On the Origins of Bodo-Garo

Abstract

Bodo-Garo is a compact, low-level branch of Tibeto-Burman. That is to say, it includes a relatively small number of languages - perhaps a dozen, depending on how we define "language" - which are very similar to one another in their lexicon and grammatical structure. For a small, compact branch, it is spread over quite a large geographical area - and, before the expansion of Assamese and Bengali, certainly over an even larger one. Bodo-Garo languages are spread over a wider area than, say, Naga or Kiranti, each of which is considerably more linguistically diverse than Bodo-Garo. My purpose in this paper is to outline a proposal for the history of the Bodo-Garo branch of Tibeto-Burman which accounts for these facts, as a contribution to our understanding of Bodo-Garo as part of Tibeto-Burman and as a participant in the long-running story of intense language contact in the Brahmaputra Valley.