NAIKI OF CHANDA

by S. BHATTACHARYA

There is a small community of people called Da.rve Gonds found chiefly around Mul in the District of Chanda. 1 The name Darve Gond has led many scholars to tabulate this people as a section of the Gond tribe. ~ Another view seeks to identify them with the Mannes z who are said to have ruled this region before the Gonds. The Da.rves are also called Naiks or Naik Gonds from which one may ask whether they have any- thing to do with the Naikpo.ds of Warangal and Adilabad, the Naikras of Pasud and the Naiks of Gujarat. A Naik, however, is more fond of calfing himself Erku, compare Gorku and Korku, the former being another name for the Nahals. This people now speak Marathi as their principal language, although their traditional mother tongue which is still spoken among themselves by some Da.rve families, is an interesting Dravidian speech called Naiki. A study of this language may throw some light on the cultural affiliation of this people. In the previous century many of the minor tribal tongues spoken in the Gondi region, like Parji, Kolami and Naiki, were usually treated as dialects of Gondi. Our confusion in this matter was partially removed by the author of the Linguistic Survey of India, IV (1906), who separated Kolami, Bhili of Basim and Naiki from Gondi, treated them as "one and the same dialect", and placed them as a member of the Intermediate group of Dravidian speeches like Kui, Gondi, etc. 4 This view has been reiterated in the Introductory Part of LSI 5 although at page 83 of the book Kolami has been shown as an Andhra language along with Telugu, while Gondi and Kui have been tabulated there as Dravi.da languages.

See Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Chanda District, C.P., by Major C. B. Lucie Smith (1869), p. 49. 2 Tribesand Castes of the Central Provinces of India, by R. V. Russell and Hira Lal III, p. 64; Man in India, XXVII (1947), p. 132. 3 Censusoflndia, 1891, Central Provinces and Feudatories, Pt. I (1893), p. 507. 4 LS1, IV, pp. 561, 570. LS1, I, Part I, Introductory (1927), pp. 83, 89-90, 467, 487. 86 S. BHATTACHARYA

Parji has, however, been treated in both the volumes of LSI as a dialect of Gondi. Further investigations into these little-known of n have shown that Parji is not a dialect of Gondi, but an independent member of the Dravidian family of languages. It has also been established that Parji is related to Naik.ri, Kolami and Naiki in its west and to Ollari and to Salur Gadba in its east. The languages of this new group are to be found to-day in pockets extended over a wide region parallel to the Telugu area. Naiki of Chanda is thus affiliated to the Parji-Kolami group of Dravi- dian languages and not to Gondi, although the clan-organisation of this people bears some aff• with that of the Gonds, which perhaps indi- cates another phase of their culture-contact. Our knowledge of Naiki was so long quite meagre. During our expedition of 1950-51 Professor T. Burrow and the present writer studied a Dravidian speech at Kinwa.t in the Adilabad District spoken by a tribe called the Nailq'.a, who live mostly in the south of the tahsil. Our knowledge of Naiki of Chanda, mentioned in LSI, IV, being inadequate at that time, we took this Naik.ri to be a form of Naiki. The Naik.ras are undoubtedly the people mentioned by earlier writers as Naikude Gonds. 7 During our second expedition in 1957-58 we explored the Chanda District in search of Naiki, and suc- ceeded contacting some speakers of this language in a village called Chandli Buzruk. s We examined the speech there for a short time. The present writer made another trip in that area in November 1958, and collected more data on Naiki from the villages of Mul and Vihir- gaon. Both the materials have been incorporated in this paper, and I am grateful to Professor Burrow for not only allowing me to use our Chandli Buzruk material, but for also guiding me to write this paper during my stay at Oxford in 1959-60. The relation of Naiki to the other languages of the Parji-Kolami group has been discussed and demonstrated in the following pages. It has been found that Naiki is nearer to Kolami than to Parji and Gadba, but it is not so close that it should be classed like Naikri as a dialect of Kolami.

6 The Parji Language, by T. Burrow and the present writer (1953); Kolami, a Dravidian Language, by M. B. Emeneau (1955); Ollari,~a Dravidian Speech, by the present writer (1957). 7 Rev. Stephen Hislop, Papers relating to the Aboriginal Tribes of the CentralProvinces (1866), Part I, pp. 24 and ft.; LS1, IV, p. 570. * It is one of the 3 villages mentioned in the Language Census Hand Book for Chanda District (1956) wherefrom Naiki speakers were recorded.