- Kusunda
The Kusunda or Ban Raja ("people of the forest"), known to themselves as the "Mihaq" or "Myahq" (< *"Myahak") [ [http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/kusunda.htm B. K. Rana (Linguistic Society of Nepal), "New Materials on Kusunda Language"] (Presented to the Fourth Round Table International Conference on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA. May 11 - 13, 2002)] , are a tribe of former
hunter-gatherer s of the forests of westernNepal , who are now intermarried with neighboring peoples and settled in villages.The Kusunda are followers of
animism , thoughHindu overtones may be seen in their religious rituals. According to the 2001 Nepal census, there are a total of 164 ethnic Kusunda of whom 160 were Hindus and 4 were Buddhists. The Nepali word "Kusunda" originally meant "savage", as the neighboringChepang and other groups traditionally thought of them as savages, but the Kusunda do not mind the term when speaking Nepali.Kusunda language
Watters (2005) published a mid-sized grammatical description of the
Kusunda language , plus vocabulary, which shows that Kusunda is indeed a language isolate. The language ismoribund , with no children learning it, as all Kusunda speakers have married outside their ethnicity.References
*D. E. Watters (2005): [http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/grammars/HLA03.html Notes on Kusunda Grammar: A language isolate of Nepal. Himalayan Linguistics Archive 3. 1-182.] NFDIN Katmandu, ISBN 99946-35-35-2.
External links
* [http://nepaliaashish.wordpress.com/2006/08/26/genetic-evidence-for-origins-of-ban-rajas-kusundas-of-nepal/ Genetic evidence for origins of Ban Rajas (Kusundas) of Nepal]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kgg Ethnologue] reports the Kusunda language to be extinct.
* P. Whitehouse, T. Usher, M. Ruhlen & William S.-Y. Wang (2004): [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/15/5692 Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific language in Nepal] , PNAS 101:5692–5695 (free access) attempts to link Kusunda to other languages, using old data.
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