इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Chota Nagpur Plateau · Central Highlands & Forest Belt
Three language families in one settlement pattern, which is rare anywhere. Santali, Mundari, Ho and Kharia belong to the Munda branch of Austroasiatic — related to Khasi and to languages of mainland Southeast Asia, not to anything else nearby. Kurukh, the Oraon language, is Dravidian, with its nearest relative Malto in the Rajmahal hills a hundred and fifty kilometres away and nothing in between. Sadri, Khortha, Kurmali and Panch Pargania are Indo-Aryan. Sadri is the link language that lets all of them trade, and it is also the language that migration carried out of the region — the tea-garden communities of Assam and the Dooars speak it as a first language today. Santali is the region's great counter-example to language loss — it is in the Eighth Schedule, it has a purpose-built script, and it is taught in schools in three states.
बोलियाँ
The most widely spoken Munda language anywhere. Written in Ol Chiki, and also in Devanagari, Bangla, Odia and Latin script depending on where its speakers live. Added to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 2003.
बोलने वाले: Around 74 lakh returned in the 2011 Census
The Munda language of the Ranchi plateau and Khunti. Its verb morphology, which can pack an entire clause into one word, is a standard reference case in descriptive linguistics.
बोलने वाले: Around 11 lakh returned in the 2011 Census
Spoken across Kolhan and into Odisha's Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. Written in Warang Chiti, a script devised for it by Lako Bodra in the mid twentieth century.
बोलने वाले: Around 14 lakh returned in the 2011 Census
The Oraon language, and one of only two Dravidian languages spoken this far north — the other, Malto, is spoken in the Rajmahal hills at the plateau's north-eastern edge. Their separation is the strongest single piece of evidence for a Dravidian presence in eastern India before Indo-Aryan.
बोलने वाले: Around 19 lakh returned in the 2011 Census
Spoken in Simdega and Gumla, and one of the region's smaller and more endangered languages.
The plateau's lingua franca — a market and inter-community language that has become a mother tongue for many Sadan households, and the shared language of the tea-garden communities of Assam and the Dooars.
The rim speeches — Khortha across the Hazaribagh and Dhanbad uplands, Kurmali on the Bengal-facing east, Panch Pargania south-east of Ranchi. All three carry heavy Munda substrate vocabulary.
स्थानीय शब्दावली
| शब्द | अर्थ |
|---|---|
| Sarna | The sacred grove — a stand of the original sal forest left uncleared beside a village, in which the village deities are seated and no tree may be cut. Also the name used for the religion practised in it. |
| Jaher and jaher era ᱡᱟᱦᱮᱨ | The Santali term for the grove, and Jaher Era, the goddess who lives in it, worshipped alongside Marang Buru, the great mountain. |
| Bonga | Santali and Mundari for a spirit or deity — of a grove, a hill, a stream, a house or an ancestor. Ritual life is transactional with bongas rather than devotional towards them. |
| Naeke and pahan | The village priest — naeke among the Santal, pahan among the Munda and Oraon. He conducts the grove sacrifice, fixes the festival dates and, at Sarhul, reads the water pots for the coming monsoon. |
| Manjhi haram | The Santal village headman, working with a council of named officers — paranik, jog manjhi, godet — each with a defined role at weddings, disputes and hunts. |
| Munda and manki | The Ho and Munda system of village headman (munda) and cluster headman (manki), formally recognised in Kolhan since the nineteenth century and still functioning. |
| Parha | The Oraon confederation of villages — a standing inter-village council with its own head, its own flag and its own jurisdiction over disputes between member villages. |
| Khuntkatti | The tenure in which the descendants of a village's original forest-clearing lineage hold its land collectively. Its defence was the central demand of Birsa Munda's movement, and it is written into the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908. |
| Ulgulan ᱩᱞᱜᱩᱞᱟᱱ | Mundari for "the great tumult" — the name of Birsa Munda's rising of 1899–1900, and now a general word in the region's political vocabulary. |
| Hul | Santali for insurrection, used specifically of the rising of 1855. Hul Diwas is observed on 30 June. |
| Handia and ranu | Rice beer, and the pressed herbal starter cake that ferments it. A ranu recipe is inherited, and the difference between two households' handia is the difference between two ranu recipes. |
| Akhra | The village dancing ground — a levelled open space, usually under a tree, that is also where meetings are held and disputes heard. Every village has one and it is maintained collectively. |
| Dhumkuria and gitiora | The Oraon and Munda youth dormitories, in which the unmarried young of a village slept, worked and learnt song, dance and adult roles under their own officers. The northern counterpart of Bastar's ghotul, and, like it, now almost gone. |
| Rugra and putka | Wild puffball mushrooms of sal root zones, appearing days after the first monsoon storm and impossible to cultivate. |
| Jharkhand | "The forest tract" — jhar, thicket, plus khand, a region. The name appears in inscriptions and land records for centuries before it became the name of a state in 2000. |
कहावतें
| कहावत | शाब्दिक अर्थ | अर्थ |
|---|---|---|
| Johar | A greeting | The standard greeting across Santal, Munda, Ho and Oraon country, used in place of namaste, and shared with the Gondi-speaking belt to the south-west. It is now also a deliberate marker of Adivasi identity. |
| Abua disum, abua raij | Our country, our rule | The Mundari slogan of Birsa Munda's movement of 1899–1900, still the most quoted phrase in the region's historical vocabulary. |
| Sarna dhorom | The Sarna religion | The self-description used by those who worship in the sacred grove, and the term at the centre of a long-standing demand for a separate religion code in the census, which currently offers no such option. |
Chota Nagpur Plateau की बोलियाँ, स्थानीय शब्दावली और कहावतें। (18)