Saurashtra-English Dictionary

The language is spoken by Saurashtrans, who mostly live in Tamil Nadu and belong to a cast of weavers. According to their oral tradition, they stem from Saurashtra and left their home when it was conquered by Muslims. They immigrated into Tamil Nadu by way of Maharashtra and Andhraradesh. The Saurashtra language is one of Indo-Aryan languages as Hindi, Gujarati, etc., are. However, as the Saurashtrans live in the Dravidian linguistic area, their language has become almost Dravidian in grammatical structure though its basic vocabulary is still Indo-Aryan. The language has many loanwords from Marathi, Telugu and Tamil, which supports the evidence of their oral tradition. This dictionary, the first modern lexicography of the Saurashtra language, contains a short grammar and a vocabulary of the Bangalore dialect of the same language.