Five volumes on Indian languages released

The Peoples' Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) here Thursday released five volumes on various Indian languages documenting their history, landmark events, folklore and songs.

PLSI is a nationwide survey aimed at working out alternate ways of development of the various Indian languages and maintaining organic links between scholarship and the social context. It has planned release of 50 volumes on the Indian languages and divided them into state and national series.

The volumes released are: "The Being of Bhasha: General Introduction to the People's Linguistic Survey of India"; "The Languages of Assam", Assamese version; The Languages of Maharashtra", Marathi version; "The Languages of Uttarakhand", Hindi version; and "The Indian Sign Languages" -- the only volume released from the national series.

Vadodara-based Bhasha Research Centre conducted the survey.

The PLSI team, comprising over 3,000 activists and scholars, covered 780 languages spread across all states and union territories.

"Languages came much before the script came. So these volumes trace the origin of the language, map their history and connect them to the roots they belong to. We are on the verge of losing languages and it is important to preserve them orally," PLSI chairman Ganesh Devy said.

He was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of a three-day event titled, "Mapping Indian Art, Culture and Languages".

Lalit Kala Akademi is hosting the series of events.

K.K. Chakravarty, chairman, Lalit Kala Akademi told IANS: "We are trying to connect performing arts to the people through these events."

"We are bringing out the volumes as they come to us," Ketaki Bose, associate publisher, Orient Blackswan, told IANS.

The publication house aims to release all volumes by December 2014.