Geographically, the Himalayan languages may be roughly defined by the rivers that flow down from the Mansarovar near Mount Kailas in western Tibet. The Brahmaputra (River Yarlung or River Tamang He) flows eastward until it reaches Sadia near Parashuram Kunda where it bends to join the Indian Ocean. The Indus flows southwest to join the Arabian Sea; the Ganges flows eastward after it crosses the Himalayan slope and the Karnali flows southwards through Nepal to join the Ganges. These rivers roughly serve as the boundaries of the Himalayan languages.
Prehistory of language contact in the Himalayas
Except for the language isolates Kusunda and Burushashki (and also Nihali) speakers of all the Himalayan languages have come to the Himalayas from outside. The original home of the Austric (Austroasiatic and the Austronesian) languages is believed to be Taiwan, which may have spread all around the Pacific ring through sea routes. The original home of the Indo-European languages is believed to be the vicinity of the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in Eurasia. The original home of the Dravidian languages is also believed to be the Mediterranean region. The only family of language the origin of which is not very far from the Himalayas is Sino-Tibetan, because as speculated by Grierson (Grierson, 1909), the original home of the Sino-Tibetan languages is the northeastern Tibetan plateau, the source of great Asian rivers (Huang He, Chang Jiang [Yangtze], Mekong, Salween and Irawati) and even the Brahmaputra is not very far from the tableland) which is shared by Tibet, Qinghai and Sichuan provinces of China.
When the speakers of the diverse families of languages came in contact as a result of prehistoric migration, linguistic features diffused across language boundaries to give birth to linguistic areas like South Asia where the languages become more or less similar by sharing linguistic features irrespective of their original characteristics retained by their members outside the area (Emeneau, 1956).
Dravidian and Indo-European languages may have started influencing each other several millennia before Christ while they were neighboring in the Mediterranean region. Archeological research in the Taklimakan desert in western China also finds mummies of both the Dravidian and Indo-European peoples (Mair, 1998). The Dravidians are believed to have entered South Asia earlier than the Indo-European speakers and the Austric people were believed to have occupied the whole plains of the peninsula before the Dravidian entered the region. Indo-Aryan is the branch of the Indo-European that entered South Asia. Hans Henrich Hock (Hock, 1988) notes mutual influence of the Dravidian and the Sanskrit languages. When the Aryans entered South Asia, they may have contact with the Austric, Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan peoples in the chronological order. The process of mutual influence among these languages may have been pertinent as soon as the Aryans entered the region. Levi, Przyluski & Bloch (1929) have noted non-Aryan borrowings in Sanskrit.
Many Austric features are shared by the Himalayish group of the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken along the Himalayan foothills from the Brahmaputra valley through Nepal as far as the Uttarakhand. Those Austric features may have been diffused to this group of Sino-Tibetan while they were still in Southeast China before being pushed down to the Brahmaputra Basin by the northern Chinese peoples behind them. The process continued even in northeast India.
Macdonell & Keith (1912) have located the abode of the Kirata near the eastern bank of the Karnali River where the Kham Magars are living today. Following Apte’s Sanskrit dictionary किरः means ‘pig’ and किरातः means ‘one who follows/hunts the pig’. Pig is an obligatory cultural animal of almost all the Sino-Tibetan speakers. Even the Raji people of western Nepal and Kumaon are identified by Rahul Sankrityayan (सांकृत्यायन, १९५३ ई) as राजकिरात. The Vedic index of Macdonell & Keith (1912) simply informs that the Tibeto-Burman speakers had reached as far as Kullu and Askot on the foothills of the Himalayas during the Vedic period (BC 1500-800).
The preceding discussion notes that the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages in Central Asia and the Himalayish group of Tibeto-Burman and the Austric languages in Southeast China had influenced each other before they entered South Asia. In South Asia the Austric speakers are once believed to have occupied the whole peninsula. The Dravidians came in contact with the Austric people and occupied the southwestern part; therefore there was no mutual influence between the Dravidian and the Tibeto-Burman languages. The Indo-Aryan speakers came in touch with the Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples on the foothills of the Himalayas. Speakers of Indo-Aryan languages have been in contact with all the other three major language speaking groups.
The Bodish group of Sino-Tibetan expanded to cross the Himalayas through mountain passes to come to South Asia after the unification of Tibet in the 7th century. After the 10th century the Tibetan language was standardized with the help of scholars from Nalanda University and Kashmir. As a result of that scholarship standard Tibetan (and Tibetan Buddhism) was greatly influenced by Sanskrit language and scriptures.
Bibliography
Emeneau, M. (1956). India as a linguistic area. Language, 32(1), 3-16.
Grierson, G. (1909). Linguistic survey of India (Vol. 3). Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
Hock, H. H. (1988). Convergence between Sanskrit and Dravidian. Pune, Maharastra, India: Deccan College.
Levi, S., Przyluski, J., & Bloch, J. (1929). Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Macdonell, A. A., & Keith, A. B. (1912). Vedic index of names and subjects. London [Delhi 1958]: Motilal Banarasidass.
Mair, V. H. (Ed.). (1998). The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age peoples of eastern Central Asia. Washington D.C. & Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man & University of Pensylvannia Museum Publications.
सांकृत्यायन, र. (१९५३ ई). हिमालय परिचय (१): गढवाल. इलाहाबाद: इलाहाबाद ल जर्नल प्रेस.