Brahmaputran

The Sal languages, also called Brahmaputran after the Brahmaputra Valley, are a Sino-Tibetan branch identified by the linguist Robbins Burling and named for the shared root sal meaning sun. They fall into three groups, Bodo–Garo, Konyak and Jingpho–Luish, and are spoken across north-eastern India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern China.

Bodo–Garo speakers settled the Assam lowlands in remote prehistory, perhaps three thousand years ago, and their ancestral tongue is thought to have served as the valley's lingua franca before Assamese spread, leaving a large lexical legacy. By the thirteenth century Bodo–Garo peoples had formed valley polities such as Chutia, Kachari and Tripura, before the Tai-Ahom kingdom began its advance in 1228.