Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image


Linguistic Survey of India

George Abraham Grierson, the man behind Linguistic Survey of India (photo from the National Portrait Gallery, London).

The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects.[1] The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguist who attended the Seventh International Oriental Congress held at Vienna in September 1886. He made a proposal of the linguistic survey and it was initially turned down by the Government of India. After persisting and demonstrating that it could be done using the existing network of government officials at a reasonable cost, it was approved in 1891. It was however formally begun only in 1894 and the survey continued for thirty years with the last of the results being published in 1928.

An on-line searchable database of the LSI[2] is available, providing an excerpt for each word as it appeared in Grierson's original publication. In addition, the British Library has gramophone recordings in its sound archive[3] which document the phonology.

  1. ^ ""Linguistic Survey of India", Britannica Online". Archived from the original on 2023-08-19. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  2. ^ See DSAL Archived 2017-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ See British Library Sound Archive Archived 2010-10-10 at the Wayback Machine

Previous Page Next Page