The Brahui Language (An Old Dravidian Language Spoken in Parts of Baluchistan and Sind)

Brahui is a language, Dravidian in structure but polyglot in vocabulary, spoken in some parts of Baluchistan and Sind, now in Pakistan. The existence of the Language and its speakers in that region has always posed a problem, not yet solved, to both the philologists and the ethnologists. The theory that the Brahuis are the rearguards or the vanguards of a Dravidian migration from North to South or South to North has now been abandoned. Nevertheless, their language is very important and deserves a serious study, more so for its isolation. The present work is a complete survey of this difficult and obscure language. The work is in three parts, viz. (i) Introduction and grammar, (ii) The Brahui problem, and (iii) Itymological vocabulary. In the introduction, the author has discussed, at great length, various Theories and hypotheses about the origin and migration of the Brahuis, the structure and composition of the Brahui language and its relation to Dravidian. Loan words and other borrowings from surrounding languages have been ably treated. The grammar is quite elaborate and comprehensive. All the elements of the language, e.g. the substantives, the adjectives, the numerals, the pronouns, the verbs, etc. have been fully analysed. Part two presents a Comparative Study of the Brahui language problem chiefly from philological point of view, taking the current Dravidian languages into consideration. The section on the admixture of the Brahui Vocabulary is very interesting, none the less the hypotheses of the author on the relation of the Brahuis with the Indus Valley civilization. Part three contains an Etymological vocabulary which not only shows the Etymology of words and gives their meanings in English but also provides with numerous examples from the actual speech.