A. History:
Nyishi, which was also known earlier as Dafla, Nissi, Nishang, belongs to Tibeto- Burman family of languages. The speakers of Nyishi inhabit the districts of Kurung Kumey, Papum Pare, Lower Subansiri, Upper Subansiri and West-Kameng in Arunachal Pradesh. According to 1991 census, their population was 1,73,791.
As per the oral tradition prevalent among the Nyishis, they had migrated from the North. They believe that they had a script which was written on the skin of a deer, which they carried with them and preserved. To their misfortune, when they faced scarcity of food and were very hungry, they were left with the skin of the deer. They had no other go but to share and eat that skin. Thus they lost their own script.
Since reliable materials and studies on Nyishi are not available, the material presented here is from the field study conducted by the resource person himself. The language has not yet been reduced to writing. Though there exists a rich oral tradition, their oral narratives are neither studied nor documented. The efforts to devise a script for the language have not yet succeeded.
Grierson classified it as one among the North-Assam group of Tibeto-Burman. He observes, “The Abor-Miris and Daflas speak dialects which are so closely related that they can be justly considered as one and the same speech form” (Grierson: 1966, p. 568). It may be noted that the speakers of these languages have already discarded the names of Abor, Miri and Dafla that are given by outsiders and call themselves as Adi, Mising and Nyishi respectively. Since all the speakers of the so called North-Assam group of languages trace their ancestry to their legendary forefather Abotani, their languages can rightly be called Tani languages- instead of calling them with the geographical name given in the work of Grierson, which is not much relevant in the present geo-political context of India.
