The Kusunda or Ban Raja ("people of the forest"), known to themselves as the Mihaq or Myahq (< *Myahak)[1], are a tribe of former hunter-gatherers of the forests of western Nepal, who are now intermarried with neighboring peoples and settled in villages. A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild Foraging and Hunting Nepal (नेपाल) is a Landlocked country in South Asia.
The Kusunda are followers of animism, though Hindu overtones may be seen in their religious rituals. Animism (from Latin anima ( Soul, Life) commonly refers to a religious belief that Souls or Spirits exist in Animals A Hindu ( Devanagari: हिन्दू is an adherent of the philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, a set of religious, Philosophical According to the 2001 Nepal census, there are a total of 164 ethnic Kusunda of which 160 were Hindus and 4 were Buddhists. The Nepali word Kusunda originally meant "savage", as the neighboring Chepang and other groups traditionally thought of them as savages, but the Kusunda do not mind the term when speaking Nepali. Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma Chepang is the commonly used name given to an indigenous ethnic group living in central and southern Nepal.
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. Kusunda is a Language isolate spoken by a handful of people in western Nepal. David E Watters, PhD is a Tibeto-Burman linguist and institute folklorist Kusunda is a Language isolate spoken by a handful of people in western Nepal. The language is moribund, with no children learning it, as all Kusunda speakers have married outside their ethnicity.
References
- D. E. Watters (2005): Notes on Kusunda Grammar: A language isolate of Nepal. Himalayan Linguistics Archive 3. 1-182. NFDIN Katmandu, ISBN 99946-35-35-2.
- ^ 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)
External links
- Genetic evidence for origins of Ban Rajas (Kusundas) of Nepal
- Ethnologue reports the Kusunda language to be extinct.
- P. Whitehouse, T. Usher, M. Ruhlen & William S. -Y. Wang (2004): 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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