Kurumba

Documenting endangered languages of the Nilgiris

groups. They show important dialectal vari‐ Kurumba in the Nilgiris (South India) ation, due notably to the influence of one or The Kurumba languages are spoken in the Nil‐ the other of the dominant state languages. giris area of South India. The region spreads However, they are characterized by the pres‐ from the Nilgiris, a hilly plateau (2000‐2600 ence of archaisms and mixed features which m), towards the , into a vast prevent them from being further classified stretch of tropical forest (500‐1500m) partly under one of the two main sub‐branches of included in the Unesco Nilgiri Biosphere Re‐ SDr.I: Tamil/Malayam‐Kodagu or . serve. For centuries, this inhospitable region Along with the upper Nilgiri languages, Toda, was sparsely inhabited by very small and mo‐ Kota, and Badagu, they are remnants of an bile tribal groups, mainly Kurumbas. The earlier dialectal continuum of the region, forest was their home and nature provided predating the main Tamil/Kannada split. their livelihood until the 19th century when Mullu Kurumba couple in front their house intrusive modernisation (roads, new settlers) began to take over their space and disrupt covered’ in the 1960s, still maintain the their way of life. The region is now divided hunter‐gatherer tradition. into three states, , and , each of them listing several Kur‐ The Jenu Kurumbas of Masinagudi (Nilgiri umba groups under various ethnonyms : Jenu lowlands) inTamil Nadu and the Jenu Kurubas (‘honey’), Mullu (‘thorn’), Betta (‘hill’) Kur‐ of H.D. Kote in Karnataka, as well as the Kat‐ tunaikas in Tamil Nadu/Kerala, are part of the core cluster of Kurumbas (about 5000 people) and representative of the transitional situ‐ ation of small tribal groups slowly shifting from swidden cultivation and forest‐based Discourse in a Jenu Kurumba death ritual livelihood to new local wage‐labour oppor‐ tunities (in the Forest Department, planta‐ tions, agriculture and various daily‐paid The documentation presents audio and audi‐ ovisual recordings (including narrations, dia‐ logues, songs, and ritual discourses) on the cultural fields mentioned above. Annotations were done with Elan. Lexicons and grammar sketches drawn from these primary data will offer matters for comparative studies.

Kurumba languages in the Nilgiris (South India) umbas/Kurubas, and Chola/Kadu/Kattu (‘forest’) Naikas (‘lords’ of the forest) among them. New trends include development Alu Kurumba Family policies (settling the people in government‐ built houses or ‘colonies’, schooling in the state language), wildlife protection (creating occupations). The Alu Kurumbas follow the ‘inviolate’ zones where people are removed same path of socio‐economic transformation, from their subsistence environment) and the but they have closer cultural ties with the development of tourism, further speeding up upper Nilgiri peoples. Recording a story in Jenu Kuruba the disruption of the traditional social ties and ways of life of the Kurumbas. The Mullu Kurumbas, a numerically larger community engaged in settled agriculture in Team the Wayanad in Kerala, are rapidly shifting to Documentation a modern way of life. The Kurumba project, presented jointly by Prof. Frank Heidemann, Institute of Social The project documents five groups living in The documentation focuses on specific cul‐ and Cultural Anthropology, Universtity of Mu‐ separate locations and representing distinct tural features (hunting, fishing, honey and nich, Germany and Dr. Christiane Pilot‐ socio‐cultural situations, ranging from the other forest products collection for subsist‐ Raichoor, Lacito‐CNRS, Villejuif, France, is most traditional way of life to an advanced ence or trade), day‐to‐day life (habitat, carried on in collaboration with team mem‐ integration in the modern regional set up. dress, food, child care and others) and more bers from Europe: formal events (festivals, weddings, healing Prof. Ulrich Demmer, Munich University, Ger‐ The Cholanaikas (fewer than 300 people) of and death rituals). many, for Jenu Kurumba, Nilambur, the ‘Cavemen of Kerala’ ‘dis‐ Oriana Reid Collins, PhD candidate, Aix‐Mar‐ seille University, France, for sociolinguistics, and India: Prof. R. Muralidharan, Thanjavur University for Cholanaika, Prof. N. Rajasekharan Nair, Annamalai Uni‐ versity, for Mullu Kurumba, Prof. B.K. Ravindranath, Mysore University, for Jenu Kuruba.

ELAN File of a Jenu Kurumba narrative CONTACT ADDRESS Christiane Pilot‐Raichoor ([email protected]) Language Linguistically, Kurumba, as well as the state Lacito‐CNRS languages of the region, Tamil, and 7 rue Guy Moquet Kannada, belong to the Southern branch 94800 Villejuif (SDr.I) of the Dravidian language family found France in the Indian sub‐continent from Afganisthan Tel. 00 33 1 49583778 /Fax 00 33 1 49583779 to Sri Lanka, but spoken dominantly only in Cholanaika man with traditional basket, used for gathering, transport of goods and households when shifting between South India. Kurumba is a cover term for the Ulrich Demmer, LMU Munich caves and temporarily huts varieties of language spoken by the Kurumba (ulrich.demmer@t‐online.de)