Vernacular Stems and Loan Vocabulary in Burushaski: A Cultural Contact with Sanskrit as Expressed by the Names of Head Parts

Abstract

Burushaski (Bur) is amongst the languages that has left huge deposits of cultural data with distinctive layers, marking the periods from history. The conception is that, that each layer in Bur distinctively preserve the remote development of vocabulary and loan inspirations from the cultures in contact. This paper aims to unfold these linguistic stratums under two major objectives. Firstly, it attempts to explore the primary layer of vocabulary, on which the Bur words are based in Names of Head Parts (NHP), developed from various stems. Secondly, it tries to find the loan vocabularies in this set of data, with historical references, inspired Bur during the past cultural contacts, mainly with Sanskrit. The following point seeks to understand the degree of impact under the cultural superiority of Gandhāri Prakrit and Sanskrit during the classical period, and with the Old Indian (OInd) or Indo-European (IE) languages. This cultural exchange is appearing to be started from the early second century AD in this mountain area of present Gilgit-Baltistan, as discussed in relation to geography and history in the opening of this paper. Following this, an attempt to present the previous investigations is offered. This is continued by the core data of NHP, exploring the distinctive primary layer, different from the super deposited stratum of loan vocabulary. This data is examined based on their decomposition revealing the words’ stems and the sentence structure. This helps us to develop a list of vocabulary of IE origin in the names of head parts, also known from previous studies. However, this study reveals that major vocabulary is based on the vernacular stems and minor on loan vocabulary, not distressing the primary stratum of sentence structure. Thus, the loan vocabulary had adjusted differently in Bur, and continued to survive for a longer period.