Thus Badaga has developed over the centuries of near isolation characteristics that bring it closer to other languages of the Nilgiris, especially Kurumba, and has long been protected from the contact of intrusive languages. These populations found in the Nilgiris a naturally isolated refuge. It comes from the Kannada language spoken by people who emigrated in the 16th century. The Badaga Dravidian language (Kannada branch) of the southern group is spoken by about 140,000 speakers in the Nilgiris massif which rises to more than 2000 meters and is located on the borders of three states in southern India: Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This makes research on this language all the more urgent. The social changes linked to globalization and modernization, have increased contact and communication with outsiders, triggering a fast shift towards the surrounding dominant languages this also implied the loss of the peculiarities of minority languages. The political reorganisation that ensued split up the area into three distinct states, each one developing its own tribal welfare and schooling programmes where the state language, Tamil, Kannada or Malayalam was the principal language of communication. After India’s independence, various development programmes opened up the region to outside groups. The urgency of language documentation here is motivated by the fast disruption of the traditional social ties and ways of life, which nowadays is affecting these tribal people. In later decades, traditional ways of life and social ties among Badaga tribes have been impacted by the pressure of modern society. Contrary to the larger Dravidian languages used as lingua franca across southern India (such as Tamil, Kannada or Malayalam), Badaga lacks a writing system, and has remained unwritten to this day. Badaga then underwent the influence of the Kurumba languages also spoken in that area. When the British settled in the Nilgiri highlands, the four communities were still distinct in their culture, habitat and economy, yet they were closely linked by links of ritual trade and economy.īadaga is in fact an offshoot of the larger language Kannada it developed independently after a group of Kannada speakers left Karnataka in the 16th c., and migrated south to the isolated Nilgiri mountains. Their expansion pushed back the forest areas, forcing the Kurumba hunter-gatherers to retreat to lower terrain, at about 1300m. After their migration into the Nilgiris, the Badaga farmers settled in the highest zones – an area of agricultural land and grasslands located between 14m.
The three other tribes are more ancient: the Todas, essentially cattle breeders the Kotas, craftsmen and musicians and the Kurumbas, nomadic hunter-gatherers who have long lived in the Nilgiri mountains following a self-sufficient way of life. The Badagas, today the largest tribe, arrived into the area in the 16th century.
These “hill tribes”, as they used to be called, consist of four distinct communities. The Nilgiris, a mountainous area of western Tamil Nadu, were always sparsely inhabited by very small and mobile tribal groups, who were dependent mainly on the environment for subsistence. The Badaga area became divided across those three separate states upon India’s independence in 1947. Its exact location is in the Nilgiri mountains, in the state of Tamil Nadu, on the border with the states of Kerala and Karnataka. It is relatively close to Kannada, a much larger language with 40 million speakers. The language belongs to the Tamil–Kannada branch of South Dravidian. François.īadaga is a Dravidian language spoken by about 140,000 people in southern India.
Her analog recordings were digitized in 2020 with the help of SOAS and CNRS, and deposited by A. These legacy audio items were recorded in 1977 by the late Christiane Pilot-Raichoor (1951-2018), a French linguist working with French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in Paris-based dept.
Badaga tribe archive#
With a total of 93 minutes, this archive presents six stories, myths and legends of the Badagas, as well as a sung ballad – also an important part of the oral tradition. Although it was historically an offshoot of the larger Kannada language, its isolation in the mountains since the 16th century has allowed it to evolve separately – to the point that it now presents special features in phonology, morphology, syntax and phraseology. Alexandre François, Christiane Pilot-Raichoorīadaga is a Dravidian language spoken in the Nilgiri mountains of Tamil Nadu, in southern India.