06-01-251

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KALAG AND BHULI.

　These two dialects have hitherto been classed as forms of Oiy. As a matter of fact, however, a reference to the following specimens will show that they are really corrupt Chhattsgah, and that all that they have in common with the other language is the character, and that they have here and there borrowed a few words and idiom s from it. No doubt the fact that they are written in the Oiy character has led to the wrong classification.

　In the Report of the Census of 1891, Bhuli is classed under the head of Oiy and was stated to be spoken by 9,106 people, while Kalag is not mentioned.

　 In the returns supplied for the present Survey, Bhuli is shown as spoken in the Sonpur and Patna States, and Kalag as spoken only in the latter. The following are the figures:-

	Sonpur.	Patna.	Total.
Kalag...	...	600	600
Bhuli...	3,560	10,000	13,560
TOTAL.	3,560	10,600	14,160

　I can gain no information from the usual sources as to the tribes or people who speak these broken dialects. Of the two, Bhuli borrows more freely than Kalag does from Oiy. Neither is worthy of being dignified as a separate dialect, for both are mere corrupt jargons spoken by uneducated people. It is unnecessary to attempt to analyse their corrupt grammatical forms. It is sufficient, in the case of Bhuli, to draw attention to the fact that there is a tendency to aspirate the letter k in postposi- tions, so that the postposition of the dative-accusative is kh, not k, and in one instance we have u-khar, meaning of him. For the termination ke of the genitive and of the Conjunctive participle, we usually find ka. Note also the curious way in which the word a is used over and over again as a kind of expletive without any meaning. It is apparently a corruption of the word , meaning 'who' or 'that.'

　The two following specimens are only given in order to justify the classification of these two forms of speech as corruptions of Chhattsgah.

2K2