# Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India
**ग्रियर्सन का भारतीय भाषा सर्वेक्षण**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/linguistic-survey-1903/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1903 CE – 1928 CE
- Where: Calcutta, where the volumes were printed (22.5726, 88.3639)
- Tags: language, colonial

## Summary

George Grierson's survey, published from 1903 to 1928, records 179 languages and 544 dialects, but leaves out Madras, Mysore and Hyderabad.

1903 से 1928 तक छपा जॉर्ज ग्रियर्सन का सर्वेक्षण 179 भाषाएँ और 544 बोलियाँ दर्ज करता है, पर मद्रास, मैसूर और हैदराबाद को छोड़ देता है।

## Account

George Abraham Grierson, an Irish officer of the Bengal civil service, took the idea of a survey from the Oriental congress at Vienna in 1886. The government approved it in the 1890s, and most of the material came in between 1898 and 1903. Local officials collected specimens in each area, including a version of the parable of the Prodigal Son, so that speech could be compared. The eleven volumes, in nineteen parts and over 8,000 pages, appeared from 1903 to 1928, with help from Sten Konow on some volumes.

The survey is still the only one of its kind for most of the country. It drew the lines between Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda and Tibeto-Burman speech that later language maps, and the states drawn by language after 1956, take for granted.

It is not a census of all India. Madras Presidency, Hyderabad, Mysore and Burma were left out, so the south is thin. Its line between a language and a dialect was a judgement, and the 179 and 544 are Grierson's own counts.

## Sources

- Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, 11 vols in 19 parts (Calcutta, 1903-1928), Digital South Asia Library — https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/
- About the Linguistic Survey of India, Digital South Asia Library — https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/about-lsi.html
- UCLA South Asia, Sir George Grierson — https://southasia.ucla.edu/history-politics/colonial-epistemologies/sir-george-grierson


---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics