Socio-Cultural Approach to Tribal Languages: An historico Comparative Dictionary of Halbi: The Lingua Franca of Aryan, Dravidian and Munda Tribes

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The tribal community being the earliest inhabitants of Indian society are isolated and have maintained a distinctive life style of their own. Although tribal society has been studied from sociological and anthropological point of view, and its language by many linguists, hardly any attempt has been made to relate the two in a significant manner.

In this massive research work, the author has systematically traced the history of socio-linguistic structure of Bastar, and has also provided a brief survey of the linguistic diversity prevalent in Bastar. A serious effort to examine and study the tribal languages of Bastar from socio-cultural perspective has been attempted. The author has concerned himself not simply with the description of structural variables but also analysed social meanings carried by rhetorical and semantic strategies, e.g. in tribal speech, anthropolinguistic rules governing conversations, information processing and social rituals etc.

Contemporary research on tribal languages has succeeded in putting lie to the notion that tribal speech is an 'impoverished' collection of random elements of speech 'errors' learned from illiterate castes. This volume will be of interest not only to students of tribal studies, but to anthropologists, sociologists and linguists in particular.

Dr. Hira Lal Shukla, 1939 received his Ph.D. in Sociology of Modern Sanskrit Literature in 1964. Thereafter he continued his studies and obtained MA. Linguistics in 1967 and Ph.D. in Linguistic Geography in 1974. He also received his D Litt. (1978) in Socio-Cultural History of Tribal Bastar. An erudite scholar, he was Professor and Head of the School of Comparative Languages and Culture at Bhopal University. He has published many articles and books and has translated Rama Charitamanasa into tribal dialects of Madhya Pradesh. His interests are vast and varied and his major fields of research are psycho-linguistics, semiotics, socio-linguistics, ethno-semantics, stylo-linguistics, folk- music and social and cultural history. Dr. Shukla has won numerous honours for his academic excellence.

FROM the standpoint of language-study,- Bastar is a more interesting region than it sometimes lets itself admitted to be. Many of the Languages spoken in Bastar before Britishers came to its fringe in 1795 A.D. are dead. Institutional policies, personal shame, and fear of disadvantage have taken their toll. Even then India is a country rich in many things, but poor in knowledge of itself with regard to language. That poverty has a cost. Laws and programmes involving language are put into effect without much knowledge of the situations to be addressed. The Freedom Movement drew attention to the educational needs of tribal children. Lack of adequate knowledge of the actual language situation led to mistaken efforts on the part of many. Much more is now generally known about features that may be characteristic of a tribal speech.

Yet the initial stimulus to research has not been well sustained. The full scope of the language experience of tribes would richly repay further study; there is need for a greater number of Indian scholars to contribute to such knowledge. Commitment to these goals has seemed to wax and wane with the vagaries of the national political system.

On September 24, 1964, 9 first entered into Bastar to know the relationship between tribal society and the language(s) spoken within its sphere. Note that the parenthesis contains the plural suffix, which means that the underlying interest was not limited to the Halbi language, the lingua franca of tribal society in Bastar. Any tribal language, such as Gadba, Raj Gondi, Muria, Jhoria, Abujhmaria, Dandami Maria. Dorli. Bhatri, or even sign language, when spoken, or learned, or borrowed by tribes in their social contexts, falls within the domain of our scrutiny. Hence our theme: Socio-cultural approach to the tribal languages of Bastar.

I tried my best to complete this book in time, because I felt that there was no such work available. For, although tribal society of Bastar has been studied by anthropologists and sociologist alike and its language by many linguists, they have not tried to relate the two in a significant way as I have done.

IN the description of the Indian language from the ethnographic standpoint, the goal is the speci- fication of the universal language-function as they are uniquely manifested in the Indian community. Emphasis is on the types of speech events and interaction processes, e.g., preaching, shucking, marking, call-response, use of proverbs in the socialization of Indian children, etc., and on the cultural norms that shape the form of the Indian speech and determine the rules governing who will speak to whom, when, where, and in what way, to what effect, etc. For example, if a youth meets a friend and shifts from his normal greeting routine, he may do so to create humour, to maintain social distance or to convey a subtle put-down. It is not the new greeting form per se which conveys the message, but the shift away from regular routine. The interpretation of this kind of message requires knowledge of the rules of speaking in the socio- cultural context of the Indian experience.

From the vantage point of the linguistic community, contemporary research on the Indian dialect has succeeded in putting the lie to the notion that the Indian speech is an "impoverished" collection of random elements of speech "errors" learned from illiterate castes. Rather, it is a complete, systematic language variety with residual Indian language influences. We propose that the Indian child is vocal, that he has a language fully developed to serve the needs of his "world" and that he thinks, and thinks effectively enough to assure his survival in a not altogether friendly world.

Despite the recent well-meaning and even intellectually progressive scholarship on the Indian speech, we must nevertheless indict the linguistic community for conceptualization of their research in total disregard for the lay community. Confining themselves to the traditional ivory towers, they have self-servingly ignored popular reactions and distorted disseminations of their research, and pursued their "work" oblivious to its political ramifications vis-a-vis public policy decisions that affected the Indian Liberation Struggle.

**Contents and Sample Pages**