Sino-Tibetan (sometimes referred to as Trans-Himalayan ) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages . Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the Tibetic languages (6 million). Four United Nations member states ( China , Singapore , Myanmar , and Bhutan ) have a Sino-Tibetan language as their main native language. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas , the Southeast Asian Massif , and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau . Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.
110-595: The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti , are Sino-Tibetan ethnolinguistic groups living in the Himalayas , mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim and the northern hilly regions of West Bengal , that is, Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts). The term "Kirat" has a rich and complex etymology rooted in
220-487: A common origin of the non-Sinitic languages has never been demonstrated. The Kra–Dai and Hmong–Mien languages are generally included within Sino-Tibetan by Chinese linguists but have been excluded by the international community since the 1940s. Several links to other language families have been proposed, but none have broad acceptance. A genetic relationship between Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, and other languages
330-480: A detailed classification, with six top-level divisions: Shafer was sceptical of the inclusion of Daic, but after meeting Maspero in Paris decided to retain it pending a definitive resolution of the question. James Matisoff abandoned Benedict's Tibeto-Karen hypothesis: Some more-recent Western scholars, such as Bradley (1997) and La Polla (2003), have retained Matisoff's two primary branches, though differing in
440-411: A distinct history and political establishment until its unification with the kingdom of Gorkha in 1774 AD . During King Prithvi Narayan Shah 's unification of Nepal, the present-day Nepal east of Arun and west of Mechi rivers was known as Limbuwan (pallo kirat). It was divided into 10 Limbu kingdoms; Morang kingdom was the most powerful and had a central government. The capital of Morang kingdom
550-575: A family whose diversity has been compared with the Romance languages . Diversity is greater in the rugged terrain of southeast China than in the North China Plain . Burmese is the national language of Myanmar , and the first language of some 33 million people. Burmese speakers first entered the northern Irrawaddy basin from what is now western Yunnan in the early ninth century, in conjunction with an invasion by Nanzhao that shattered
660-489: A geographic grouping, as Matisoff does, van Driem leaves them unclassified. He has proposed several hypotheses, including the reclassification of Chinese to a Sino-Bodic subgroup: Van Driem points to two main pieces of evidence establishing a special relationship between Sinitic and Bodic and thus placing Chinese within the Tibeto-Burman family. First, there are some parallels between the morphology of Old Chinese and
770-492: A harmonious relationship with nature and ancestral worship. The historical use of "Kirat" in ancient Indian texts, including the epic Mahabharata and various Puranas, signifies a recognition of these people as distinct from the dominant Indo-Aryan civilizations. Over centuries, the term has come to embody a shared cultural heritage among the various ethnic groups in the region, despite their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The modern understanding of "Kirat" reflects both
880-462: A hypothesis called Sino-Kiranti . The proposal takes two forms: that Sinitic and Kiranti are themselves a valid node or that the two are not demonstrably close so that Sino-Tibetan has three primary branches: George van Driem , like Shafer, rejects a primary split between Chinese and the rest, suggesting that Chinese owes its traditional privileged place in Sino-Tibetan to historical, typological, and cultural, rather than linguistic, criteria. He calls
990-662: A millennium, the Kirat had inhabited the Kathmandu Valley , where they installed their own ruling dynasty. According to the history of Nepal , the Kirats ruled for about 1100 years (800 BC–300 AD ). Their reign had 29 kings. The Kirat population in the valley and the original Australoids and Austro-Asiatic speakers form the base for what had developed into today's Newar population. As time passed, other Kirat groups, now known as Limbu, Rai, Yakkha and Sunuwar settled mostly in
1100-837: A mythological god called Tagera Ningwaphuma, a shapeless entity that appears as a bright light, and is worshipped in earthy form as the goddess Yuma Sammang and her male counterpart 'Theba Sammang'. The Kirat Limbu ancestor Yuma Sammang and god of war Theba Sammang are the second most important deities. The Limbus festivals are Chasok Tangnam (Harvest Festival and worship of goddess Yuma), Yokwa (Worship of Ancestors), Kirat New Year's Day (Maghey Sankranti), Ke Lang, Limbu Cultural Day, Sirijanga Birthday Anniversary. Kirat Rai worship (Sumnima/Paruhang) are their cultural and religious practices. The names of some of their festivals are Sakela , Sakle, Tashi, Sakewa, Saleladi Bhunmidev, and Folsyandar. They have two main festivals: Sakela/Sakewa Ubhauli during planting season and Sakela/Sakewa Udhauli during
1210-425: A prototypical example of the isolating morphological type, southern Chinese languages express this trait far more strongly than northern Chinese languages do. Initial consonant alternations related to transitivity are pervasive in Sino-Tibetan; while devoicing (or aspiration) of the initial is associated with a transitive/ causative verb, voicing is linked to its intransitive/ anticausative counterpart. This
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#17327765013501320-547: A provisional classification of the remaining languages: Following that, because they propose that the three best-known branches may be much closer related to each other than they are to "minor" Sino-Tibetan languages, Blench and Post argue that "Sino-Tibetan" or "Tibeto-Burman" are inappropriate names for a family whose earliest divergences led to different languages altogether. They support the proposed name "Trans-Himalayan". A team of researchers led by Pan Wuyun and Jin Li proposed
1430-586: A range of other sources. Some proposals were based on cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages, though workers have also found solely Chinese evidence for them. For example, recent reconstructions of Old Chinese have reduced Karlgren's 15 vowels to a six-vowel system originally suggested by Nicholas Bodman . Similarly, Karlgren's *l has been recast as *r, with a different initial interpreted as *l, matching Tibeto-Burman cognates, but also supported by Chinese transcriptions of foreign names. A growing number of scholars believe that Old Chinese did not use tones and that
1540-486: A separate Tibeto-Burman subgroup, Hill (2014) finds that Burmese has distinct correspondences for Old Chinese rhymes -ay : *-aj and -i : *-əj, and hence argues that the development *ə > *a occurred independently in Tibetan and Burmese. The descriptions of non-literary languages used by Shafer and Benedict were often produced by missionaries and colonial administrators of varying linguistic skills. Most of
1650-526: A special relationship between Chinese and Bodic. Van Driem has also proposed a "fallen leaves" model that lists dozens of well-established low-level groups while remaining agnostic about intermediate groupings of these. In the most recent version (van Driem 2014), 42 groups are identified (with individual languages highlighted in italics ): He also suggested (van Driem 2007) that the Sino-Tibetan language family be renamed "Trans-Himalayan", which he considers to be more neutral. Orlandi (2021) also considers
1760-513: A survey in the 1937 Chinese Yearbook , Li Fang-Kuei described the family as consisting of four branches: Tai and Miao–Yao were included because they shared isolating typology, tone systems and some vocabulary with Chinese. At the time, tone was considered so fundamental to language that tonal typology could be used as the basis for classification. In the Western scholarly community, these languages are no longer included in Sino-Tibetan, with
1870-515: Is always placed after the year number (for example: 70 BC but AD 70), which preserves syntactic order. The abbreviation "AD" is also widely used after the number of a century or millennium , as in "fourth century AD" or "second millennium AD" (although conservative usage formerly rejected such expressions). Since "BC" is the English abbreviation for Before Christ , it is sometimes incorrectly concluded that AD means After Death (i.e., after
1980-584: Is argued to reflect morphological derivations that existed in earlier stages of the family. Even in Chinese, one would find semantically-related pairs of verbs such as 見 'to see' ( MC : kenH ) and 現 'to appear' ( ɣenH ), which are respectively reconstructed as *[k]ˤen-s and *N-[k]ˤen-s in the Baxter-Sagart system of Old Chinese . Anno Domini The terms anno Domini ( AD ) and before Christ ( BC ) are used when designating years in
2090-423: Is by far the oldest recorded Sino-Tibetan language, with inscriptions dating from around 1250 BC and a huge body of literature from the first millennium BC. However, the Chinese script is logographic and does not represent sounds systematically; it is therefore difficult to reconstruct the phonology of the language from the written records. Scholars have sought to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese by comparing
2200-631: Is clearly different from the Tibetan and Indo- Nepalese ones, although it has been influenced by them through long term contacts. According to census of 2011, the population of the Kirat peoples, are as following: In academic literature, the earliest recorded groups of the Kirati are today divided into five groups — the Yakkha , Limbu , Rai , Sunuwar , Dhimal When the Shah kings conquered, they established
2310-756: Is disagreement over whether to include the entire Kra–Dai family or just Kam–Tai (Zhuang–Dong excludes the Kra languages ), because the Chinese cognates that form the basis of the putative relationship are not found in all branches of the family and have not been reconstructed for the family as a whole. In addition, Kam–Tai itself no longer appears to be a valid node within Kra–Dai. Benedict overtly excluded Vietnamese (placing it in Mon–Khmer) as well as Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai (placing them in Austro-Tai ). He otherwise retained
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#17327765013502420-452: Is generally accepted by experts there is a 27-year difference between AP and AD reference. The date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth is not stated in the gospels or in any secular text, but most scholars assume a date of birth between 6 BC and 4 BC. The historical evidence is too fragmentary to allow a definitive dating, but the date is estimated through two different approaches—one by analyzing references to known historical events mentioned in
2530-500: Is the book of knowledge on origin, history, culture, occupation and traditions of Kirati people. Noted scholars on Kiratology so far is Iman Xin Chemjong who did ground breaking contributions on kirat Mundum/Mundhum, history, cultures, and languages. After Chemjong, PS Muringla, BB Muringla and Bairagi Kainla also contributed towards Kiratology. After the end of Rana Regime in 2007 BS (1951 AD), when power came back to Shah dynasty
2640-950: The Brahmi script of Ancient India. Most comparative work has used the conservative written forms of these languages, following the dictionaries of Jäschke (Tibetan) and Judson (Burmese), though both contain entries from a wide range of periods. There are also extensive records in Tangut , the language of the Western Xia (1038–1227). Tangut is recorded in a Chinese-inspired logographic script, whose interpretation presents many difficulties, even though multilingual dictionaries have been found. Gong Hwang-cherng has compared Old Chinese, Tibetic, Burmese, and Tangut to establish sound correspondences between those languages. He found that Tibetic and Burmese /a/ correspond to two Old Chinese vowels, *a and *ə. While this has been considered evidence for
2750-713: The Byzantine Era . No single Anno Mundi epoch was dominant throughout the Christian world . Eusebius of Caesarea in his Chronicle used an era beginning with the birth of Abraham , dated in 2016 BC (AD 1 = 2017 Anno Abrahami). Spain and Portugal continued to date by the Spanish Era (also called Era of the Caesars ), which began counting from 38 BC, well into the Middle Ages. In 1422, Portugal became
2860-530: The Byzantine calendar in 1700 when Russia did so, with others adopting it in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although anno Domini was in widespread use by the 9th century, the term "Before Christ" (or its equivalent) did not become common until much later. Bede used the expression "anno [...] ante incarnationem Dominicam" (in the year before the incarnation of the Lord) twice. "Anno ante Christi nativitatem" (in
2970-671: The Carolingian Empire ultimately lies at the core of the system's prevalence. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia , popes continued to date documents according to regnal years for some time, but usage of AD gradually became more common in Catholic countries from the 11th to the 14th centuries. In 1422, Portugal became the last Western European country to switch to the system begun by Dionysius. Eastern Orthodox countries only began to adopt AD instead of
3080-527: The Gregorian and Julian calendars. The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means "in the year of the Lord" but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", taken from the full original phrase " anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi ", which translates to "in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ ". The form "BC" is specific to English , and equivalent abbreviations are used in other languages:
3190-554: The Julian or Gregorian calendars , AD 1 is immediately preceded by 1 BC, with nothing in between them (there was no year zero ). There are debates as to whether a new decade, century, or millennium begins on a year ending in zero or one. For computational reasons, astronomical year numbering and the ISO 8601 standard designate years so that AD 1 = year 1, 1 BC = year 0, 2 BC = year −1, etc. In common usage, ancient dates are expressed in
3300-586: The Karen languages , spoken by 4 million people in the hill country along the Myanmar–Thailand border, with the greatest diversity in the Karen Hills , which are believed to be the homeland of the group. The highlands stretching from northeast India to northern Myanmar contain over 100 highly diverse Sino-Tibetan languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages are found along the southern slopes of the Himalayas and
3410-479: The Koshi region of present-day Sikkim , Darjeeling and eastern Nepal. The Limbu people have their own distinct form of Kirat Mundhum , known as Yuma Sammang or Yumaism ; they venerate a mythological goddess called Tagera Ningwaphumang . In addition to ancestor worship, Kirati people also worship Mother Nature . From around the 8th century, areas on the northern frontier of the Kirat region began to fall under
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3520-455: The Latin form, rarely used in English, is ante Christum natum (ACN) or ante Christum (AC). This calendar era takes as its epoch the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus. Years AD are counted forward since that epoch and years BC are counted backward from the epoch. There is no year zero in this scheme; thus the year AD 1 immediately follows
3630-611: The Lolo-Burmese group. While Benedict contended that Proto-Tibeto-Burman would have a two-tone system, Matisoff refrained from reconstructing it since tones in individual languages may have developed independently through the process of tonogenesis . Sino-Tibetan is structurally one of the most diverse language families in the world, including all of the gradation of morphological complexity from isolating ( Lolo-Burmese , Tujia ) to polysynthetic ( Gyalrongic , Kiranti ) languages. While Sinitic languages are normally taken to be
3740-703: The Pyu city-states . Other Burmish languages are still spoken in Dehong Prefecture in the far west of Yunnan. By the 11th century, their Pagan Kingdom had expanded over the whole basin. The oldest texts, such as the Myazedi inscription , date from the early 12th century. The closely related Loloish languages are spoken by 9 million people in the mountains of western Sichuan, Yunnan, and nearby areas in northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. The Tibetic languages are spoken by some 6 million people on
3850-670: The Tibetan Plateau and neighbouring areas in the Himalayas and western Sichuan . They are descended from Old Tibetan , which was originally spoken in the Yarlung Valley before it was spread by the expansion of the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century. Although the empire collapsed in the ninth century, Classical Tibetan remained influential as the liturgical language of Tibetan Buddhism . The remaining languages are spoken in upland areas. Southernmost are
3960-572: The death of Jesus ), which would mean that the approximately 33 years commonly associated with the life of Jesus would be included in neither the BC nor the AD time scales. The anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus to enumerate years in his Easter table . His system was to replace the Diocletian era that had been used in older Easter tables , as he did not wish to continue
4070-598: The "Indo-Chinese" languages of Southeast Asia from the mid-19th century by Logan and others revealed that they comprised four families: Tibeto-Burman, Tai , Mon–Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian . Julius Klaproth had noted in 1823 that Burmese, Tibetan, and Chinese all shared common basic vocabulary but that Thai , Mon , and Vietnamese were quite different. Ernst Kuhn envisaged a group with two branches, Chinese-Siamese and Tibeto-Burman. August Conrady called this group Indo-Chinese in his influential 1896 classification, though he had doubts about Karen. Conrady's terminology
4180-474: The British Gorkhas. Sino-Tibetan languages Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed , but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. Although the family is traditionally presented as divided into Sinitic (i.e. Chinese languages) and Tibeto-Burman branches,
4290-477: The Common Era (BCE). Astronomical year numbering and ISO 8601 avoid words or abbreviations related to Christianity, but use the same numbers for AD years (but not for BC years in the case of astronomical years; e.g., 1 BC is year 0, 45 BC is year −44). Traditionally, English follows Latin usage by placing the "AD" abbreviation before the year number, though it is also found after the year. In contrast, "BC"
4400-548: The Himalayas, including the Rai, Limbu, and other related communities. These groups have their own unique languages, customs, and traditions, yet share common cultural elements that tie them to the broader Kirat identity. The Kirat people have historically been known for their animistic beliefs and practices, which are deeply interwoven with the natural environment of the Himalayas. Their spiritual and cultural narratives often highlight
4510-666: The Kingdom of Bhutan Hadgaon been established under the political and spiritual leadership of the lama Zhabs-drung Ngawang Namgyal . Te-ongsi Sirijunga Xin Thebe was an 18th-century Limbu scholar, teacher, educator, historian, and philosopher of Limbuwan (pallo kirat) and Sikkim. Sirijanga researched and taught the Limbu script , Limbu language and religion of the Limbus in various part of Limbuwan (Pallo Kirat) and Sikkim. He revived
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4620-638: The Kirat King Yalambar ( Aakash Bhairav ) and pre-Licchavi period has been discussed by many historians and anthropologists. The language of the Newars , Nepalbhasa , a Sino-Tibetan language, is classified as a Kirati language. Similarly, the over 200 non-Sanskritic place names found in the Sanskrit inscriptions of the Licchavi period of the first millennium C.E. are acknowledged to belong to
4730-589: The Kirat region in Eastern Nepal documented by Hodgson, divided into three region are Wallo Kirat (Near Kirat), Majh Kirat ( Middle Kirat/ Khambuwan ) and Pallo Kirat (Far Kirat/ Limbuwan ). The region Wallo Kirat, Majh Kirat were predominant by Khambu Kirat and Pallo Kirat were preponderance by Limbu Kirat as known as Limbuwan . The Yakkha , Khambu Rai , Limbu , and Sunuwar are different from one another and yet they all sit under one umbrella in many respects. The Kirati people and Kiranti languages between
4840-477: The Kirat region of present-day Nepal during the last quarter of the 18th century. A collection of manuscripts from the 18th and 19th centuries, till now unpublished and unstudied by historians, have made possible a new understanding of this conflict. These historical sources are among those collected by Brian Houghton Hodgson (a British diplomat and self-trained orientalist appointed to the Kathmandu court during
4950-791: The Kirata Nepal" argues that the Newar temple technology based on brick and timber usage and the rectangular temple design used for 'Tantric' Aju and Ajima deities are pre-Licchavi in origin and reflect Newar religious values and geometrical aesthetics from the Kirati period. The Himalayan Kirat people practice Kirat Mundhum , calling it "Kirat religion". In early Kirat society, Mundhum was the only law of state. Kirati people worship nature and their ancestors, and practice shamanism through Nakchhong . Major ethnic/caste groups following Kirat Religion in Nepal 2011 Census Some Kirat Limbus people believe in
5060-709: The Limbuwan-Gorkha Treaty ("Nun-Pani Sandhi"). This treaty formally merged some of the Limbu provinces into the Gorkha kingdom but it also had a provision for autonomy of Limbuwan under the "kipat" system. Kiratology is the study of Kirats the Mundhum along with history, cultures, languages and literatures of Kirat ethnic people in Nepal , Darjeeling , Sikkim , Assam , Myanmar , and so on. The Mundum or Mundhum
5170-702: The Nativity accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew and the second by working backwards from the estimation of the start of the ministry of Jesus . The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede , who was familiar with the work of Dionysius Exiguus, used anno Domini dating in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People , which he completed in AD 731. In the History he also used the Latin phrase ante [...] incarnationis dominicae tempus anno sexagesimo ("in
5280-463: The Yangshao and/or Majiayao cultures. Sagart et al. (2019) performed another phylogenetic analysis based on different data and methods to arrive at the same conclusions to the homeland and divergence model but proposed an earlier root age of approximately 7,200 years ago, associating its origin with millet farmers of the late Cishan culture and early Yangshao culture. Several low-level branches of
5390-423: The absence of any sort of systematic comparison – whether the data are thought reliable or not – such "subgroupings" are essentially vacuous. The use of pseudo-genetic labels such as "Himalayish" and "Kamarupan" inevitably gives an impression of coherence which is at best misleading. In their view, many such languages would for now be best considered unclassified, or "internal isolates" within the family. They propose
5500-581: The advent of Nyingma , the oldest Buddhist order in Lhasa and Central Tibet , which led followers of the older religion to flee to the Kirat area for survival. The Tibetan cultural influx ultimately laid the foundation for a Tibetan politico-religious order in the Kirat regions, and this led to the emergence of two major Tibetan Buddhist dynasties, one in Sikkim and another in Bhutan . The early political order of
5610-543: The alternative abbreviations CE and BCE (sometimes written C.E. and B.C.E.) are sometimes used in place of AD and BC. The "Common/Current Era" ("CE") terminology is often preferred by those who desire a term that does not explicitly make religious references but still uses the same epoch as the anno Domini notation. For example, Cunningham and Starr (1998) write that "B.C.E./C.E. […] do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog than
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#17327765013505720-506: The autonomous power given to Limbu Kings was reduced. When King Mahendra ascended the throne he banished the law which prohibits other tribes right to buy land without permission of Subba (Head of Limbu) of particular area as well as levy and taxes to Subba in 1979. The Kirati Population in Nepal number approximately one million (around five percent of the Nepalese population) and speak languages belonging to Tibeto-Burman . Kirant culture
5830-585: The conventional B.C./A.D." Upon its foundation, the Republic of China adopted the Minguo Era but used the Western calendar for international purposes. The translated term was 西 元 ( xī yuán ; 'Western Era'). Later, in 1949, the People's Republic of China adopted 公元 ( gōngyuán ; 'Common Era') for all purposes domestic and foreign. In the AD year numbering system, whether applied to
5940-487: The cultural and historical contexts of the eastern Himalayas. The Kirat people, who are indigenous to the region encompassing parts of Nepal, India, and Bhutan, trace their name back to ancient traditions and languages. The etymology of "Kirat" is believed to derive from the Sanskrit term "Kirāta," which originally referred to the indigenous tribes of the region, particularly those living in the hilly and mountainous areas of ancient India. In Sanskrit and classical texts, "Kirāta"
6050-489: The current spread of Sino-Tibetan languages is the result of historical expansions of the three groups with the most speakers – Chinese, Burmese and Tibetic – replacing an unknown number of earlier languages. These groups also have the longest literary traditions of the family. The remaining languages are spoken in mountainous areas, along the southern slopes of the Himalayas , the Southeast Asian Massif and
6160-519: The dead and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus. The old Anno Mundi calendar theoretically commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Old Testament . It was believed that, based on the Anno Mundi calendar, Jesus was born in the year 5500 (5500 years after the world was created) with the year 6000 of the Anno Mundi calendar marking
6270-547: The details of Tibeto-Burman. However, Jacques (2006) notes, "comparative work has never been able to put forth evidence for common innovations to all the Tibeto-Burman languages (the Sino-Tibetan languages to the exclusion of Chinese)" and that "it no longer seems justified to treat Chinese as the first branching of the Sino-Tibetan family," because the morphological divide between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman has been bridged by recent reconstructions of Old Chinese . The internal structure of Sino-Tibetan has been tentatively revised as
6380-405: The domination of migrant people of Tibetan origin. This flux of migration brought about the domination by Tibetan religious and cultural practices over ancient Kirat traditions. This influence first introduced shamanistic Bön practices, which in turn were later replaced by the oldest form of Tibetan Buddhism . The early influx of Bön culture to the peripheral Himalayan regions occurred only after
6490-538: The eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau . The branch with the largest number of speakers by far is the Sinitic languages , with 1.3 billion speakers, most of whom live in the eastern half of China. The first records of Chinese are oracle bone inscriptions from c. 1250 BC , when Old Chinese was spoken around the middle reaches of the Yellow River . Chinese has since expanded throughout China, forming
6600-536: The eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. The 22 official languages listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India include only two Sino-Tibetan languages, namely Meitei (officially called Manipuri) and Bodo . There has been a range of proposals for the Sino-Tibetan urheimat , reflecting the uncertainty about the classification of the family and its time depth. Three major hypotheses for
6710-438: The end of the world. Anno Mundi 6000 (approximately AD 500) was thus equated with the end of the world but this date had already passed in the time of Dionysius. The " Historia Brittonum " attributed to Nennius written in the 9th century makes extensive use of the Anno Passionis (AP) dating system which was in common use as well as the newer AD dating system. The AP dating system took its start from 'The Year of The Passion'. It
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#17327765013506820-453: The entire family "Tibeto-Burman", a name he says has historical primacy, but other linguists who reject a privileged position for Chinese nevertheless continue to call the resulting family "Sino-Tibetan". Like Matisoff, van Driem acknowledges that the relationships of the "Kuki–Naga" languages ( Kuki , Mizo , Meitei , etc.), both amongst each other and to the other languages of the family, remain unclear. However, rather than placing them in
6930-506: The erstwhile Kirat royal lineage. Even though most modern Newars are either Hindu or Buddhist or a mixture of the two as a result of at least two millennia of Sanskritization and practice a complicated, ritualistic religious life, vestigal non-Sanskritic elements can be seen in some of their practices that have similarities with the cultures of other Mongoloid groups in the north-east region of India. Sudarshan Tiwari of Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, in his essay "The Temples of
7040-451: The family, particularly Lolo-Burmese , have been securely reconstructed, but in the absence of a secure reconstruction of a Sino-Tibetan proto-language , the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. Thus, a conservative classification of Sino-Tibetan/Tibeto-Burman would posit several dozen small coordinate families and isolates ; attempts at subgrouping are either geographic conveniences or hypotheses for further research. In
7150-466: The following Stammbaum by Matisoff in the final print release of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) in 2015. Matisoff acknowledges that the position of Chinese within the family remains an open question. Sergei Starostin proposed that both the Kiranti languages and Chinese are divergent from a "core" Tibeto-Burman of at least Bodish, Lolo-Burmese, Tamangic, Jinghpaw, Kukish, and Karen (other families were not analysed) in
7260-472: The following phylogenetic tree in 2019, based on lexical items: Except for the Chinese, Bai , Karenic , and Mruic languages, the usual word order in Sino-Tibetan languages is object–verb . However, Chinese and Bai differ from almost all other subject–verb–object languages in the world in placing relative clauses before the nouns they modify. Most scholars believe SOV to be the original order, with Chinese, Karen, and Bai having acquired SVO order due to
7370-460: The following century, Brian Houghton Hodgson and others noted that many non-literary languages of the highlands of northeast India and Southeast Asia were also related to these. The name "Tibeto-Burman" was first applied to this group in 1856 by James Richardson Logan , who added Karen in 1858. The third volume of the Linguistic Survey of India , edited by Sten Konow , was devoted to the Tibeto-Burman languages of British India . Studies of
7480-416: The following initials: Although the initial consonants of cognates tend to have the same place and manner of articulation , voicing and aspiration are often unpredictable. This irregularity was attacked by Roy Andrew Miller , though Benedict's supporters attribute it to the effects of prefixes that have been lost and are often unrecoverable. The issue remains unsolved today. It was cited together with
7590-484: The great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. There is no consensus regarding the date and location of their origin. During the 18th century, several scholars noticed parallels between Tibetan and Burmese, both languages with extensive literary traditions. Early in
7700-503: The harvest. The British had recruited Gurkhas ethnicity-wise; four regiments were composed of Kirati tribes: Yakkha , Limbu , Rai , Sunuwar . The 7th Gurkha Rifles was raised in 1902 and recruited Rai, Limbu, Yakkha, and Sunuwar from Eastern Nepal. The 10th Gurkha Rifles and the regiment maintained its assigned recruiting areas in the kirat tribal areas of eastern Nepal as part of a broad reorganisation on 13 September 1901. 11 Gorkha Rifles composed entirely of kirati non-optees for
7810-513: The headman and as local rulers and were given the title Yakkha as Dewan , Khambu as Rai , Limbu as Subba , Sunuwar as Mukhiya . The Kirat groups that today identify themselves using the nomenclature 'Kirat' include the Khambu (Rai) , Limbu (Subba) , Sunuwar (Mukhia) , Yakkha (Dewan) , Thami (Thangmi) and few segments of the Kirat people like Nachhiring Bahing , Kulung and speakers of Khaling , Bantawa , Chamling , Thulung , Jerung , and other related ethnic groups. The tripartition of
7920-470: The historical context and the ongoing cultural evolution of these communities, who continue to preserve their heritage while engaging with contemporary issues of identity and recognition. Thus, the etymology of "Kirat" is not just a linguistic exercise but a reflection of the rich tapestry of historical migration, cultural adaptation, and the evolving identity of the Himalayan peoples. The term encapsulates
8030-484: The influence of neighbouring languages in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area . This has been criticized as being insufficiently corroborated by Djamouri et al. 2007, who instead reconstruct a VO order for Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Contrastive tones are a feature found across the family although absent in some languages like Purik . Phonation contrasts are also present among many, notably in
8140-493: The lack of reconstructable shared morphology, and evidence that much shared lexical material has been borrowed from Chinese into Tibeto-Burman , by Christopher Beckwith , one of the few scholars still arguing that Chinese is not related to Tibeto-Burman. Benedict also reconstructed, at least for Tibeto-Burman, prefixes such as the causative s- , the intransitive m- , and r- , b- g- and d- of uncertain function, as well as suffixes -s , -t and -n . Old Chinese
8250-579: The last Catholic country to adopt the anno Domini system. The Era of Martyrs , which numbered years from the accession of Diocletian in 284, who launched the most severe persecution of Christians , was used by the Church of Alexandria and is still officially used by the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic churches. It was also used by the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches. Another system
8360-420: The last non-imperial consul, Basilius , was appointed in 541 by Emperor Justinian I , later emperors through to Constans II (641–668) were appointed consuls on the first of January after their accession. All of these emperors, except Justinian, used imperial post-consular years for the years of their reign, along with their regnal years. Long unused, this practice was not formally abolished until Novell XCIV of
8470-711: The law code of Leo VI did so in 888. Another calculation had been developed by the Alexandrian monk Annianus around the year AD 400, placing the Annunciation on 25 March AD 9 (Julian)—eight to ten years after the date that Dionysius was to imply. Although this incarnation was popular during the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire , years numbered from it, an Era of Incarnation , were exclusively used and are still used in Ethiopia . This accounts for
8580-548: The manuscript of his work in 1941, but it was not published until 1972. Instead of building the entire family tree, he set out to reconstruct a Proto-Tibeto-Burman language by comparing five major languages, with occasional comparisons with other languages. He reconstructed a two-way distinction on initial consonants based on voicing, with aspiration conditioned by pre-initial consonants that had been retained in Tibetic but lost in many other languages. Thus, Benedict reconstructed
8690-412: The memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians . The last year of the old table, Diocletian Anno Martyrium 247, was immediately followed by the first year of his table, anno Domini 532. When Dionysius devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year— Dionysius himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior ", which
8800-601: The modern Bodic languages. Second, there is a body of lexical cognates between the Chinese and Bodic languages, represented by the Kirantic language Limbu . In response, Matisoff notes that the existence of shared lexical material only serves to establish an absolute relationship between two language families, not their relative relationship to one another. Although some cognate sets presented by van Driem are confined to Chinese and Bodic, many others are found in Sino-Tibetan languages generally and thus do not serve as evidence for
8910-579: The obscure descriptions of the sounds of Middle Chinese in medieval dictionaries with phonetic elements in Chinese characters and the rhyming patterns of early poetry. The first complete reconstruction, the Grammata Serica Recensa of Bernard Karlgren , was used by Benedict and Shafer. Karlgren's reconstruction was somewhat unwieldy, with many sounds having a highly non-uniform distribution. Later scholars have revised it by drawing on
9020-506: The old Limbu script developed in the 9th century. Limbuwan has a language spoken by the yakthung tribe which falls in the Sino Tibetan language family. Their language uses a form of brahmic script called "The Sirijunga Script" which was originally created by Sirijunga Hang during the 9th century A.D. The script lost prominence for some 600 years and was later revived by Limbu Scholar Sirijunga Sing-Thebe (Teongsi Sirijuga). Limbuwan had
9130-467: The outlines of Conrady's Indo-Chinese classification, though putting Karen in an intermediate position: Shafer criticized the division of the family into Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Daic branches, which he attributed to the different groups of languages studied by Konow and other scholars in British India on the one hand and by Henri Maspero and other French linguists on the other. He proposed
9240-566: The place and time of Sino-Tibetan unity have been presented: Zhang et al. (2019) performed a computational phylogenetic analysis of 109 Sino-Tibetan languages to suggest a Sino-Tibetan homeland in northern China near the Yellow River basin. The study further suggests that there was an initial major split between the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages approximately 4,200 to 7,800 years ago (with an average of 5,900 years ago), associated with
9350-650: The proto-Newar language; modern variants of many of these words are still used by the Newars today to refer to geographical locations in and around Kathmandu valley. Although the 14th century text Gopalarajavamsavali states that the descendants of the Kirata clan that ruled Nepal before the Licchavis resided in the region of the Tamarkoshi river, a number of Newar caste and sub-caste groups and clans also claim descent from
9460-510: The resilience and diversity of the Kirat communities, whose histories are deeply interwoven with the mountainous landscapes they inhabit. Contemporary historians widely agree that widespread cultural exchange and intermarriage took place in the eastern Himalayan region between the indigenous inhabitants — called the Kirat — and the Tibetan migrant population, reaching a climax during the 8th and 9th centuries. Another wave of political and cultural conflict between Khas and Kirat ideals surfaced in
9570-570: The rivers Likhu and Arun , including some small groups east of the Arun, are usually referred to as the Kirat people, which is a geographic grouping rather than a genetic grouping. The Sunuwars inhabit the region westward of River Sun Koshi. The Kirat were among the earliest inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley and a large percentage of the Newar (Jyapu) population is believed to have descended from them. The continuity of Newar society from
9680-548: The second quarter of the 19th century) and his principal research aide, the scholar Khardar Jitmohan. For over two millennia, a large portion of the eastern Himalaya was identified as the home of the Kirat people, of which the majority are known today as Chamling , Limbu , Rai/Khambu , Sunuwar , and Yakkha . In ancient times, the entire Himalayan region was known as the Kimpurusha Desha Kimpurusha Kingdom (also, Kirata Pradesh). For over
9790-504: The seven- or eight-year discrepancy between the Gregorian and Ethiopian calendars . Byzantine chroniclers like Maximus the Confessor , George Syncellus , and Theophanes dated their years from Annianus' creation of the world. This era, called Anno Mundi , "year of the world" (abbreviated AM), by modern scholars, began its first year on 25 March 5492 BC. Later Byzantine chroniclers used Anno Mundi years from 1 September 5509 BC,
9900-495: The similarities attributed to diffusion across the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , especially since Benedict (1942) . The exclusions of Vietnamese by Kuhn and of Tai and Miao–Yao by Benedict were vindicated in 1954 when André-Georges Haudricourt demonstrated that the tones of Vietnamese were reflexes of final consonants from Proto-Mon–Khmer . Many Chinese linguists continue to follow Li's classification. However, this arrangement remains problematic. For example, there
10010-464: The sixtieth year before the time of the Lord's incarnation"), which is equivalent to the English "before Christ", to identify years before the first year of this era. Both Dionysius and Bede regarded anno Domini as beginning at the incarnation of Jesus Christ , but "the distinction between Incarnation and Nativity was not drawn until the late 9th century, when in some places the Incarnation epoch
10120-528: The smaller Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken in inaccessible mountainous areas, many of which are politically or militarily sensitive and thus closed to investigators. Until the 1980s, the best-studied areas were Nepal and northern Thailand . In the 1980s and 1990s, new surveys were published from the Himalayas and southwestern China. Of particular interest was the increasing literature on the Qiangic languages of western Sichuan and adjacent areas. Most of
10230-409: The staff of 30 non-linguists collated all the available documentation of Sino-Tibetan languages. The result was eight copies of a 15-volume typescript entitled Sino-Tibetan Linguistics . This work was never published, but furnished the data for a series of papers by Shafer, as well as Shafer's five-volume Introduction to Sino-Tibetan and Benedict's Sino-Tibetan, a Conspectus . Benedict completed
10340-413: The subclassification or even ST affiliation in all of several minor languages of northeastern India, in particular, is either poor or absent altogether. While relatively little has been known about the languages of this region up to and including the present time, this has not stopped scholars from proposing that these languages either constitute or fall within some other Tibeto-Burman subgroup. However, in
10450-494: The tones of Middle Chinese developed from final consonants. One of these, *-s, is believed to be a suffix, with cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages. Tibetic has extensive written records from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century. The earliest records of Burmese (such as the 12th-century Myazedi inscription ) are more limited, but later an extensive literature developed. Both languages are recorded in alphabetic scripts ultimately derived from
10560-517: The underlying date." Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens briefly present arguments for 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1 as the year Dionysius intended for the Nativity or incarnation . Among the sources of confusion are: It is not known how Dionysius established the year of Jesus's birth. One major theory is that Dionysius based his calculation on the Gospel of Luke , which states that Jesus
10670-415: The van Driem's Trans-Himalayan fallen leaves model to be more plausible than the bifurcate classification of Sino-Tibetan being split into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman. Roger Blench and Mark W. Post have criticized the applicability of conventional Sino-Tibetan classification schemes to minor languages lacking an extensive written history (unlike Chinese, Tibetic, and Burmese). They find that the evidence for
10780-465: The year 1 BC . This dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus but was not widely used until the 9th century. (Modern scholars believe that the actual date of birth of Jesus was about 5 BC.) Terminology that is viewed by some as being more neutral and inclusive of non-Christian people is to call this the Common Era (abbreviated as CE), with the preceding years referred to as Before
10890-585: The year before the birth of Christ) is found in 1474 in a work by a German monk. In 1627, the French Jesuit theologian Denis Pétau (Dionysius Petavius in Latin), with his work De doctrina temporum , popularized the usage ante Christum (Latin for "Before Christ") to mark years prior to AD. When the reckoning from Jesus' incarnation began replacing the previous dating systems in western Europe, various people chose different Christian feast days to begin
11000-600: The year: Christmas, Annunciation , or Easter. Thus, depending on the time and place, the year number changed on different days in the year, which created slightly different styles in chronology: With these various styles, the same day could, in some cases, be dated in 1099, 1100 or 1101. During the first six centuries of what would come to be known as the Christian era, European countries used various systems to count years. Systems in use included consular dating , imperial regnal year dating, and Creation dating . Although
11110-588: Was "about thirty years old" shortly after "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar", and hence subtracted thirty years from that date, or that Dionysius counted back 532 years from the first year of his new table. This method was probably the one used by ancient historians such as Tertullian , Eusebius or Epiphanius , all of whom agree that Jesus was born in 2 BC, probably following this statement of Jesus' age (i.e. subtracting thirty years from AD 29). Alternatively, Dionysius may have used an earlier unknown source. The Chronograph of 354 states that Jesus
11220-451: Was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". Thus, Dionysius implied that Jesus' incarnation occurred 525 years earlier, without stating the specific year during which his birth or conception occurred. "However, nowhere in his exposition of his table does Dionysius relate his epoch to any other dating system, whether consulate, Olympiad , year of the world , or regnal year of Augustus; much less does he explain or justify
11330-700: Was Bijaypur (present-day Dharan ). The Gorkha conquest had reached the walls of limbuwan and were now battering on the doors. A total of 17 recorded battles took place between the Kingdom of Gorkha and the Kingdom of Limbuwan/Yakthunglajey. After the Limbuwan–Gorkha war and seeing the threat of the rising power of the British East India Company the kings and ministers of some of the provinces of Yakthung laje ("thibong Yakthung laje") kingdoms of Limbuwan gathered in Bijaypur, and they agreed upon
11440-403: Was born during the consulship of Caesar and Paullus (AD 1), but the logic behind this is also unknown. It has also been speculated by Georges Declercq that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was intended to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world . At the time, it was believed by some that the resurrection of
11550-423: Was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted. The initial focus on languages of civilizations with long literary traditions has been broadened to include less widely spoken languages, some of which have only recently, or never, been written. However, the reconstruction of the family is much less developed than for families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included
11660-554: Was identified with Christ's conception, i. e., the Annunciation on March 25" ("Annunciation style" dating). On the continent of Europe, anno Domini was introduced as the era of choice of the Carolingian Renaissance by the English cleric and scholar Alcuin in the late eighth century. Its endorsement by Emperor Charlemagne and his successors popularizing the use of the epoch and spreading it throughout
11770-511: Was to date from the crucifixion of Jesus , which as early as Hippolytus and Tertullian was believed to have occurred in the consulate of the Gemini (AD 29), which appears in some medieval manuscripts. Alternative names for the anno Domini era include vulgaris aerae (found 1615 in Latin), "Vulgar Era" (in English, as early as 1635), "Christian Era" (in English, in 1652), " Common Era " (in English, 1708), and "Current Era". Since 1856,
11880-697: Was uncertain about the affinity of Karen and Hmong–Mien . The English translation "Sino-Tibetan" first appeared in a short note by Przyluski and Luce in 1931. In 1935, the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber started the Sino-Tibetan Philology Project, funded by the Works Project Administration and based at the University of California, Berkeley . The project was supervised by Robert Shafer until late 1938, and then by Paul K. Benedict . Under their direction,
11990-530: Was used to describe the people inhabiting the rugged terrains of the eastern Himalayas, who were perceived as different from the Aryan settlers of the Indo-Gangetic plains. This designation was not merely a label but reflected the distinct cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identities of the groups living in these regions. The term "Kirat" has evolved over time to encompass a broad array of ethnic groups within
12100-508: Was widely used, but there was uncertainty regarding his exclusion of Vietnamese. Franz Nikolaus Finck in 1909 placed Karen as a third branch of Chinese-Siamese. Jean Przyluski introduced the French term sino-tibétain as the title of his chapter on the group in Meillet and Cohen 's Les langues du monde in 1924. He divided them into three groups: Tibeto-Burman, Chinese and Tai, and
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