Zhangzhung and its next of kin in the Himalayas

Abstract

Zhangzhung is an extinct Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in what today is western Tibet. What little we know about the language and about the history of the people who once spoke it supports the old hypothesis proposed by Frederick William rlliomas and propagated by Robert Shafer, Erik Haarh and Helmut Hoffmann that Zhangzhung belongs to the same branch of the Tibeto-Burman family as the languages still spoken today in adjoining tracts on the southern flank of the Himalayas. An ethnolinguistic relationship between Zhangzhung and the language communities that speak Manchad, Bunan, Rangkas, Kinnauri and related languages has always been the most obvious hypothesis in terms of both history and geography, and this hypothesis also happens to be the one best supported by the 1inguistic data seen to date. In the following I shall address two questions: What are the 1inguistically relevant cultural and historical facts about the people who once spoke Zhangzhung? What is the state of the art in the 1inguistic study of Zhangzhung?

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