Aryan loanwords in Burushaski as a data source for the reconstruction of language contact in the Upper Indus basin

Anton Kogan (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; kogan_anton@yahoo.com)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 23/1-2, 2025 - p.17-25

Abstract: The article attempts to reconstruct certain essential features of language situation in the Upper Indus region before the Tibetan conquest of the 8th century CE. Recent research has found that in pre-Tibetan times this area was inhabited by speakers of Burushaski, as well as of some now extinct Indo-Iranian (most probably, Dardic) lect. Intensive contact and mutual influence of these two languages seem likely but specific evidence on this point was almost unavailable to scholars until now. The author scrutinizes a large group of Aryan loans in Burushaski and concludes that a significant number of them must have been borrowed from an Indo-Iranian dialect of pre-Tibetan Ladakh. Some important historical-phonological peculiarities of such loan vocabulary are determined.

Keywords: language contact, lexical borrowing, Burushaski language, Indo-Iranian languages, Dardic languages, Ladakhi language, Balti language, Purik language

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