I am not a linguist but a student of anthropology, which is one of the new social sciences concerned chiefly with culture and social structure with a bias towards the study of tribal communities. Anthropologists, like other social scientists, seek to build up systematic knowledge of social processes, which include communication through language. While the linguist deals with grammar, phonemes, morphemes, semantics, Etymology, etc., the social scientist deals with language as part of the totality of the people’s culture. Language, in fact, is man’s oldest culture, coeval with his humanity. Apart from the function of communication, transmission and conservation of culture, language has other functions such as setting the limits to intimate group creation. Linguistic differences constitute effective barriers to social contact among people geographically near as well as remote from each other. If, within a small area, as in Assam or Chotnagpur, we find a large number of languages, the obvious inference is that for centuries the groups speaking these different languages had only minimal contacts and were isolated one from the other.

Language, particularly semantics, analysed from the cultural points of view, gives us insights into the guiding frames of reference within which a people did their thinking. If we do not know much of the history is to examine their language. In the case of pre-literate communities, all that can be known of there past is confined to their oral folk literature. For example, the Juangs, one of the most primitive tribes of Orissa has no word for ‘village’, for the reason that in the past, they did not settle sufficiently long in any of place. The Juangs ‘drink’ rice, not ‘eat’ rice, for, in the past they were accustomed to liquid preparation of cereals.

Tribal languages also contain all the unwished for potentialities for linguistics troubles with which we are now familiar. These are the concern of the politicians, so I shall refer only to the background of the language situation as it concerns the tribal people.

In the past we used to talk of primitive tribes, but now-a-days no anthropologist would talk of tribal culture as primitive or low, as there are no value-free scales for ranking cultures. In a similar manner, and much more justifiable, there can be no talk of any language as primitive. One may argue as to whether a particular tribe engages itself in activities that are worthy of the name of religion or art, but we know of no people who are not possessed of fully developed language. The lowliest South African Bushmen speak in the forms of a rich symbolic system that is in essence perfectly comparable to the speech of the cultivated Frenchmen. The language of the Juang or the Ho is as complex in grammar, syntax, etc., as any other language in the world. The only difference lies in the size of the vocabulary. In unwritten languages, as those of the tribal groups there is no point in loading the language with words for which their can be no possible use.

The tribal languages of Orissa are spoken languages with no script of their own. They fall into two board divisions, Mundari and Dravidian. The Mundari group has a northern branch, which Grierson called Kherwari after the traditional homeland of the Santals, Mundas, Birhors, Ho’s and other tribes. The southern Mundari branch includes Saora, Gadaba (Gutob), Remo, Pareng, Juang, etc. the chief Dravidian tribal languages are Kui, Kuvi, Gondi, Ollari, Kisan and Oraon. On account of the presence of some Mundari-like words in vocabularies of Khmer tribes of South-East Asia, Pater Schmidit, a Viennese scholar tried to trace Mundari origins to South-East Asia but modern linguists are inclined to the view that these languages have little to connect them with South-East Asia. Extra-Indian affiliations of Dravidian are also discounted by modern linguists. As regards the question whether Mundari or Dravidian was the first to appear on the scene of Orissa, opinion seems to be somewhat divided. Grierson thought that Dravidian pushed into the north from the south displacing Mundari. But taking all the evidence, racial and cultural and historical, into consideration, one would be inclined to the opposite view that the Dravidian speakers were the earlier pre-Aryan, pre-Mundari ethnic stock. The Gadabas found in the Koraput district and in the contiguous tracts of Andhra are the most southerly speaker of Mundari tongue. The Gadabas who call themselves Gutob are themselves split into two sections, one speaking the Mundari Gutob tongue and the other speaking Ollari, a Dravidian language closely allied to Parji, Koya, Kolami and Naiki, all the four together forming an important but little-known branch of the Dravidian language family with its 18 languages including Brahui spoken in Baluchistan.

Of all the Mundari languages, Santali has the largest population speaking that tongue. In the year 1932, Rev. P. Bodding, the missionary lexicographer of Santali estimated that about three million people spoke that language. That number has probably gone up now. The name Santali is the Hindi version of the name Saotar given to the people by the Bengalies. The people themselves call their language Hor Ror that means the ‘speech of men’. Bodding himself has listed for his great Santali Dictionary more than 25,00 words. The Santals have been inveterate borrowers from other neighboring languages and as a mobile people, have a sharp sense of fine shades of meaning. Thanks partly to the efforts of Christian missionaries and partly to the new linguistic ethnocentrism, Santali is now one of the most cultivated tribal languages. The missionaries have adopted the Roman script for Santali. As the Santals are distributed in three linguistic areas, a script, which will unify the tribes, is exercising the minds of the tribal leadership. As a language, Santali seems to have a future.

The growth of bilingualism, and in some cases trilingual seems to be one of the most interesting developments in the tribal linguistic situation. The Juangs, for example, inhabiting the remote areas of Juangpirh in Keonjhar district are bilingual. I am informed by one of my former students working among the Juangs that Juang children become bilingual by the age of five. This is an indication of the heavy influx of Oriya into Juang. Even to ask such a simple question, "What is your name?" they say, "Ama namo biri" introducing the Oriya word for name. The Kisan of Sundargarh are trilingual, speaking among themselves their Dravidian mother tongue Kisan, speaking Oriya to the local neighbors and Munda to the Mundari-speaking neighbors. They seem to have the gift of tongues. In Phulbani, a predominantly Kond area, most of the Konds are bilingual.

In contrast to the viability of Santali, thousands of speakers of Saora and Kui and Gondi have completely given up their native tongues and adopted Oriya, which is matched on the social side by disclaiming relationship with their brethren still clinging to the original tribal language. In the Garjhat areas less than 20 per cent of the tribal groups speak any of the tribal languages. The slow attrition of the tribal tongues by disuse is a pointer to the fate that awaits these languages. But to understand the developmental history of Oriya itself, if not for purely linguistic research, all that scholars can preserve of these vanishing languages should be granted before they are irretrievably lost. For the linguists, as for the anthropologists, tribal languages offer a rich field for research. Here in Orissa we may perhaps be able to reconstruct proto-Dravidian and Proto-Mundari.

The ‘Tribal Tribune: Beyond Feathers and Arrows’ consider it a proud privilege to dedicate this February 2005 number to the memory of Professor A. Aiyappan, who was born in this month in 1905. As this net-magazine is devoted to the cause of tribal people, it will be most appropriate to pay homage to the late scholar Prof. A. Aiyappan, who opted for research in anthropology, after obtaining Master Degree in Zoology. While carrying out doctoral research in Britain, his interest in tribal studies was inspired by legendary scholars like Bronislaw Malinowski and Raymond Firth, both of them came to anthropological discipline from different back grounds. This amalgamation of knowledge from various disciplines, could allow wide-angled view to study human world. Aiyappan,s academic compatriots included E. Evanspritchard who introduced the African tribal communities through classic ethnographic syudy, L.S.B. Leakey, who discovered the famous fossil hominids and established African claim for human evolution, Cora Dubris, H.D. Saukhalia, and many others.

Aiyappan spent major part of his work life in the State Museum in Chennai (Madras).so most of his research works are related to the south Indian tribal communities. When he moved to Utkal University in Bhubaneswar to take up responsibilities of a nascent post graduate teaching department of anthropology, his field studies were expanded to the tribal areas of Orissa. He retried from the University services in 1996 and again moved to Thiruvanthapuram (Trivandram) to assume the duties of Vice Chancellor. Elevation to coveted posts may be lucrative, but do not secure a place in the enviable academic school of con tributors to knowldge. The readers of present generation would prefer to be aquinted with academic contribution of Professor Aiyappan.

Prof. Aiyappan was a complete anth5ropologist in true sense of the term. His activites were not limited in only the sub field of social anthropology or ethnography. He greatly pioneered the mesum movement and wrote a book on museology and museum preservation methods, the most compitent in mid-twentieth century. Unlike other social antthropologists, Aiyappan studied genetic and morphometric variation in Wyand area and prehistoric cultures of Suth India. His close association with renound archeologists like V. D. Krishnaswamy, Subba Rao, Sankhia and even Mortimor Wheeler, indicate his deep interest in prehistoric and proto-historic cultures. In many articles he has tried to find the evolutionary continum of people in India, tracling the problem from linguistic, ritualistic, social practices and biological traits. This was uncommon in his time of mid-twentieth century. The prosterity will wonder from the vastness of the areas where professor Aiyappan has expressed his inquisitiveness on human life. He composed his articles with such élan and simplicity of language, that these could be understood by any layman.

Aiyappan did show little interest in theorizing his observations like his contemporary renowned scholars, but tried to extricate the inner details from which generalization can be arrived easily. Once he was asked by his American friends (in early sixties of last century) about the secret of family piece in India in spite of poverty, and for which his curt reply was, general Hindu couple gave immense value to the rituals of marriage, the promise before sacred fire ("homa"). A couple will prefer quarrel but not think of divorce. Marriage matches are believed to be predetermined. Such fundamental observation and deep introspection, characterized Professor Aiyappan.

His class room teaching was never piece-meal incidents of people’s life and developing these into anthropological interpretation. Probably for these reasons, I was attracted to anthropological science in a holistic manner, combining all the approaches. Writings of Prof. Aiyappan was very lucid and wrinkle-free, so that the meaning is conveyed easily to the reader who is not conversant with jargons.

Dr. A. Aiyappan joined the Utkal University in 1958 as the Professor of Anthropology, then a newly created postgraduate department, after his retirement from the service as head of the Madras Museum. His stepping into this department was not restricted to teaching alone. He introduced the Museology as a practical paper in the Anthropology curriculum. His long expertise in Madras museum enabled him to organize this course in no time. Not only he stressed on the study of ethnological materials, which were to be preserved in a scientific way, his experiences in the Madras Museum were imparted to the students in a very simple way. These objects were at first stored and then displayed in a hall where the students got the facility of handling them, repair the broken pieces and applied insecticides or/and chemicals to prevent the object from being destroyed. Thus the lessons of the collection through field exploration, preservation in the store and conservation of the broken objects were imparted to the students, the essential items of the Museology study.

Prof A. Aiyappan got involved in the planning of the tribal welfare and activated the Tribal Research Bureau, which at present is re-christened as Tribal and Harijan Research and Training Institute (THRTI). He caused a museum to be built in that institution which now houses many more objects of the Orissan tribes. Prof. A. Aiyappan’s students with Museology training in its rudimentary form collected, proliferated and preserved the objects of the most primitive tribes of Orissa like Banda, Gadaba, Juang, Dongria, Kond, and Paudi Bhuinyas. Such objects, with additions every year, have enriched the THRTI museum. Prof. Aiyappan remained the advisor of this institution and helped in the publication of the journal ‘Adivasi’ in which the research findings were published. In this each employed student was given topics and helped by Prof. Aiyappan to make the journal reader and research oriented while giving ideas to the government which line to be followed for the upliftment of the individual tribal group and planning of a common program for the purpose. Probably the tribal development co-operatives guided by his student employees helped in economic enhancement of different tribal groups who could market their commodities direct to the government instead of middlemen. Probably Prof. Aiyappan’s earlier work among the Ezavas helped him to reflect upon the Orissan Tribal problems.

Another important contribution of Prof. Aiyappan was the reorganisation of the Orissa State Museum as a multipurpose museum with the addition of natural history, mining and geology and anthropology galleries. This plan linked earlier history and archeology subjects with the earlier pre and proto-historic cultural phases. Aspects relating to man and archeology were linked in the planning of Anthropology galleries, which were again linked with the zoological evolutions on the basis of Darwin’s theory to link up human evolution with human culture in this part of India. The preparation of the dioramas for display purposes was the mental child of Prof. Aiyappan and was undertaken in consultation with Prof. Cora-du-boys, the American professor of Anthropology. His knowledge in Madras Museum at Chennai, where Robert Bruce Foote, the father of Indian prehistoric archeology, once laid his hands on, proved quite useful in this venture. The contribution of Prof. Aiyappan to the organizational set up of Orissa State Museum was to link Natural History with history and culture via Anthropology, - consisting of pre, proto and early history on the one hand and the ethnographic links through the living people and their cultural traits encased in dioramas on the other. It will not be the out of place to mention how the dioramas were planned with the existing museum building in three halls of projecting corners. One hall was exclusively marked for the display of tribes with their costumes and ornaments wrapped in life-size models. Orissa was a maritime power with a sizable and dominant fishing community spreading from the coast of Bengal border to that of Andhra. The catamaran and fishing nets on the sandy beach with the blue sea breaking waves at the background was depicted in an open diorama, which is certainly a novel way of conveying the cultural message to others as to how the past is linked with the present. Such linkage is also displayed by the costumes on wire models and the raw keranga birk on the one hand and the finished clothe woven by the Bondos and Panos for the Godabas, on the other. Even the display of ornaments used by the tribes and folk in succession from birk, lead and metal ornaments were instructed by him.

The display of prehistory objects in the Orissa State Museum was due to his association with Paramananda Acharya, the earliest prehistoric researcher of Orissa after V.Ball. With the association of Aiyappan, Acharya arranged transfer of prehistoric objects kept in the Baripada Museum to the Orissa State Museum. These objects were recovered from the Calcutta University Museum in the department of Anthropology and were kept in the Baripada Museum. With his instructions we have planned the display of stone weapons and artifacts, metal objects and pottery objects in wall and table show cases. From the tips given by Acharya we could collect photographs of different types of pottery belonging to the Neolithic phase.

Prof. Aiyappan’s activities were not confined to the Utkal University, Tribal Research Bureau and Orissa State Museum only. He was instrumental in opening Anthropology Departments in the B.J.B. College and Khallikote College where he laid stress on opening of museums. These museums procured objects from the local and regional environments with occasional acquisition of state based objects. The State Museum was intended to acquire specimens from state jurisdiction and also from the national context to facilitate comparative studies with the state and East Indian regional extent.

Prof. Aiyappan was keen to see the subject of Anthropology flourishing in educational centers of Orissa. He made it a mission to open Anthropology in different colleges like B.J.B. Khallikote etc. His students also took lead in forwarding his mission. Mention may be made about the colleges at Rairangpur, Talcher and such other destinations having a thick tribal population around them. He knew the rich cultural heritage of Orissa visible in her monuments and was aware of her rich and glorious history based on fierce military strength. So he wanted to infuse among the underdeveloped tribals awareness about the continued cultural traits since Stone Age. He also wanted them to be aware of the autochthonous indigenous colorful and unique culture complexes reflected in their ways of life. Since these tribals were losing their cultural traits etc, at a very fast rate, the traits in the form of material objects, the manner of their faithful preservation in the garb of social and religious tenets should be available in the museums and higher educational institutions for their easy and at hand references in the absence of which their significance would remain unknown. So museums in historical and anthropological subjects became a priority in Prof. Aiyappan’s agenda.

Prof. Aiyapan had a great liking for his students. He tried to see his students well placed in stations of life. It would not be out of place to mention a few lines relating my experiences with him. He was very kind to me when he admitted me into the Dept. of Anthropology. He was also kind to me when he gave his opinion on my character certificate after I got through the M.A. examination. In the same he wrote that "His behavior is always faultless, with some encouragement he will do well." Thus he had faith on me and on my character. But I could not say how far I have projected myself to his expectations. After I passed M.A. I went home and joined as a teacher in a high school near my village. During this period neither did I visit the University nor I met Prof. Aiyappan. But he sent a letter through one of my friends to meet him immediately. I rushed to meet him on the very next Sunday at his quarters. He asked me, "Why have you read Anthropology?". I could not answer since he looked at me critically. Then he asked me if I wanted a better job and that too a stationary one in a research oriented situation. He informed me that there was a post in the Orissa state Museum and asked me to apply for the same. He typed the application by himself and handed over the same to me to put my signature in his presence. Then I met Haish Chandra Das, the Curator of Anthropology of the State Museum and mentioned him the intention of Prof. Aiyappan. I joined the State Museum and spent my entire service period in this institution. For me, my career in the museum has been quite satisfying as I could engage myself in learning and writing on issues demanding deeper insight and analysis It is still continuing despite many constraints due to retirement. Yet I am not sure if I have risen to the expectations of my revered god like teacher whose memory I shall cherish till the end of my life.