subjective analysis that, since the Bhumij seem more willing to spread out and live among various groups, their speech has borrowed more heavily from regional languages especially Bengali at the time
of their study than have other Mundari speeches.
1.2.6 Relationship between Bhumij and Mundari
The relationship between Bhumij and Mundari has been addressed progressively, since the time of Risley 1891, reprinted in 1981:117, who wrote, “There can be no doubt that the Bhumij are closely allied to,
if not identical with, the Mundas; but there is little to show that they ever had a distinct language of their own.” In 1927 Grierson reported that the Bhumij tend to speak whatever Munda language is
dominant in the area, and that his survey yielded no information to suggest the existence of a separate dialect: “The obvious reason is that Bhumij is not the name of a dialect but of a tribe” Grierson 1927,
reprinted in 1967:95. Evidence from more recent linguistic studies by Bhattacharya 1975 and Nigam and Dasgupta 1964 described dialectal differences between the two. It was the recommendation of
Nigam and Dasgupta that further studies be done among the Bhumij from a triangular approach of the three major disciplines of “linguistics, psychology and anthropology” 1964:196 in order to round out
understanding of Bhumij speech patterns.
One such aspect, which the survey team felt was lacking, is an investigation of intelligibility. The subjective analysis that one group of people understand another group can have a range of
interpretations that often have more to do with social issues than with linguistic or psychological issues. In addition, often linguistic descriptions alone give a false impression that two groups can understand
each other, when actually the complexities of the spoken language make understanding difficult. As a result, it was felt necessary to test the hypothesis that Bhumij and Munda are mutually intelligible. Due
to time constraints, only one direction of intelligibility was investigated: the intelligibility of Mundari by the Bhumij.
1.3 Previous survey
A sociolinguistic survey, similar in type to this current study, was carried out primarily among the Ho people between February and April of 1989. Additional research among various groups was conducted in
Mayurbhanj district, Orissa, during September 1989. Reports were compiled by Bryan Varenkamp 1989, 1990. During the course of these investigations, researchers collected data from several Bhumij-speaking
locations, including questionnaires, wordlists, a narrative story to test intelligibility, and other information that was of value to this project. Conclusions formulated as a result of those surveys
recommended that it would be profitable to conduct an extensive survey among the Bhumij as soon as possible.
1.4 Purpose and goals
The purpose of this sociolinguistic survey among the Bhumij community was to assess the need for literature development and literacy in the vernacular. A secondary purpose of the project originally, but
subsequently not pursued, was to ascertain the relationship between the languages of the Khewari sub- branch of the Northern Munda language family.
In order to guide the course of the investigation, the following goals were devised. They are stated below as originally formulated and are listed in general order of importance to the project:
• To evaluate comprehension of Mundari speech by Bhumij speakers.
• To determine the number of Bhumij speakers and the geographical areas they inhabit.
• To identify the domains of language use and ascertain the vitality of the Bhumij language.
• To investigate attitudes of the Bhumij towards their mother tongue, other languages and different
scripts.
• To study the differences, if any, among the various speech varieties spoken by the Bhumij
population; and to determine if any particular variety is considered standard, central or pure. •
To investigate the degree of intelligibility between Ho, Santali, Mundari and Bhumij. •
To look into the extent and level of community bilingualism in Oriya, Hindi and Bengali.
2 Linguistic aspects of Bhumij speech found in this survey
2.1 Lexical similarity comparison
