Santali language is spoken by almost a million and a half f people, who are mainly found distributed over a strip of Bengal extending for about 850 miles from the Ganges to the Baitarni, bisected by the meridian of Bhagalpur, or 87 East longitude, and comprising the following districts: Bhagalpur, Monghyr, the Santal Pargannas, Birbhum, Bankura, Hazaribagh, Manbhum, Midnapur, Singbham, Mayurbhanj and Balasore.
Santali belongs to the Munda or Kolarian family of languages, and has reached a much higher stage of development than any other language or dialect of the family to which it belongs. It is spoken with little variation in pronunciation or idiom over the greater part of the above-mentioned area.
Northern Santali, or that spoken in Bhagalpur, Monghyr, the Santal Pargannas, Birbhum, Baukura, Hazaribagh and Manbhum, is the language of an overwhelming majority of the tribe, and is more polished than Southern Santali. The former is, therefore, regarded as the Standard, and Southern Santali, or that spoken in the remaining district, as a dialect, or, possibly, a group of dialects of it.
Most Dictionaries indicate what parts of speech the words are, but in Santali it is impossible to do this in the case of the great bulk of the words. Consequently, in the few instances in which it might have been done it has not been thought worthwhile doing so in this Dictionary. The form in which the words appear is the Root, and only the Root idea is, in most instances, given. A slight knowledge of the Grammar of Santali will enable those consulting the Dictionary to deduce the meanings of the different forms in which the root appears, whether noun, adjective, verb, adverb, &o. Greater fullness of detail could have been given only in a very bulky volume, and, as Santali is regular in its method of dealing with the Root, no real advantage would have been gained.
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