20. Some Remarks on Mundari Phonology and on its 

 Treatment in the Records of the Linguistical Survey of 

 India* 



By The Rev. C. MlHL, G.E.L. Mission, Chaibasa. 



In my leisure hours during the last rainy season I went 

 through vol. iv of the Linguistic Survey of India, containing 

 the Munda and Dra vidian languages. My expectations to find 

 the volume a mine of information about subjects of compara- 

 tive philology were fully realized, and I do not hesitate to 

 pay my full tribute of acknowledgement and admiration to the 

 scholarship displayed in handling the linguistic problems, in 

 which we missionaries, working in the respective languages, 

 take a lively interest. So it was gratifying to me to find the 

 assertion of an existing connection between the Kurukh and 

 the Mundari languages resting on so untena I >le grounds, finally 

 disproved. 



But turning to the Mundari dialects, I was rather struck 

 by the manner in which parts of the Mundari phonology have 

 been treated and Mundari sounds written. During the years 

 I have been in Chota Nagpur, I studied the Mundari dialect 

 of the Sonepur Pargana, that of Porahat, which is practically 

 the same as the Mankipatti dialect, and that of the Hos of 

 Singhbhum. I have been working among the Mundari-speak- 

 ing population east of Ranchi, and have here to do with Bhumij 

 and Tamarias too, but from none of these various sections of 

 the bulk of the Mundari people, numbering about 900,000, 



I ever heard the semi-consonants and vowels pronounced as 

 they are recorded in the respective language specimens and 

 in the list of words. I showed the Mundari sp< eimen to an 

 educated Munda. He said, he understood it be mse he knew 

 the story, but that it was not his owti language. 



It was a great mistake on the part of the compiler to 

 regard the Koda dialect as " almost pure Mundari/' and to 



II correct " the Mundari, etc., specimens and list of words accord- 

 ing to the phonetics of that dialect. This a quite superficial 

 analysis of the Koda specimen (pp. 111 — 113, vol. iv, L.S.I.) 

 will show. The following Koda words and bases are not used 

 in Mundari, viz., "gam, ansa, bisae, katak, da, datran, b ha- 



Ian, pora, laga, ray at, than, pad jaega, bagal, garaj, kintu. 



jahae, chimtit', bisi-k', layek, lahae. hoe, habar,nakar, hatak, 

 sanak, anti, posao, damra, bati hat, rij ran, karan, anaeh, 

 mahindar," atak, lahar, nitit, bachhar, daulat, nasta, khusi." 

 So also not the following w r hich 1 could trace as Santali words 



