Talk:Malana people

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Page scope

Malana people is the page for the people of the village of Malana in Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh (the Malanis; also written Malanese), who speak Kanashi. It covers names, population, language, the accounts of their origin, caste, clans and marriage, religion, village government, livelihood and cannabis, and lists the accessions collected among them. The village, its valley, its deity and its charas are treated on Malana, Malana Valley, Jamlu and Malana Cream; the language on Kanashi language.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

Anju Saxena and Lars Borin, "Introduction: Kanashi, its speakers, its linguistic and extralinguistic context" (2022), is on the publisher's open-access page. Page numbers are the book's (the chapter runs from p. 1 to p. 12). Their figures for Ethnologue (1,400 speakers, from a 2001 source) and the 2011 Census (1,722 people) are in their footnote 1. Harcourt (1871) and P. C. Sharma and colleagues (1985) are quoted from this chapter; neither was read directly.
The Agro-Economic Research Centre's resurvey of Malana (Kalia and others, December 2018) is cited from a text copy of the PDF. The PDF carries no printed page numbers, so references give the report's section numbers. Its fieldwork was done in 2016–17.
Richard Axelby's article in the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 46 (2015). Page numbers are the journal's. Colin Rosser's 1952 article and 1956 thesis are known here only through Axelby's quotations and summaries, and the article says so where a figure is Rosser's.
G. M. Young's "Malana and the Akbar-Jamlu legend" (1916) is cited from a web reproduction without page numbers.
The IGNCA text "Malana: Shangrila in the Himalayas" is a PDF on the IGNCA site. It is an exhibition text for photographs by Virendra Bangroo and Krzysztof Stronski and names no separate author; it carries no date.
Giroti and Talwar (2010) are cited from the abstract only. The 2011 Census figures for Malana (village code 012882) are from the District Census Handbook for Kullu.

Where the sources disagree

Caste. Young (1916) describes the village as mainly Kanet with a few Dagi families; Rosser's 1956 count, as Axelby quotes it, gives 109 Kanet households, one Julaha and two Lohar. The 2016–17 resurvey calls all families but five Rajput, and the IGNCA text names four Rajput sub-divisions. The article gives each caste name with its date and source. None of the sources read explains the change of name.
Non-Rajput families. The resurvey counts five (three weaver, two blacksmith); the IGNCA text and an earlier IGNCA article by Bangroo (2002) count two families, one Lohar and one Julaha. The 2011 Census records 28 people of Scheduled Castes.
Rasol and marriage. Young (1916) has brides taken from Rashol into Malana; the IGNCA text has Malana girls marrying into Rasol. Young names Jamlu's wife Naroi; the IGNCA text calls the goddess of Rasol, Renuka, Jamlu's wife.
Upper and lower Malana. The IGNCA text's prose puts Dhara Beda in upper Malana and "Sor Beda" in lower Malana, while its Kanashi word list glosses dhara-bheda as lower Malana and sara-bheda as upper Malana. The article does not place the two halves.
Greek descent. The IGNCA text says in its introduction that some Kanashi words and building motifs are "arguably of Greek provenance", and in its language section that no lexical link with Greek or Macedonian has been shown. The article uses the language section. The resurvey calls the Alexander story not credible.
Population. Young's 376 is "at the time of the last census" before 1916; Rosser's 1952 count is of households (119, of 116 families), and Axelby gives 112 households from Rosser's thesis. The resurvey's 1,969 (2017) and the 2011 Census's 1,722 are both given.

Not used

V. Bhalla and P. C. Sharma, "Malanis", in People of India: Himachal Pradesh (1996), is known only from the resurvey's summary, which the article cites as such.
Tobdan, Exploring Malana (2011), and the later chapters of Saxena and Borin (2022), including chapter 8 on the prehistory of Kanashi, were not read.
The IGNCA text's statements on the age at marriage were not used: they are a single unsourced statement in an exhibition text.

Open questions

Whether Kanashi speakers live permanently in the hamlets of the Malana valley, besides Malana itself.
When and how the community's caste name changed from Kanet in the colonial and 1950s records to Rajput in the 2018 resurvey.