What is it about?
Until around 2015, the use of language names like #Balmiki or #Valmiki is quite common in India and available with linguistic description (see, e.g., M.W.M. Yeatts 1932; Raymond B. Christmas & J. Elisabeth Christmas 1971–1975; Nilakantha Dolia 2009, and A. Usha Devi & D. Chandrashekhara Reddy 2015). But after that, averring the “discovery” of a new language “Walmiki” in Odisha by Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016) has gained a high concentration of discontentment among the academia of Indian linguistics.
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Why is it important?
The study grows out of such distortion and intervention done by Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016), to ascertain the ethnolinguistic position of Balmiki or Walmiki, spoken in Odisha, vis-à-vis Kupia, spoken in Andhra Pradesh states of India, using bibliographical evidence. The objective is to see if they are one language with different names or absolutely different languages. This paper also examines the methodological veracity of the discovery claim of Walmiki from Odisha (in Mohanty 2016). Serious linguists and heterogeneous readers, regardless of their ideological affiliations, would benefit from this study and be able to contribute further to the discourse. In this study, both linguists of Odisha have convincingly established that these languages are already identified long back and studied by different scholars. The discovery claim of Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016) can be dubbed as a classic case of public fooling due to the lapse of genuine reporting in the digital era. Mohanty (2016) has made the best use of the lack of public attention and discourse about these languages to make false claims of discovery.
Perspectives
Renaming and giving an independent name (i.e. Walmiki) to this language by another means of linguistic definition is not in pari materia with the existing knowledge. This brings to the conclusion that Valmiki or Balmiki is an indigenous community of Odisha and that it is the same as Kupiya/Valmiki spoken in Andhra Pradesh. We believe that these epithets, Balmiki/Valmiki/Walmiki, are considered (by some of their neighbours) to be eponymous in the manner of pronunciation variants, largely adopted by ethnologists and linguists. Considering the different sources discussed in their paper, including the numerous references, they are at the point to refute the authoritarian declaration made by Pachananan Mohanty (2016) of “discovering” Walmiki, a new language of Odisha. It stands as incorrect within the areas of linguistic research. Therefore, any such incumbent needs to be careful in showcasing their phenomenal works with sufficient linguistic proofs, for otherwise all their celebrative will bring forth the whole phonetic chart into serpent chart. Before any disaster starts and sinks out, let us all not be myopic – to the youngster, and fellow enablers.
Dr. Biswanandan Dash
Centurion University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: An ethnolinguistic repositioning of the Balmiki language of Odisha, Asian Languages and Linguistics, December 2020, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/alal.20018.das.
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