ABSTRACT
In the Linguistic Survey of India (1898–1928), Grierson classified Nepali as belonging to the Eastern Pahari branch of Indo-Aryan. The linguistic continuum in north-west India is one of great complexity; dialects overlap and merge into one another, with few hard and fast boundaries. Nepali itself seems to be a composite language consisting of (a) an Indo-Aryan substratum of Śauraseni type, which was the language of the Khasa tribes in the Himalayan foothills some two thousand years ago, an ancestry which survives in the local name of the language – Khas Kura (kura ‘speech’); (b) the related New Indo-Aryan language brought to Central Nepal by the Rajput invaders in the mid-eighteenth century, a development associated with the rise of the Gurkhas; (c) the new literary standard fostered by press and radio, which makes heavy demands on the Sanskrit reservoir; and finally, (d) one should mention the pervasive influence, especially in the more outlying colloquials, of the Tibeto-Burman languages – e.g. Newari – which have always surrounded the Pahari languages.
