People of India: National Series: Languages and Scripts Vol 9 - Hardcover

The People of India project, a massive exercise carried out by the Anthropological Survey of India, has generated a wealth of information on the hundreds of communities, castes and tribes which exist in this country. The subjects covered include culture, society, location, language, script, biological variation, educational level, impact of development, food habits, rituals, and work practices.
For the present volume, project information was collected on the languages spoken and the scripts used within a kin group, at home and outside. Data was generated on community-specific languages (325), and on the scripts (25) in present use.
The authors show that Indian languages derive strongly from the ethnic community or the territory in which the language is used. They also show the distribution of different language families, and the larger spread of languages such as Hindi, Marwari, Urdu and Telugu. They suggest that in language-contact situations, the incidence of bilingualism and multilingualism is very high. For example, many tribals speak more than three or four languages; moreover, there is evidence of considerable linguistic heterogeneity even within communities.
All the States and Union Territories of India are multilingual, despite the dominance in each of speakers of the scheduled languages. The language situation is extremely dynamic, with new languages evolving to serve as the lingua franca in several areas.
The data set being presented in this volume has been described as the third major contribution to the survey of Indian languages, alongside G. A. Grierson's work for the Linguistic Survey of India and the body of information generated by the Census of India. The People of India project on languages also forms the first comprehensive and definitive database of the languages and scripts used by communities all over India.