THE PEOPLE
Khond Under another name. 'Poroja' is a term which has occasioned much confusion, as there are some seven kinds of Poroja people who speak several different dialects (see p. 86 below)which are apparently forms of Khond, Uriya, Gadaba and Kóya respectively. Bastari, Hindi and Chattisgarhi are rare and occur only in the north of Naurangpur taluk; in the Golgonda and Viravilli Agencies Telugu is spoken to the exclusion of all other languages; Savara is only used by the people of that tribe in the hills east of Gunupur and in the Pálkonda Agency; and Kóya only by the Kóyas of south Malkanagiri. The other tongues are not definitely localized. Lambádi is the vernacular of the pack-bullock traders called Lambádis, Banjáris, Brinjáris or Boipáris. Uriya has a strong resemblance to Hindostáni and Bengali, and any one acquainted with either of those vernaculars can readily pick it up. The written language differs even more than usual from that in everyday use. These numerous vernaculars belong to as many as three different linguistic families; for Bastari, Chattisgarhi, Hindi, Hindostáni and Lambádi are Áryan tongues; Khond, Kóya and Telugu are Dravidian; and Gadaba and Savara are classed as belonging to the Munda (Kolarian) family.
The great diversity of tongues in the Agency constitutes an immense hindrance to administration; the more so that (except Uriya, Telugu, Hindostáni and Hindi) the vernaculars in use have no written character and have been but little studied, and that, thanks to the isolation enforced by difficult country, a language often possesses several local dialects. The Khonds of the north of Bissamkatak, for example, can scarcely make themselves understood by the Khonds of the 3,000 feet plateau,while neither of them can converse without difficulty with the lowland Khonds along the eastern fringe of the hills or with the Khonds of Kálahandi. The Gadabas of the Jeypore country,again, speak a patois which is unintelligible to the members of the same caste living on the eastern slopes of the 3,000 feet plateau.
No trained philologist has ever worked at these less-known tongues or their dialects, and a wide field is awaiting exploration. It would probably be found that Kóya and the dialect of the Bhúmiyas of Naurangpur and Jeypore taluks, which are usually classified as forms of Góndi, are in reality nothing of the kind; that 'Poroja,' which has long been classed as a separate language, resolves itself into a series of dialects of recognized vernaculars; and that Gadaba is not a Kolarian tongue. An interesting point in several of these languages is
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