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SHARPA
The Tibetan word shar means 'east,' and shar-pa accordingly means 'inhabitant
of an eastern country.' The latter word is commonly used to denote the Bh
i
s
of north- eastern Nepal and their dialect. They are also found as immigrants
outside of Nepal. During the preliminary operations of this Survey their dialect
was reported to be spoken in Darjeeling and Sikkim. Estimates of the number
of speakers were only forwarded from Sikkim, as follows:-
| Sikkim... |
900
|
| At the last Census of 1901 the Sharpa dialect was returned from the following districts:- | |
| Darjeeling... |
3,477
|
| Sikkim... |
912
|
| Jalpaiguri... |
18
|
|
TOTAL.
|
4,407
|
AUTHORITIES-
HODGSON, B.H.,-On the Aborigines of the sub-Himalayas. Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, Vol. xvi, 1847, pp. 1235 and ff. Reprinted in Selections
from the Records of the Government of Bengal, No. xxvii, Calcutta, 1857, pp.
126 and ff.; and in Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nep
l
and Tibet. London, 1874, Part ii, pp. 29 and ff. The title of the reprint is
On the Aborigines of the Himalaya.
HUNTER, W.W.,-A Comparative Dictionary of the Languages of India and High Asia. London, 1868.
A version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son and a list of Standard Words and Phrases have been received from Darjeeling. In addition to these texts I have also made use of some few sentences which were added at the end of the Parable. The spelling of the texts is influenced by the orthography of classical Tibetan, and it does not allow us to judge about all niceties of pronunciation. It is, however, quite possible to get a general idea of the phonetic system.
Sharpa is closely connected with Kgate
and 
njong-k.
It can, with some correctness, be described as a form of the latter dialect,
and it has very few character- istics of its own
Pronunciation.-The vowels are modified in various ways, usually under
the influence of following consonants. Sometimes also concurrent vowels are
contracted; thus, sui and si, i.e., probably s
,
whose; 
i,
classical 'agro-i, of the going; khi, thy, from khyo, thou, and so forth.
The soft initials of classical Tibetan are sometimes represented by soft and some- times by hard consonants; thus, dang and tang, and; bu and pu, son. The actual pronunciation is probably an aspirated soft consonant as in most dialects of Central Tibetan.
Final g and b are probably pronounced as k, p, respectively. They are, however, usually written g, b, respectively; thus, chig, one; mig, eye; shog, come; gyab, back; lep, arrive.
VOL. III, PART I.
Q