Munda and Dravidian Languages- A Linguistic Analysis (An Old and Rare Book)

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The present volume, entitled Munda and Dravidian languages and issued as No. 20 of the Panjab University Indological Series presents a succinct linguistic analysis of the said languages and their. dialects.

The Munda languages, of which the prominent dialects are Kherwari and Santali, is spoken by tribes inhabiting the Chota Nagpur Plateau, while the main Dravidian languages, viz., Tamil, Malayalam, Kanarese (Kannada) and Telugu are the regional languages, respectively, of Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, in South India. Though Mundă and the Dravidian are spoken by the Dravidian race, a comparison of their vocaulary and grammatical features indicate that they belong to different groups and are not connected to one another. Indeed, the Munda languages agree in several respects with the forms of speech in Farther India, the Malay Peninsula and Nicobars, while the Dravidian languages seem to have been derived from the original inhabitants of South India.

The following pages aim at providing a bird's eye view of the main characteristics of the Munda and Dravidian families of languages and their main dialects, in respect of their provenance, grammatical categories and syntax, Comparative tables of select words, phrases and sentences of the two groups are also provided, for a better understanding of these languages. It is to be hoped that the present reprint will serve the purpose for which it is intended.

As in the case of the three volumes of the Summary, by Dr. Varma, of the Linguistic Survey of India referred to above, the present reprint has also been seen through the press with care by Dr. S. L. Dogra, Asstt. Librarian, and Dr. Trilochan Singh Bindra, Lecturer, in this Institute.