Newar (; , ) is a Sino-Tibetan language of central Nepal belonging to the Tibeto-Burman group. It is spoken natively by the Newar people, the indigenous inhabitants of Nepal Mandala, which consists of the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions in Nepal. The name Nepal Bhasa was historically used for the language and is also the name used in official contexts by the Government of Nepal. This name is also preferred by native speakers and writers of the language. Another name frequently used is Newari, but this name is considered inappropriate by Newars due to the addition of the Indic -i suffix and it has become increasingly common to refer to the language as Newar in English.
Newar was the official language of Nepal during the medieval period, having been given this status by Jayasthiti Malla in the 14th century. The language during this period was consistently referred as "nepāla bhāṣā", a term which literally means "Nepalese Language". Despite the similar nomenclature, It is distinct from the Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language which replaced Newar as the national language after the conquest of Nepal by the Shah Dynasty, and additionally only adopted the name Nepali in the 1930s.
From the start of the Rana dynasty in the 1840s until democratization, Newar suffered from official suppression. From 1952 to 1991, the percentage of Newar speakers in the Kathmandu Valley dropped from 75% to 44% and today Newar culture and language are under threat. Today, the language has been listed as "Definitely endangered" by UNESCO.
Newar is one of four Tibeto-Burman languages with an old literary tradition, with the other three being Tibetan, Burmese, and Meitei. Literature in Newar is one of the oldest in Nepal, dating back to at least 600 years ago. Many of the literature written in Newar, like the Gopal Raj Vamshavali and Manava Nyaya Shastra are important in the study of the history of Nepal. On 6 May 2024, Newar, along with Tamang and Nepali was declared as the official language of Bagmati Province. Similarly, Newar is given official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and several city governments of Nepal including the capital Kathmandu.
Name
The official and historical name of the language, Nepal Bhasa, which literally means Nepalese Language, originates from Nepal.उनले भनेका थिए– ‘तिब्बतको दक्षिणमा ‘नेपाल’ छ, त्यसका बासिन्दालाई ‘नेवार’ भनिन्छ ।’ यो सन्दर्भलाई पत्याउने हो भने त्यतिखेर ‘नेपाल’ काठमाडौं वरिपरि मात्र भएको देशको नाम थियो र अहिले ‘नेपाली’ भनिए जस्तो त्यो ‘नेपाल’ देशका बासिन्दालाई ‘नेवार’ भनिन्थ्यो । उनीहरूले बोल्ने भाषालाई ‘नेपाल भाषा’ भनिन्थ्यो । यसको गहिरो अर्थ छ– ‘नेवार’ कुनै जात, जाति वा नश्ल समुुदाय हैन, एक ऐतिहासिक राष्ट्र वा राष्ट्रियता हो । Historically, Nepal was only used to refer to the Kathmandu Valley and its surroundings, where the language was native to.Multiple sources:
The name "Nepal Bhasa" has been used consistently in sources from the Malla dynasty to refer to the language. The earliest occurrences of the name Nepālabhāṣā (Devanāgarī: नेपालभाषा, "Nepalese language") or alternatively Nepālavāca (Devanāgarī: नेपालवाच, "Nepalese speech"), used to refer to the language, can be found in the manuscripts of a commentary to the Nāradasaṃhitā, dated 1380, and a commentary to the Amarkośa, dated 1386. Some sources from the Malla Dynasty refer to the language as deśabhāṣā (Newar Script: , ) or svadeśabhāṣā (Newar Script: , ). Similarly, the language was referred to as Nepalese in sources of some 18th-century Capuchin missionaries like in the journal who visited Nepal in the 1740s.
In contrast, the name Newar did not even appear in the written record before the 17th century and William Kirkpatrick was one of the first Western scholars to use the term Newar for the language in his 1811 book. Newar was also used in the travelogue of a few 18th-century European missionaries to refer to the people or the land of Nepal. For instance, Ippolito Desideri who visited Nepal in 1721 used the term Neuâr to refer to the inhabitants of Nepal. Similarly, in one of the books written by the Capuchin mission in the 1740s, Nepal is referred as the kingdom of "Newar or Nepal".
The origin of the word Newar is generally believed to be related to the word Nepal, possibly derived by the replacement of the 'la' sound with a 'ra' sound, a common practice in historical documents from Nepal. Historically, "Newar" rarely used appeared in native sources as well. Only two sources in Nepal from before the Gorkhali rule use the term "Newar" to refer to the language or its script; the multilingual stone inscription of Pratap Malla uses "nevāra ākhara" ("newar alphabet") to refer to the Newar script and another stone inscription of Pratap Malla from 1652 uses the term nevārabhāṣā ("newar language") to refer to the language.
The term "Newari", derived from the Sanskritisation of "Newar" was first used by Brian Hodgson in 1847 and since then used by most western scholars. In one case, Shakya noted that Cecil Bendall in his translation of a Newar manuscript, used the term Newari to refer to the language although the manuscript he translated used the word Nepala Bhasa. However, the name Newari is considered inappropriate by Newar speakers due to the addition of the Indic suffix -i and it has become increasingly common to refer to the language as Newar in English.
In the 1920s, the language known as Khas Kura, Gorkhali or Parbatiya was renamed to Nepali. Conversely, the term Gorkhali in the former national anthem entitled "Shreeman Gambhir" was changed to Nepali in 1951. Gorkhā Bhāṣā Prakāśinī Samiti (Gorkha Language Publishing Committee), a government institution established in 1913 (B.S. 1970) for advancement of Gorkha Bhasa, renamed itself as Nepālī Bhāṣā Prakāśinī Samiti (Nepali Language Publishing Committee) in 1933 (B.S. 1990), which is currently known as Sājhā Prakāśana.
On 7 September 1995, the cabinet of ministers decided to use "Nepal Bhasa" instead of "Newari". On 13 November 1998, the Minister of Information and Communication issued another directive to use the name Nepal Bhasa instead of Newari. Similarly, the Central Bureau of Statistics have started to use the name "Nepal Bhasa" since the 2021 Nepal census.
History and development
Origin
The precise position of Newar within the Tibeto-Burman language family remains unresolved and it does not fit neatly into any established sub-group. In 1992, Van Driem proposed a genetic link between Newar and the Kirati languages based primarily on shared verbal agreement morphology—notably a third-person patient-marking suffix reconstructed as Proto-Tibeto Burman *-u which is retained in the Kiranti languages and Dolakha Newar, and thus grouped the Newar language with Kiranti in the sub-group of Mahakiranti language. Van Driem later expanded this hypothesis to include Thangmi and Baram alongside Newar in this group. However, after a fieldwork on the Gongduk language in Bhutan, Van Driem discovered the same morphological trait in Gongduk, that he had previsouly theorized united the Mahakiranti group, and thus Van Driem retracted the Mahakiranti theory and instead proposed a narrower "Newaric" sub-group consisting of Newar, Baram and Thangmi.
The Newaric hypothesis remains the most widely cited proposal for Newar's closest relatives, supported by Turin's lexical research identifying over thirty likely cognates specific to Thangmi and Classical Newar. Though, this theory has still not reached scholarly consensus as the linguist Tej Ratna Kansakar, among others, attribute the lexical similarity between Newar and Thangmi to language contact and borrowing.
According to the linguist Glover, Newar and Chepang must have diverged around 2200 BC. It is estimated that Newar shares 28% of its vocabulary with Chepang. At the same time, a very large and significant proportion of Newari vocabulary is Indo-European in origin, by one estimate more than 50%, indicating an influence of at least 1,600 years from Indo-European languages, first from Sanskrit, Maithili, Persian, and Urdu and today from Hindi, Nepali and English.
Proto-Newar The Newar language is first attested in the stone inscriptions from the Liccahvi period (400–879 CE), which represent the earliest available historical sources in Nepal and the current evidence suggests that Newar existed as a vernacular language since the Licchavi period. Although these inscriptions are written in Sanskrit in Gupta characters, an analysis of 190 inscriptions between 464 and 877 CE done by linguist KP Malla found the presence of 246 non-Sanskritic nominals mostly in the form of toponyms and hydronyms but some in the form of tax office nominal as well as personal names. These nominals were identified by Malla as belonging to a Tibeto-Burman language and based on formal, lexical and diachronic analysis, which showed that most of these nominals constituted an earlier form of the nominals still in use in Modern Newar, he concluded that these nominals belonged to an early form of the Newar language which Malla dubbed as "Proto Newari".
As an example of the diachronic continuity, the toponym khopṛiṅa attested in an inscription from 561 CE survives in modern Newar as khopa, the native name for Bhaktapur, narapṛiṅa first attested in 490 CE survives in Modern Newar as nara, the native name of the town of Harigaon and jolapṛiṅa first attested in 631 survive as jala, the native name for the town of Harisiddhi. Recent research suggest that almost 80 percent of the names of places, taxes and merchandise used in the inscriptions from the Licchavi period are Tibeto-Burman in origin.
Classical Newar
Following the Licchavi period, Sanskrit remained the dominant language of written sources in Nepal with Newar appearing more commonly since the 12th century. The earliest dated document written entirely in Newar that has been found till date, a palm-leaf manuscript preserved in Uku Bāhā, a Buddhist monastery in Lalitpur, dates from 1114 (NS 234). Following is a line from the document which mostly deals with business transaction.
Newar also started to be used as the language of royal epigraphy from the 12th century, as the earliest dated inscription in Newar from the royal family is one from an edict at the Bajrayogini Temple of Rudradeva from 1173 (NS 293).
The form of the Newar language used since the Uku Bāhā palm leaf to the sources of the 18th century is referred to as Classical Newar. Scholars like Otter and Tamot further divide the period into Old Newar (or Early Classical Newar), referring to the language before the 16th century and Classical Newar (or Late Classical Newar), referring to the language used between the 16th and 18th century. Tamot prefers the separation between these two forms based on political events; with Late Classical Newar appearing from 1482 when the united Nepala Mandala was divided among the children of Yaksha Malla.
The reign of Jayasthiti Malla in the 14th century saw the first ever translations of Sanskrit classics into Newar like the Manav Nyaya Shastra as well as original Newar works like the Gopal Raj Vamshavali, leading some scholars like Pal to conclude that Jayasthiti Malla had elevated Newar to the status of national language. Since his reign, most royal decrees, official proclamations and public notices set up by the monarchs as well as an overwhelming number of stone inscriptions in the Kathmandu Valley, where they are a ubiquitous element at heritage sites, are in Newar.Bajracharya, Chunda (1985). Mallakalya Chhun Sanskriti ("Some Customs of the Malla Period"). Kathmandu: Kashinath Tamot for Nepal Bhasa Study and Research Centre.