An overview of research on Lepcha

Also in the middle of the nineteenth century, Colonel (later General) Georges Byres Mainwaring of the Bengal Staff Corps visited Darjeeling for the first time. The Lepcha customs and way of life had a great impact on him and he saw all the fine traits of their culture reflected in their language. He was the first to write a grammar of Lepcha, which was published in the year 1876. Mainwaring worked on a Lepcha dictionary as well, the manuscript of which was edited and published in 1898 by Albert Grünwedel after Mainwaring's death. Mainwaring's work has been of great importance for the survival of the Lepcha language.

Apart from editing Mainwaring's dictionary, Albert Grünwedel published a series of Lepcha texts translated from Tibetan sources. Lawrence Waddell published an article with remarks on a number of Lepcha place names in 1892 and in an article in 1899 he translated and explained nine Lepcha songs. In his account of Tibetan Buddhism, he also gives attention to religious practices of the Lepchas. These works were followed by different short accounts of the Lepcha language (Schott, Drouin, Feer).

In the late 1890s, two Darjeeling teaplanters John and William Stölke compiled an extensive Lepcha-English dictionary. The handwritten dictionary is kept in the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and is now being studied and prepared for publication.

Much attention is given to the Lepchas in numerous travel books in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century. Several influential studies on Lepcha culture or aspects thereof have appeared, I mention here those by Stocks, Morris, Gorer, Hermanns and later publications by Klafkowski, Thakur, and Chattopadhyay.

The most important anthropological study of the Lepchas until today is the monumental and inspiring work of Halfdan Siiger and Jørgen Rischel of 1957. The Austrian Tibetologist René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz published extensively on the religion of the Lepchas, all his work is excellent and highly recommended.

Notable 20th century publicatons on the Lepcha language consist of studies on the field of classification (Benedict, Shafer, Forrest, Bodman), orthography and inconsistencies in spelling (Haarh, Sprigg, Chakraborty), phonetics and phonology (Sprigg, Bodman). In 1966 Prabhakar Sinha wrote an unpublished grammar of Lepcha as a Ph.D. dissertation at Deccan College in Pune. Richard Keith Sprigg, who lived in Kalimpong for a long time, has written numerous valuable articles on the Lepcha language, the indigenous Lepcha script and Lepcha history.

The Lepcha Textbook Department of the Government of Sikkim and the various Lepcha Associations of Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Sikkim have been publishing periodicals, books, plays and collections of poetry in Lepcha for decades now. Here I will mention a few of the many Lepcha authors who have written on their native language and culture. The Lepcha author Arthur Foning published his beautiful and influential book 'Lepcha, my vanishing tribe' in 1987. A reprint of this book was published in 2003. Two other outstanding Lepcha scholars are Khárpú Támsáng and Dóngtshen Luksóm, who both published important studies on the Lepcha language and culture. Some work is written in English, but most of Támsáng's and Luksóm's work is written in Lepcha.

Several dictionaries of the Lepcha language have been compiled. Apart from the works by Mainwaring, Grünwedel and the Stölke brothers, which were mentioned above, I will mention three other important works here. Khárpú Támsáng's magnificent 'Lepcha English Encyclopedic Dictionary' from 1980, is indispensible to anyone working on Lepcha. In 1983 a 'Lepcha Hindi English Dictionary' was compiled by Dóngtshen Luksóm. More recently, an 'English to Lepcha Dictionary' was compiled by the eminent Lepcha authors Ugen Shipmú, Karma Loday Righimú, Naku Tshering Likmú and Dorji Wangdi Kunchudyangmú, which was published in 1996. In the bibliography, there are also references to the dictionaries compiled by the authors Cemjong and Kumar.

Ever since its first issue in 1997, the quarterly Lepcha bilingual news magazine 'Aachuley', published by the Lepcha Literary Organisation in Kalimpong, edited by Lyángsóng Támsáng (who himself has contributed several valuable articles to the magazine as well), has proven to be an important source for contributions on Lepcha language and culture written by authors from all over the world.

In 2000, a thesis called 'The Lepchas and their language and culture in the Darjeeling and Sikkim hills. A study', which is written in Nepali, was published by Anthony Lepcha.

In 2003, a concise overview of Lepcha grammar was given in the chapter on Lepcha language written by Heleen Plaisier in the handbook on Sino-Tibetan languages edited by Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla. Also in 2003, Heleen Plaisier published a descriptive catalogue of the 182 Lepcha manuscripts in the Van Manen Collection, kept in the library of the Kern Institute of Leiden University. In 2005, she published an article on Lepcha orthography and literature in the Bulletin of Tibetology of the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok. Her grammar on the Lepcha language, based on fieldwork in the Lepcha-speaking area, was published in 2007. In 2009 she embarked on a project aimed at preserving handwritten Lepcha books and digitized a range of private collections of Lepcha manuscripts in Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Sikkim, funded by the Endangered Archives Programme. Her current research is described elsewhere.

Many people are currently actively involved in research in the field of Lepcha studies, such as Vibha Arora, Jenny Bentley, Olivier Chiron, Satarupa Dattamajumdar, Fr Samuel Dingrongmoo Lepcha, Yishey Doma, Julien Garcia, Ajeya and Vanya Jha, Piotr Klafkowski, Charisma Lepcha, Dawa Lepcha, Kerry Little, Dulal Chandra Roy, Azuk Támsángmú, Lyángsóng Támsáng, Davide Torri and others. Please refer to the bibliography on this website for references to the publications of all of these scholars.

On this entire website the emphasis lies on written and published works, but the internet now also offers a wealth of information relevant to those interested in Lepcha studies, to which new additions are made on a daily basis. The cartoonist and filmmaker Sarbajit Sen has made a beautiful film based on fieldwork in Dzongú, called 'The Days and Nights of Netuk'. Chinlop Fudong Lepcha's excellent photos can be found on several websites.

Please have a look at the website of the Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association.

*Please note that these webpages are a work in progress, and that I may not have been able to give credit to all deserving parties. I welcome suggestions in general and additional information on research work on Lepcha that I have not mentioned here in particular, via lepcharesearch at gmail dot com.