Munda

Munda is the western branch of the Austroasiatic family, distantly related to Mon, Khmer and Vietnamese, and is spoken across eastern India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Linguists derive Proto-Munda from South-East Asia: pre-Proto-Munda speakers are thought to have reached the Mahanadi delta on the Odisha coast by sea around 1500 BCE and then to have spread inland up the river system.

The family splits into North Munda, centred on the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Jharkhand, and South Munda in central Odisha; its principal languages include Santali, the largest, Mundari, Ho and Korku.

Head-final and agglutinating, they distinguish inclusive from exclusive first-person plural, lack grammatical gender and make wide use of numeral classifiers. Long the established population of the plateau and adjoining hills, Munda communities came under pressure from expanding Indo-Aryan kingdoms during the first millennium CE and retreated into forested uplands.