Ku͂ɽux and Kuɳha are North Dravidian indigenous languages spoken by the Oraon and Kisan communities, respectively, in the Chotanagpur plateau, primarily in Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and in areas outside India, including Nepal and Bangladesh. The origin myths of both communities reveal that both communities sprang from a common proto-language. Baxla (2015) states 75% of the vocabulary has a similarity index between the two languages. The present study highlights the phonological variations between the two languages. It provides a clear understanding of the phonological systems of both languages, in particular, and of Dravidian studies in general.

The Kurux Language: Grammar, Texts and Lexicon by Masato Kobayashi and Bablu Tirkey is a comprehensive description of Kurux, a northern Dravidian tribal language with two million speakers. Isolated in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Eastern India, Kurux shows a unique mixture of archaic Dravidian traits and innovations induced by contact with neighboring Indo-Aryan and Munda languages, and has posed questions regarding language change and Dravidian subgrouping.

Making use of first-hand materials from their fieldwork, Kobayashi and Tirkey analyze the complexities of the language in the grammar section. This book also contains transcribed and glossed texts, and a lexicon with more than 9,000 entries, and serves both as reference for linguists and learning resource for students.

* https://www.academia.edu/49047599/Vitality_and_Endangerment_of_Contemporary_Kurukh?sm=b

* https://www.academia.edu/128767631/Shaping_the_status_of_indigenous_languages_through_policy_Kurukh_in_Bengal

I'm listing here some material obtained from SIL International site about the Dhangar-Kurux variety spoken in Nepal and the Kurux of Bangladesh:

• Shackelford, Sarah R., Janel Swenson, Ram Chaudhary, Loren Maggard (researchers). "The Kurux (Uranw) Language in Nepal and its Relationship to Kurukh in India: A Sociolinguistic Study". 2022. Journal of Language Survey Reports, Language Assessment, Sociolinguistics - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/93057
• Gordon, Kent , Phonology of Dhangar-Kurux , 1976 - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/36922
• The Kurux of Bangladesh: A Sociolinguistic Survey - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/41654

Proto‑Slavic topographic and hydrographic lexis This article is a contribution to the historical lexicology of the Proto‑Slavic language. It analyzes the etymologies of 110 Proto‑Slavic lexemes in the field of topography and hydrography and classifies them into chronological layers. It draws a distinction between lexemes inherited from the Proto‑Indo‑European language and the Balto‑Slavic community and the numerous lexemes that were innovated during different periods of the Proto‑Slavic history. Some of these lexemes, created on the basis of Indo‑European roots and lexemes, must have arisen in the early period of the Proto‑Slavic language, though many more lexemes have a Slavic motivation. They developed in a later period of the Proto‑Slavic history or possibly at the time when the Proto‑Slavic language began to split into dialects. Lexemes without certain etymology have been addressed in the article separately.

EXPANSION OF THE SLAVIC TRIBES FROM AN ONOMASTIC AND PEDOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Geographical names are extremely helpful in giving evidence of early settlements and their inhabitants due to their solid anchorage in the landscape, even in the case of population changes. Through the investigation of these place names, information can be gathered not only on the name giver, but also on the settlers who took on the names later on. Therefore, it is considered that any linguistic investigation has to start from the river and place names of a region. The utilization of geographical names yields the following findings: — The centre of Old Slavic names is situated on the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains, approximately between Bukovina and Krakow; it is based on a substrate of older, Indo-European hydronyms. — The expansion of the East Slavic tribes bypasses the Pripyat Marshes and extends further through Central Russia and especially to the North and the East. — West Slavic settlers reach their new settlement areas through migration from Bohemia and further on to Saxonia and Thuringia, and also through Western Poland to Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. — The migration of the South Slavs takes place in two big, yet separate flows, on the one hand through the Moravian Gate to Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia, and on the other hand on the Eastern edge of the Carpathian Mountains to Serbia and Bulgaria

Abstract

The present study provides an etymological analysis of toponyms collected by Ptolemy from Northeast Europe, as known to him in the mid-second century CE. The territory studied roughly corresponds to contemporary Poland and part of the Czech Republic. The northernmost border of probable Celtic toponyms in the area of contemporary Poland may be determined between the 54th and 53rd latitudes (c. 53°30′).

Abstract

The present study confirms the traditionally proposed Celtic origin of proper names from the Danubian delta (Νουϊόδουνον, Ἀλιόβριξ, Βριτολάγαι = *Βριγολάται) and the upper Dniester (Καῤῥόδουνον). New candidates for Celtic toponyms are added from the area between the lower Dniester and Dnieper, namely Axiaces / Ἀξιάκης, Βάρσακον (better than Σάρβακον), Ἤρακτον, Λήινον πόλις, Μαιτώνιον, Νίοσσον. The last three place-names were already included by Holder (1904) in his Celtic corpus but without any concrete etymological support of such identification. These new etymological and geographical identifications shift the eastern border of the European Celts to the South Bug, according to Ptolemy a tributary of the Dnieper, although its name was unknown to him.

ABSTRACT

Indo-European Fire Rituals is a comparative study of Indo-European fire rituals from modern folklore and ethnography in Scandinavia and archaeological material in Europe from the Bronze Age onwards to the Vedic origins of cosmos in India and today’s cremations on open pyres in Hinduism.

Exploring Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices, this book analyses fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. It asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Fire as an agent and divinity was fundamental in all major sacrifices. In Europe, ritual fires in relation to agriculture and fertility may also explain the enigma of cremation. Cremated remains were ground and used in fertility rituals, and ancestral fires played an essential role in metallurgy and the creation of cosmos. Thus, the role of fire rituals in culture and cosmology enables a unique understanding of historic developmental processes.

For students and academics studying Indo-European culture history from the Bronze Age onwards, this book has a broad interdisciplinary audience including archaeology, ethnography, folklore, religious and Indo-European studies.

ABSTRACT

Beginning in the early fourteenth century, Tamil poets created a prolific literary genre called tūtu (from Sanskrit dūta), messenger poems related indirectly to Kalidasa’s prototype but with a grammar and structure of their own. There is also a secondary genre, viṟali viṭu tūtu, “messages sent by a dancer.” This chapter examines two typical tūtu works from the region of Sivagangai in southern Tamil Nadu, traces their intricate relations with the classical courier poems in Sanskrit and other languages, and focuses on the specific features of the Tamil genre—the beginning of the underlying narrative in an ulā progression by a god or a king, the love-sickness of a young woman who catches sight of this ravishing male figure, the series of attributes the latter necessarily possesses, and the concrete sign—a garland worn by the god/king—that the messenger has to bring to the sender as a sign that the message has been delivered. An excursus looks at an embedded tūtu in the Telugu Vasu-caritramu of Bhaṭṭamūrti.

ABSTRACT

There is a dearth of archaeological vestiges for Hindu temples prior to the 6th century in the Tamil-speaking South, although we know through literature and epigraphy that they were built at least by the early 5th century. This may be explained by the fact that these monuments were made of perishable material, which did not survive the centuries. However, many temples that are scattered around the holy Kaveri river are still extant, because many of them were reconstructed in stone, a long-lasting and prestigious material, in the 10th century. Analysing the epigraphy of some sites of this region, Valérie Gillet attempts here to outline different processes lying behind the reconstruction of those temples. She investigates more particularly the site of Govindapputtūr, where an important character emerges in the epigraphy as a key figure of the locality and explores how the endeavour of reconstructing a temple in stone appears to be, besides being an act of devotion, a process to gain and establish one’s power.

ABSTRACT

Every style of building construction reflects a clearly distinctive principle that represents a particular culture and era. In India, the temple and its associated structures evolved with time and the most identifiable difference is in their structure. Specifically in Kerala, a southern state of India, temple architecture is different from that in neighbouring states due to the obvious reason of its geography and various other factors. Gopurams (entrance gateways) are the principal structure of any temple complex. This led to the investigation of the difference in the form of a gopuram in terms of its material and construction. The topic demands a literature study of Dravidian and Kerala gopurams, followed by case studies of different types to support the investigation. In this research, the major reason behind the differences was found to lie in the geography of the state, which itself can be categorised into three different regions within the state such as Malabar, Kochi and Travancore. In addition, an analysis is done on the proportions of the gopurams. This is done by taking into account the dimensions of the temple as well as the structural elements of the gopuram. The conclusion summarises the principles of planning, differences in form, and the scope for future studies.

Ramaswamy, Vijaya. “Chaste Widows, Cunning Wives, and Amazonian Warriors: Imaging of Women in Tamil Oral Traditions.” Asian Ethnology 69, no. 1 (2010): 129–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27821484.

This article is an attempt to cut through the monolithic imaging of women in traditional Tamil societies. In the process, the study critically explores a whole trope of representations of women ranging from chaste wives to deviant and/or cunning women. In studying the Alii or Pavakkkodi myths, this article also attempts to analyze the morphology of patriarchal taming, both of the myth and its female protagonist. In moving from oral recitations to chapbooks, the article also looks at the complexities of the slippages between orality and textuality as well as between the written text and its dramatized performances.

Sankar, Lokasundari Vijaya. “The Importance of Ethnic Identity When Language Shift Occurs: A Study of the Malaysian Iyers.” In National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities: Speaking in Many Tongues, edited by Dipika Mukherjee and Maya Khemlani David. Amsterdam University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mvhg.6.

David, Maya Khemlani, Caesar Dealwis, and Ponmalar N. Alagappar. “Ethnic Identity in the Tamil Community of Kuching.” In National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities: Speaking in Many Tongues, edited by Maya Khemlani David and Dipika Mukherjee. Amsterdam University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mvhg.7.

Nambiar, Mohana. “The Impact of Language Policy on Language Shifts in Minority Communities: Focus on the Malayalee Community in Malaysia.” In National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities: Speaking in Many Tongues, edited by Dipika Mukherjee and Maya Khemlani David. Amsterdam University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mvhg.12.

Coelho, Gail. “Placing Indigeneity: Betta Kurumba Narratives of Territory and Clan Structure.” Asian Ethnology 73, no. 1/2 (2014): 39–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43150503.

The Betta Kurumbas are one of more than sixteen indigenous group Nilgiri-Wayanad hills of southern India, a region that, since the nin century, has experienced wide-ranging cultural and political change ing extensive immigration by people from other parts of India. Thi describes the Betta Kurumbas' view of their homeland, based on the mation contained in native -language narratives in which they descr social organization into clans and their spiritual beliefs. The narrati vide a glimpse into the Betta Kurumba perspective on the changes t overrun the region, changes that have rendered them - along w Nilgiri-Wayanad groups - politically and socially marginalized in th homeland.