SORA & ORIYA: A STUDY ON LOAN VOCABULARY

Of the several important tribes of Orissa, the Sora is one of the most well-known, mainly due to its connection with the Jagannath legend. The tribe is also known by various other names such as Sabara, Saura, and Sora. The mother tongue statistics for this tribe, spelled as “Savara” in the 1981 Census, are as follows:

Savara – 1981 Census

• India: 556,195
• Orissa: 370,060
• Andhra Pradesh: 82,101

It is clear from these figures that the main concentration of the tribe is in Orissa. However, we have reasons to believe that these census figures may not be very accurate, because a large number of Sora speakers who return Oriya as their mother tongue are merged with another tribe called Sabara or Lodha.

It is important to note that the Oriya-speaking Sabaras are mainly found in the coastal districts of Cuttack and Puri, while the Sora speakers predominantly inhabit the districts of Ganjam and Koraput. It is these latter Soras who are discussed in this paper.

Their language, Sora, belongs to the southern branch of the Munda sub-family and is genetically distinct from Oriya, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family. However, languages that have been in contact with each other for centuries are likely to influence one another, irrespective of their genetic affiliations.

Thus, we find that there are a large number of linguistic features and words that are common to Oriya and Sora. This situation immediately raises the question of cultural contact between these languages and, consequently, of a loan vocabulary.

Although, at the moment, it is not possible to identify definitively the languages in terms of donor or recipient, the loan vocabulary is sufficient proof to establish the depth and extent of the contact situation. However, considering the cultural conditions of these two groups, it cannot be denied that Oriya is far ahead of Sora in many accomplishments, and therefore it is natural that Oriya, in most cases, will appear to be the donor and Sora the recipient rather than the other way round.

But it is also true that Sora, as we understand its processes, is a very conservative language and has a natural ability built into it to recreate its own vocabulary using its indigenous devices. As a moderately agglutinative language, it favours the formation of new words from indigenous material rather than through direct borrowings.

Some of the direct borrowings include words such as raja (king), sun (quicklime), loa (iron), and mua (a sweetmeat). However, there is also a large amount of common vocabulary that cannot be traced to any particular source, and the possibility of Oriya borrowing from Sora remains quite plausible.

In any case, such a study is all the more difficult, particularly in the absence of a theory of loanwords. Although no such theory is proposed here, a few guidelines might be of interest.