Overview
The two authors were jointly responsible for the first version of this Badaga Dictionary (Berlin, 1992). Ithas been extensively revised and expanded to two volumes, and unique for a Dravidian dictionary it includes some 2,000 local place-names. The vocabulary documented here was partly collected by the two authors during long-term fieldwork, but otherwise came from records of Badaga folk literature. Although there are several dialects of the language, these have not yet been systematically studied; but dialectal variations are nonetheless recorded wherever they are known.An introductory essay examines the status of the language, while another essay outlines the cultural history of the Badaga people. Many entries here include the bibliographic references to the extensive Nilgiri regional literature, and these will prove invaluable to natural scientists, even those not concerned with the Badaga language. Thousands of entries also include notes on religious or cultural beliefs and practices in the Nilgiri Hills.