Linguistic Survey of India

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The Linguistic Survey of India, often referred to as the LSI, is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects^[1]. It was a project of the British Raj conducted between 1894 and 1928, under the direction of George A. Grierson, an official of the Indian Civil Service.

An on-line searchable database of the LSI is available, providing an excerpt for each word as it appeared in Grierson's original publication, in .pdf format. In addition, the British Library has gramophone recordings in its Sound Archive which document the phonology.

See also: List of Titles of the Linguistic Survey of India

[edit] New Survey

The 1991 census of India found 1,576 "mother tongues" with separate grammatical structures and 1,796 languages classified as "other mother tongues". Calls for a more complete and exact Linguistic Survey of India soon followed. It was noted that Grierson's works had relied on untrained field workers and neglected the former province of Burma, Madras and the then princely States of Hyderabad and Mysore. The result was that South India was under-represented in the LSI^[2]^[3].

The Government of India has announced an ambitious project to expand and revise the Linguistic Survey of India. In the 11th five-year plan (2007-12) Rs. 2.8 billion was sanctioned for the project. It has been classified into two sections: a New Linguistic Survey of India and a Survey of Minor and Endangered Languages. Under the auspices of the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, and under the direction of Udaya Narayana Singh, the project is expected to involve over 54 universities, 2,000 investigators and 10,000 linguists and language specialists working over a period of ten years.^[4].