trade route that also helped enable the culture and languages of these early peoples to spread throughout Southeast Asia and eventually reach eastern India. The proto-Munda people probably inhabited the modern regions of Eastern India, Northeastern India, and Bangladesh, though it is uncertain how or why they entered the region or even if their pattern of arrival was in a single wave or spread out over centuries. The area was later colonized by the Dravidian peoples about 2,500 years ago, a tribe who were themselves later followed into the region by Indo-Aryan speakers. Recent research, though, has shown that the contemporary speakers of the Munda languages are more closely related to other Indian ethnic groups than to their fellow speakers of Austroasiatic languages. However, the same research indicates the Munda speakers are no closer related to the Dravidians than to the Indo-Europeans, indicating that the two groups did not descend from a single ethnic ancestor, further muddying the true nature of their origins. Additionally, despite their eastern Austroasiatic language affiliations, their own oral legends suggest that they arrived in their current homelands from the state of Uttar Pradesh in the west.

Although several different classifications for the Austroasiatic language family have been proposed, most linguistic scholars separate them into the Mon-Khmer group, which includes all the languages of the Indochina Peninsula, and the Munda group. However, due to the murky origins and unclear relationships between these languages, other linguists have sought to place the Austroasiatic languages into as many as thirteen different categories. Regardless, as a result of the quick spread of these languages after their development, there is a great deal of difference between the contemporary forms of these tongues.

The Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family of languages is similarly uncertain, although it is most often separated into northern and southern branches. The northern grouping contains the more closely related Munda languages of the north, east, and west ranges of the Munda-speaking territories and is itself divided into two subgroups: Korku, which is the most western Munda language, and Khwerian (or Kherwarian), which has the most prevalently spoken forms of Munda. Included in this latter grouping is Santali (or Santhali), Ho, Mundari, Agariya, and Korwa, all of which are estimated to be spoken by more than 50,000 people.

The languages in the southern grouping are less certain in both their classification and their orientation to one another. Most of these tongues are found exclusively in the Indian state of Orissa and comprise less than 10 percent of all Munda speakers. Among the most widespread of these southern group languages are Juray, Sora, and Kharia.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

The Munda languages exist in small, scattered areas ranging in a straight line from central India east to the Indian-Bangladeshi border. Though the early Munda tribes are believed to have controlled a large portion of eastern India at some distant point in the past, the arrival of the Dravidians and Indo-Aryans pushed them into the periphery of Indian geography. Today, the present-day Munda peoples largely inhabit less-desirable areas in the remote hilltops, plateaus, and heavy forests of Orissa and Jharkhand. They are classified as among the Scheduled Tribes of India, a cataloging of traditionally oppressed and disadvantaged ethnicities in India who have special rights under India’s national constitution.

The Munda languages have the subject of limited analysis compared to their sister tongues in the Mon-Khmer family, and attempts to reconstruct the Proto-Munda language have been less fruitful than with other branches of the Austroasiatic family in part due to its poorly documented record. Initial scholarship in the West exploring the ethnolinguistic origins and cultural context of the Munda language date back less than two hundred years, although some Sanskrit resources—such as the ancient Indian epic called the Mahabharata, whose own sketchy origins date back to at least 400 BCE—offers some attestation of the early Munda tribes and their languages in the pre-India state. Today, the Munda languages serve as important cultural unifiers for the various Munda ethnic groups across India.

Bibliography

Anderson, Gregory D. S. The Munda Languages. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Katzner, Kenneth. The Languages of the World. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

"Munda—History and Cultural Relations." Countries and Their Cultures. Advameg, 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. <http://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Munda-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html>.

"Munda Languages." Language Gulper. Alejandro Gutman and Beatriz Avanzati, 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. <http://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Munda.html>.

"Munda Languages Project." Living Tongues. Present Living Tongues, 2007. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. <http://www.livingtongues.org/hotspots/hotspot.GSA.munda.html>.

Riccio, M. E., et al. "The Austroasiatic Munda Population from India and Its Enigmatic Origin: A HLA Diversity Study." Human Biology 83.3 (2011): 405–35. Print.