Discovery of Walmiki language found concocted: A study revealed by Odisha Linguists
What is it about?
Until around 2015, the use of language names like #Balmiki or #Valmiki is quite common in India and available with linguistic description (see, e.g., M.W.M. Yeatts 1932; Raymond B. Christmas & J. Elisabeth Christmas 1971–1975; Nilakantha Dolia 2009, and A. Usha Devi & D. Chandrashekhara Reddy 2015). But after that, averring the “discovery” of a new language “Walmiki” in Odisha by Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016) has gained a high concentration of discontentment among the academia of Indian linguistics.
Why is it important?
The study grows out of such distortion and intervention done by Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016), to ascertain the ethnolinguistic position of Balmiki or Walmiki, spoken in Odisha, vis-à-vis Kupia, spoken in Andhra Pradesh states of India, using bibliographical evidence. The objective is to see if they are one language with different names or absolutely different languages. This paper also examines the methodological veracity of the discovery claim of Walmiki from Odisha (in Mohanty 2016). Serious linguists and heterogeneous readers, regardless of their ideological affiliations, would benefit from this study and be able to contribute further to the discourse. In this study, both linguists of Odisha have convincingly established that these languages are already identified long back and studied by different scholars. The discovery claim of Panchanan Mohanty (Mohanty 2016) can be dubbed as a classic case of public fooling due to the lapse of genuine reporting in the digital era. Mohanty (2016) has made the best use of the lack of public attention and discourse about these languages to make false claims of discovery.