MUNDAS. The Munda (Mmtc/d) family is the least numer ous of the linguistic families of India. It comprises several dialects spoken in the two Chota Nagpur plateaux, the adjoining districts of Madras and the Central Provinces, and in the Mahadeo hills. Santa1i, Munclari, Bhumij, Birhar, Koda, HO, Asuri and Korwa are only slightly differing forms of one and the same language, which can be called Kherwari, a name borrowed from Santall tradition. Kherwari is the principal Munda language, and quite 88% of all the speakers of Munda tongues belong to it. The Korwa dialect, spoken in the western part of Chota Nagpur, con nects Kherwari with the remaining Munda languages. Of these it is most closely related to the Kurka language of the Mahadeo hills in the Central Provinces. Kurku, in its turn. in important points agrees with Kharia and Juang, and Kharia leads over to Savara and Gadaba. The two last-mentioned forms of speech, which are spoken in the north-east of the Madras Presidency, have been much influenced by Dravidian languages.
The Munda dialects are, as a rule, only found in the hills and jungles, while the plains and valleys are inhabited by people speaking some Aryan language. When brought into close contact with Aryan tongues Munda forms of speech have been partly superseded by Aryan dialects. Thus some Aryanized tribes in northern India have formerly belonged to the Munda stock. Such are the Cheros of Behar and Chota Nagpur, the Kherwars, who are found in the same localities, in Mirzapur and elsewhere, the Savaras, who formerly extended as far north as Shahabad, and others. An old Munda element is present in some Tibeto-Burman dialects spoken in the Himalayas from Bashahr eastwards.
They are short, dark skinned, broad nosed, with curly hair, with medium to long heads—features possessed by the jungle tribes of southern India, the Veddas, Sakai, etc.
The Munda family of languages in India proper belongs to the Austro-Asiatic division of the Austric family. They must have been settled in India from a very early period. The Sabaras, the ancestors of the Savaras, are already mentioned in old Vedic literature.
The Munda languages abound in vowels, and also possess a richly developed system of consonants. They avoid beginning a word with more than one consonant. They shorten short conso nants at the end of words. The usual stopped consonants—viz., k, c (i.e., English ch), t and p----are formed by stopping the current of breath at different points in the mouth, and then letting it pass out with a kind of explosion. In the Mundy language this opera tion can be abruptly checked half-way, so that the breath does not touch the organs of speech in passing out. The result is a sound that makes an abrupt impression on the ear, and has been described as an abrupt tone. Such sounds are common in the Mundy languages. They are usually written k', c', t' and p'. Similar sounds are also found in the Mon-Khmer languages and in Indo-Chinese.
The vowels of consecutive syllables to a certain extent approach each other in sound. Thus in Kherwari the open sounds d (nearly English a in all) and a (the a in care) agree with each other and not with the corresponding close sounds o (the o in pole) and e (the e in pen). The Santali passive suffix ok' accordingly becomes dk' after a or d; compare siin-dk', go, but dal-ok', to be struck.
Words are formed from monosyllabic bases by means of various additions, suffixes (such as are added after the base), prefixes (which precede the base) and infixes (which are inserted into the base itself). Suffixes play a great role in the inflexion of words, while prefixes and infixes are of greater importance as formative additions. Compare Kurku k-on, Savara son; Kharia ro-mong, Kherwari mu, nose; Santali bor, to fear; bo-to-r, fear; dal, to strike; da-pa-1, to strike each other.
The various classes of words are not clearly distinguished. The same base can often be used as a noun, an adjective or a verb. The words simply denote some being, object, quality, action or the like, but they do not tell us how they are conceived.