Darmiya

Darmiya (ISO-639-3 code: drd)

Darma is the name of community and the language too. The community is known after the name of the valley they belong to. The darma valley is situated along the Indo-Tibetan border. Darma belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family spoken by fewer than 3019 people (according to census 2001). Among the villages, about fourteen of Darma Valley in Pithauragarh District of Uttarakhand state. The habitat of Darma community stretches along the ‘Dauli Ganga’ river in the Darma Valley. In the ‘Linguistic survey of India’, Grierson had given another name for this language which is Darmiya based on settlement patterns, the community has two divisions: The lower Darma which has permanent shelters. where as the upper Darma has temporary shelters. They are known by two different names which are PANG JINKHU comprising four villages (Banling, Nagling, Chal and Sela), YAR JINKHU comprising the rest of the villages (Baun, Filum, Saun, Dugtu, Daubu, Go, Tidang, Bedang, Maraksha and Sipu).

Darma is considered an endangered language, listed by the UNESCO in 2001. Darma together with Byansi and Chaudansi comprise the Rang community, of which Darma is said to be the most conservative (WILLIS, 2007:8). These languages are said to share several linguistics features which may indicate a common genetic descent for them. The community claims, to have had a common scriptfor all Rang languages in the past,which is unfortunatly, no longer preserved nor transmitted to current generation: so the script was missing among the speakers. Due to the great efforts put in by the Rang community, some compilations of lexemes transcribed in Devanagari script excist which got published for preservation and future reference. Though the work is laudable, it neverthless requires further linguistic improvements to be considered as proper documentation.

The Darmas are usually reffered to as Bhotias, for all Rang community members have been reffered to as by Britishers earlier and also the Government of India for their perceived similarity to the Tibetans in feature. The term bhot means ‘of Tibet’, and They are generally categorised as scheduled tribes (all Bhotias) by Government of India.