Kusunda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kusunda or Ban Raja ("people of the forest"), known to themselves as the Mihaq or Myahq (< *Myahak)[1], are a tribe of former hunter-gatherers of the forests of western Nepal, who are now intermarried with neighboring peoples and settled in villages.
The Kusunda are followers of animism, though Hindu overtones may be seen in their religious rituals. According to the 2001 Nepal census, there are a total of 164 ethnic Kusunda of which 160 were Hindus and 4 were Buddhists. The Nepali word Kusunda originally meant "savage", as the neighboring Chepang and other groups traditionally thought of them as savages, but the Kusunda do not mind the term when speaking Nepali.
[edit] Kusunda language
Watters (2005) published a mid-sized grammatical description of the Kusunda language, plus vocabulary, which shows that Kusunda is indeed a language isolate. The language is moribund, with no children learning it, as all Kusunda speakers have married outside their ethnicity.
[edit] References
- D. E. Watters (2005): Notes on Kusunda Grammar: A language isolate of Nepal. Himalayan Linguistics Archive 3. 1-182. NFDIN Katmandu, ISBN 99946-35-35-2.
- ^ B. K. Rana (Linguistic Society of Nepal), "New Materials on Kusunda Language" (Presented to the Fourth Round Table International Conference on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA. May 11 - 13, 2002)
[edit] External links
- Genetic evidence for origins of Ban Rajas (Kusundas) of Nepal
- Ethnologue reports the Kusunda language to be extinct.
- P. Whitehouse, T. Usher, M. Ruhlen & William S.-Y. Wang (2004): Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific language in Nepal, PNAS 101:5692–5695 (free access) attempts to link Kusunda to other languages, using old data.
