Significance Of Kusundas And Their Language In The Trans-Himalayan Region
B. K. Rana
Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA
October 21- 22, 2006
General Background:
The Kusunda language does not remain a ‘not well studied and classified’ language anymore now. The government of Nepal funded for its detailed study with some leading linguists in the country. The National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities [NFDIN] brought at least two fluent Kusunda speakers along with few others from western part of Nepal in Kathmandu, funded for their 3 months stay to document data and organized a national seminar on the language on October 10, 2004. Enough data has been obtained and documented. The study shows Kusunda language doesn’t resemble to any other languages in the world.
Since, I left Nepal for USA in 2003, I have been unable to establish any direct communication with the Kusundas whom I could discover among the mid-hills of Nepal in early 2000. However, I could obtain some other crucial data from Ms S. Thapa who brought Gyani Maya, a fluent Kusunda speaker, in her hometown of Butwal in the western plains of Nepal and video-graphed her interview in April 2003. We have already discussed on those data in the Fifth Harvard Roundtable on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia in Cambridge on May 10 - 11, 2003.
Before the discovery of Raja Mama, a lone Kusunda of Tanahu in west Nepal, the linguistic communities held a belief that Kusundas have already vanished from the face of the earth and eventually their precious language also. But the discovery of Raja Mama opened up a new avenue for Kusunda research in recent years. This also led to the preservation of this important indigenous tribal community and its profound linguistic heritage. Now, another important job has to be done, providing direct benefit to the target community in compliance with the international laws, testing the Kusunda DNA.
The Nepal government has placed high priority to preserve certain near-extinct indigenous communities and their heritage. The National Foundation for Indigenous Nationalities,[NFDIN] a government entity headed by the Prime Minister, in whose governing council, Raja Mama had been nominated a member in 2004. This is a first record in Nepalese history that a Kusunda got nominated to a government entity.
Raja Mama and Lil Bahadur Kusunda:
After his discovery Raja Mama [Kusunda] drew enormous media attention in the country. The media still report him as ‘a lone Kusunda’ of Nepal; however, there are few more others in different parts of western Nepal.
The photo below was taken in February 2000 in Tanahu when I discovered him. He said he was fifty years old. He should have weighed 55 to 60 Kilograms and about 5 feet tall. He said to me he was born in jungle. He doesn’t remember anything about his father. He was a lonely fellow. He told me he used to hunt jungle fowl, forage yam, tuber and fruits. Nowadays, he doesn’t go for a hunt. He helps other in agriculture. He just gave me some 50 Kusunda words
Raja Mama Kusunda
As Tamla Ukyab, then Member Secretary and ex-officio Executive Director of the Foundation told me over phone from Kathmandu that the government deposited in a fixed account Rs. 75,000.00 [little more than US $ 1000.00] in his name so that he could marry and start a family life. Now, he has married a woman – Tamla Ukayb said. Both Tamla Ukyab and Sant B. Gurung played a vital role for the recent study and preservation of Kusunda language. We are thankful of them.
Since, Raja Mama Kusunda had received wide media coverage in the country. Kusundas got prominence which led me to participate in the 4th Harvard Rountable in 2002. After the roundtable, I wrote a few articles on the Kusunda and published in major dailies from Kathamadu. People began taking deep concern in the Kusundas.
Almost one year after the discovery of Raja Mama Kusunda, All Nepal Indigenous Peoples’ Convention, [ANIPC], one of the non-governmental organizations of indigenous peoples, organized its second national convention in Kathmandu in April 2001. Hundreds of representatives from among different indigenous peoples’ communities in the country participated in the convention. The convention organizers told they wanted to hear and understand the issues of the indigenous tribal communities directly from their own mouths.
Lil Bahadur Kusunda, born in 1949
Therefore, the convention organizers had also invited Lil Bahadur Kusunda and his middle son Setu Lal Kusunda from Tiram Ward 6. Budhi Chaur, of Pyuthan district. Lil Bahadur Kusunda had arrived Kathmandu with his particular traditional Kusunda weapons: bow and arrow. This Kusunda has also forgotten most of the Kusunda words as the Raja Mama Kusunda of Tanahu.
Lil Bahadur Kusunda has married a non-Kusunda woman and has 18 members in his family. He told me he lived in the jungle for 28 years. He doesn’t speak any Kusunda. Since his is an inter-caste marriage, his children and grand-children are therefore also unknown about the Kusunda language. He told huru for bow and guru for the arrow. Actually, in Kusunda bow is called tut and arrow - mui.
Chepangs, Rautes, and Kusundas:
Chepangs were also a hunting group of people in the central hills of Nepal whose population size is 52237 [2001]. Nowadays, they don’t hunt. They live in Gorkha, Dhadhing, Makawanpur and Chitwan districts – quite close to Kathmandu. These Chepangs speak one of the TB languages.
Rautes, population 658 [2001], are another group of foraging tribal community in western part of Nepal. They speak Khamchi, a TB language and roam, even today, amongst the deep forests in western part of Nepal. In the jungle they make huts tying together some vines with branches of small trees. Such huts are called ‘rautees’. These Rautes run away from the Kusundas as the latter treat them as their ‘subjects’. Rautes hunt monkeys and eat them.
The Chepangs do not call themselves Thakuris while Rautes and Kusundas have taken Thakuri surnames as: Shahi, Sen, Malla and Shah. A Thakuri erupts in bad temper when one talks of Kusunda in front of him. I had that kind of experience in one of my expeditions in search for Kusundas. The Thakuris are derogatively called ‘Kusundas’. The Kusunda origin story as documented by Reinhard and Toba tells Kusunda, Thakuri and Magars are blood brothers. This story, however, is in indigenous Kusunda language, sounds fairly recent.
Kusundas used to have some taboos: as they would not touch cow-dongs, would not eat or drink anything put in a milk pot. In other words, they would not eat anything if you have put some milk in a jar or bowl or whatever and used it later to give some rice or pulses to the Kusundas. The Kusundas would not live inside a house or hut tied with ropes or vines. The Kusundas would not kill monkeys for meat. These are the striking differences between Kusundas and Rautes. Kusundas do not say themselves Kusunda. They shun this word. In their own language they prefer calling themselves a ‘myahaq’ – a King or ‘gelang de mahaq’ - king of forest. Could this ‘Kusunda’ title be given by some other advanced communities to the Kusundas?
Kusundas, Mundas, Nihals and Jarawas:
While talking of Kusundas, the Mundas also come into our mind. The Santhal or Santhali is one of the Munda languages. Santhals have even developed a script of their own. This is also a pronominalized language.
Sanskrit and Prakrit have derived hundreds of words from the Proto-Munda [Kuiper,1948]. However, the Proto-Munda ‘ka-la(n)ja’ and certain words such as: Sanskrit ‘al-in-jara’, Pali ‘al-an-jara’ and Nihali ‘len-jo’ pose some problems to designate Munda as Austro-Asiatic [Witzel 2000] . Also the view of having some links in Nihali and Kusunda [Fleming, 1996] has also been contested that ‘Nihali no language at all but a `so-called' or seeming language’ [Zide, 1995 ?].
The photo below of a Munda king also looks different than both the Raja Mama and Lil Bahadur Kusunda.
Picture (courtesy HRCBM-Khulna): The poverty striken Anil Munda and his wife. Mr. Anil Munda is the king of Mundas at Koyera, Khulna of Bangladesh http://www.hrtribune.com/Munda/Munda_part-I.html
The picture below of two Jarawa young boys actually does not look like that of Raja Mama Kusunda and Lil Bahadur Kusunda. The boys in this picture look South Indian stock while both Raja Mama and Lil Bahadur Kusunda have longer hair and different facial feature.
Photo courtesy: Ausaf Sayeed http://www.ausafsayeed.com/jarawa.html
A Designated Language Isolate:
The Kusunda has been designated a language isolate. The most recent study carried out by David E. Watters and others again designate Kusunda as a language isolate. He writes the Kusunda has no relationship with any other languages in the world.
There is enough Kusunda vocabulary on the Kusunda language. And, there has been a lot more works on the Kusunda being left undone after Hodgson and Reinhard & Toba.
Until recently the most popular Kusunda sentences among linguists used to be chi kadi gaman (I rice eat), git kadi gaman (He rice eats) and nu kadi naman (You rice eat). Now David Watters has worked on this and finds five basic pronouns as: chi ‘I’, tok ‘we’, nu ‘you’, nok ‘you (plural)’ and gina ‘he, she, that’ and the equivalent of ‘they’ gina dzina ‘they two’, gina da ‘they three’ gina pyangdzang ‘they four’, gina pandang ‘they five’ and gina many, ‘they many’. He offers the following sentences:
First Person:
t-am-an sl ‘I ate’
t-am-da-n pl ‘We ate’
Second Person
n-am-an sl ‘You ate’
n-am-da-n pl ‘You ate’
Third Person:
g-am-an sl ‘He/she ate’
g-am-da-n pl ‘They ate’
The singular morpheme -an is replaced by -du and plural morpheme –da-n by da-k in future tense below:
First Person:
t-am-du sl. ‘I will eat’
t-am-da-k pl. ‘We will eat’
Second Person:
n-am-du sl. ‘You will eat’
n-am-dak pl. ‘ You [pl] will eat’
Third Person:
g-am-du sl. ‘He/she will eat’
g-am-da- k ‘They will eat’
The above Kusunda sentence ‘chi [kadi] gaman’ for English ‘I eat [rice]’ also sometimes spoken ‘taman’. And while speaking, Kusundas say ‘taman’ only leaving ‘kadi = rice’. A phonetic change ‘t’ > ‘ch’ or ‘ch’ > ‘t’ takes place. The Kusunda pronoun ‘chi’ meaning ‘I’ changes into ‘ti’, gets pronominalized ‘taman’ and appears to be a single word.
Kusunda: a Mother language ?
There has been no agreement on whether Kusunda is a language isolate or otherwise. Now, we have enough data with which we can tell that Kusunda doesn’t have any relationship with any other languages in the world, however by accident or whatever, there are quite a number of Kusunda words among different languages.
The Kusunda ‘mai = mother’, ‘suta= thread’, ‘mahi= water buffalo’ and ‘miza or azaki (cf. Sanskrit aja ) = goat are interesting to note here. John Bengston attributes Kusunda ‘mai’ to Proto-Human.
The Kusunda pronoun ‘nu’ and Jarawa, a language spoken in the South and Middle Andaman ‘ni’ offer same meaning - the second person ‘you’. The Jarawa ‘onnaho = tooth’ and Kusunda ‘ouho = tooth’ look alike while Jarawa ‘na:ppo= fish’ and Kusunda ‘nasa= fish’ have nasal sounds in their initial syllables.
John McWhorter points out that Kusunda and Oko-Juwoi, a language once spoken in India, have some similarities by close accident or whatever. He finds Kusunda ‘chi= I’ and Juwoi ‘tui= I’, Kusunda ‘chee = my’ and Juwoi ‘tii-ye = my’ and Kusunda ‘gida= he/she’ and Juwoi ‘kite= my’.
We now understand Kusunda has given its cognates to so many of different languages and therefore it would be reasonable to designate it a Mother Language or similar other title than any isolate. This language is not in isolation but has shared with many others in the world.
References:
Fleming, Harold 1996: Looking to the West and North: Nihali and Kusunda Find Links Mother Tongue II, Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, Issue II ( December 1996).
Hodgson, Brian H. 1857: Journal of Asiatic Society - Bengal and Asian Educational Services C-2/15, SDA, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016
Justin, Anstice 2000: Who are the Jarawa? http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/Justin/art-justs.htm#1
Kuiper, F.B.J. 1948: Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, Verhandeling der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie Van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks Deel Li, No. 3] http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/dictionary/9MUNDA.HTM
McWhorter, John 2004: Can relationships between languages be determined after 80,000 years?
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001037.html
Rana, B. K. 2002: New Materials on the Kusunda Language: The Fourth Harvard Roundtable on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia Cambridge MA, USA May 11 - 13, 2002. http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/kusunda.htm, http://nepalresearch.org/publications/kusunda_materials.pdf
__________ 2003: Recently Recorded Materials on the Kusunda Language: The Fifth Harvard Roundtable on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia Cambridge MA, USA May 10 - 11, 2003 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Langhali_Forum/files/
___________ 2005: Additional Data and Analysis on Kusunda (Nepal) – Mother Tongue, Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, Issue X 2005
Reinhard, J. and Toba, S. 1970: A Preliminary Linguistic Analysis and Vocabulary of the Kusunda Language’ Summer institute of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. September 1970.
Sayeed, Ausaf : Jarawa Tribes -- Confluence of The Present with The Past http://www.ausafsayeed.com/jarawa.html
Watters, David E. et.al 2005 : Notes on Kusunda grammar ( a language isolate of Nepal) – National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Witzel, Michael 2000: The Languages of Harappa [February 17, 2000]
Zide, Norman 1995 [?]: The Status of Nihali, University of Chicago http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/austroasiatic/AA/nihali
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'माओवादीले हतियार र कांग्रेसले राजामोह त्याग्नुपर्छ'
वनको राजस्व माओवादी कब्जामा
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Game Theory – The Classic Game is Prisoners’ Dilemma
Given the current strain condition between madhesis and paharis, it’s very difficult to trust each other. One may, for assurance sake, argue any thing. But the real fact is paharis had shown no fate on madhesis since last more than 260 years. As a result of which, madhesis could not find any responsibility in state defense, diplomacy, administration, and government representation. On the other hand, madhesi experience of paharis attitude and behavior for last 260 years has made them perceive this attitude as colonial strategy of pahari, which madhesi is not unwilling to accept any more. Breaking the deadlock of last 260, madhesis are asking right to rule themselves.
Explaining in term of Prisoner’s dilemma, madhesis are also facing dilemma. Madhesi's are not able to make strategy for future course, whether they should maintain status quo or march forward for non cooperation. Applying Game theory, one can predict that, the outcome will be the strategy for protecting individual interest. Madhesi and pahari, each one will apply individual rationality, and thus will maximize individual payoff. In the condition of mutual doubt, the resulting outcome is no-cooperation with each other, ultimately resulting in a more strain which can finally lead to a political and geographical line between madhesis and paharis.
The local version of game theory is also quite common.. It is said that, 1 and 1 when comes together, can make power of 11. But, it is only possible if both of them work and cooperate with each other. But if any group betrays, then there will be unequal division of payoff, i.e one group taking more that 5.5 point of payoff from power. This is where discontent arises. If the suppressed group continues to get less than 5.5 point of payoff from power, the relationship will not last longer.
This is the condition between madhesis and paharis right now. Paharis want to take more share of payoff, where as the relationship is believed to be on equality basis. Now even if madhesis is getting some payoff on investment of 1 but is less than 5.5 point of payoff from power, madhesis will not want to be in relationship any further.
The above two concept explains to most extend, the strategy madhesis will adopt further. State restructuring will be the minimum and first step in this direction. Given that majority madhesis are distributed along a specific geography, state restructuring will only ensure of regional administrative equality, but other issues that will be left are participation in state defense, diplomatic and central resource planning & distribution.
Ram Manohar Sah
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