ave rarely undergone reprints and ‘Karbi Self-taught’ has certainly achieved a landmark, in Karbi standard!
In 1966, Fr. Michael Balawan compiled ‘A Mikir-English Dictionary’ —‘for private circulation only’ which appeared in printed form under a new title ‘A Mikir-English Dictionary with some tits-bits of Mikir Grammar’, published from Shillong, Khasi Jaintia Presbyterian Press in 1978. Fr. Balawan (1922-1989), tracked by the Nazis for not abiding by the compulsory labours,came to Indian shore from France as a Salesian brother and took up his assignment at Umswai Catholic Church and School, a nondescript Karbi-Tiwa populated village. This great humanitarian and an exceptional missionary produced great works in both Tiwa and Karbi. His ‘Tiwa Mat’ is the first Reader in the Tiwa language, which is still in circulation while ‘Baibele History’, is a ‘Brief Bible History in the Tiwa Language’ (1988) and both the books are published by the Don Bosco publications, Guwahati. But what must rank as the most outstanding for the Karbis is his ‘Mikir Grammar’ (1988, Don Bosco Press Shillong), which is currently out of print. This 86-paged grammar deals with phonetics, morphology and syntax in Roman script, which definitely is an excellent introduction to learners of Karbi language and could have easily been used as text in middle and high school level classes. The general apathy of the language speakers and the ignorance of people that matters can be gauged by the fact that only a 2 Km patch of unfinished village road leading to the Umswai Parish is named after this great man! Similar is the fate of Pangti Andreas Hanse Durong (1911-1993), whose immense love for his people and tireless efforts have virtually remained unknown! As many as 13 text books in the language that include ‘Mikir-English Reader’ (for classes A, B, I, II & III), ‘Mikir-English Translation’ (Part- I, II & III), ‘Mikir Geography’ ‘Arithmetic in Mikir’ (for Classes -B, I, A-B & I, II, III) produced by this rare genius of a Karbi are today nowhere, except of course, in the exclusive custody of the Umswai Catholic Mission. Both Fr. Balawan and Pangti Andreas Hanse Durong are forgotten and ignored as neither their great works nor the men are considered worthy of Karbi gratitude!
About a decade later, Prof. Ronbong Terang’s ‘Karbi Lamtasam’ appeared in 1974. The Mikir-English-Assamese dictionary with a brief sketch of grammar is undoubtedly an important contribution towards the growth of the language. But unfortunately, the book is now out of print and it is hard to guess if the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council would be generous enough to fund the much-needed reprint as it did for the first publication. Prof. Terang has acknowledged Walker’s book as the guiding inspiration for his ‘Lamtasam’. But the highlight of the ‘dictionary’ is certainly the grammatical sketch that he had incorporated where he had attempted to offer the phonological patterns of the language. The tilt to the Assamese grammar in his grammatical sketch seems obvious for the author who had taught Assamese in the Diphu Govt. College for almost all his life. He had observed that there is no difference between the short and long phonemes in Karbi and that there are five tones corresponding to ‘high’, ‘mid high’, ‘high-lower-middle’ and ‘low’. According to Prof. Terang, ‘in Karbi seven separate vowel sounds are to be found’ while Mr. Stack had distinguished twelve vowel sounds adopting the Roman alphabets, ‘always employed to express the sounds of the language’. Likewise, while Prod. Terang had put nineteen consonant sounds, Mr. Stack had put them at fifteen barring the aspirates.
During the same time, Dr. Karl-Heinz Grüssner of Tübingen University (Germany), in his hunt for ‘exotic languages’ chanced upon the Karbi tongue in one of his first Shillong visits and started the process of documenting it through 1970 to 1973 and published his materials in 1973 under the title, ‘Arleng Alam, die Sprache Der Mikir: Grammatik u. Texte’ in German language. Mr. Harrison Langne, Dr. Clement Singnar, both hailing fro