Himalayan Linguistics

Kharia is a South Munda language spoken primarily in the southwestern districts of the state of Jharkhand in central eastern India, as well as in the adjacent districts in eastern Chattisgarh and northwestern Orissa. It is also spoken in Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, Nepal and elsewhere. Its closest relative is Juang, spoken in Orissa. Kharia is the only South Munda language spoken in Jharkhand and is also the only South Munda language spoken in the direct vicinity of the North Munda languages, most notably Mundari, which is spoken in many of the same villages as Kharia in the more southerly Kharia-speaking areas, as well as the North Dravidian language Kurux, found more to the north.

The present study is a revision of the second volume of my Habilitationsschrift or “professorial dissertation” which was submitted at the University of Osnabrück in 2006 (Peterson, 2006). Volume I of that three-volume study was an extensive grammar, which is currently being reviewed (in revised form) for publication, while Volume III consisted of a collection of texts, glossed, annotated and translated into English.

This Kharia-English lexicon contains all of the morphemes found in the texts in Volume III of that study as well as many which occurred in conversations with native speakers. In addition, it contains all of the morphemes found in the texts in Pinnow (1965a; b), in the first half of the texts in Kerkeʈʈā (1990), as well as in the Kharia-English lexicon in Biligiri (1965). There are also a few entries from Roy & Roy (1937) and Malhotra (1982).