The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) celebrates its Golden Jubilee this year after completing 50 years of excellence. The Institute was established on July 17, 1969 by the Government of India in Mysuru to help in evolving and implementing the language policy of the Government and to coordinate the development of Indian Languages by conducting research in the areas of language analysis, language pedagogy, language technology and language use in the society.
It began its journey with several units of research such as Tribal and Border Languages, Sociolinguistics, Phonetics, Psycholinguistics, Material Production and Training, Testing and Evaluation, Educational Technology, Lexicography and Translation, Cartography, Folklore and Computer Applications. In addition to this, seven Regional Language Centres were set up at Mysuru, Patiala, Bhubaneswar, Pune, Lucknow, Solan and Guwahati with a goal of implementing the three-language formula and thereby contribute to national integration. These Centres offer a 10-month Diploma in Language Education in second languages and teach 20 Indian languages to non-native speakers mainly to in-service teachers, prospective teachers, research scholars and general public. CIIL was one of the few institutions that initiated work on natural language processing in the early 1990s. It has interdisciplinary academic collaborations with various institutions at both national and international levels. The Institute is well-recognised by the academic fraternity across the globe for the quality of its wide-ranging linguistic research and language studies.
Over the years, the Institute has not only expanded its activities on language matters but also ventured into new areas. Several projects and schemes were undertaken to carry out research and development, for instance, Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages, National Translation Mission, Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian languages, National Testing Service, Centre of Excellence for Studies of Classical Languages, Bharatavani, North-East Language Development that add to the promotion of Indian languages. The Institute conducts research & organises orientation programmes and imparts training through its comprehensive schemes and projects, in order to develop and use both scheduled and non-scheduled languages of the country in education, administration and mass communication. In these five long decades CIIL has contributed immensely on various aspects of languages and linguistics. It serves as a nucleus to bring together all the research outputs of the various schemes and projects, and continues to serve as a clearing house of information on all language related matters of the nation.
The Institute publishes the instructional materials of the Regional Language Centres and the outcomes of the various projects, schemes, workshops and other research works in the form of books, dictionaries, glossaries, manuals, etc. since the early days. It has been continuing to publish manuscripts not just on and in scheduled languages but also on and in the non-scheduled & minority languages of the country.
To commemorate the Golden Jubilee Celebration, amongst many other things, the Institute brings out the 'Golden Jubilee Publication Series'. I congratulate the authors, editors, compilers and resource persons involved in this task. The present book is one of the volumes of the Series.
Odia is claimed to be about two thousand years old and its rich literature has a history of about a thousand years of which the last six hundred years, in particular, beginning with Sarala Dasa's Mahabharata, a very creative and truly outstanding retelling of Vyasa Mahabharata, have been notable for both the volume of the literary output and its quality. Odia culture is an inclusive concept, accommodating different cultures, each of these, rich in its own way. It is indeed a huge challenge to write a book that would provide the second language learners of Odia some basic information about the language, the literature and the social and cultural life of the people of Odisha across centuries.
This book shows that the challenge has been met with commendable success. The selection of the material for inclusion in the book is careful and the presentation of it is well-organized and lucid. From a historical perspective, it deals with the language and the script it uses, and with the literature, created in this language, both folk and mainstream, periodizing the literary history appropriately. The information about, and the discussion of, the writers and the genres in which they have written is precise and adequate. Some major facets of the religious and the social life of the people of Odisha and some of their important cultural practices, religious and secular, the festivals observed in the state, public and family-based, are carefully documented here.
The book informs the readers about the artistic expression of the people in the form of folk dance, drama, traditional painting and handicraft and also about some important places of tourist attraction. In short, it provides in a compact and highly readable form what a second language learner of Odia language, literature and culture must know about these. I am confident that not just the non-Odia learners, the general reading public of Odisha will find this book useful. It is the only one of its kind in Odia and the editor, the contributors and the sponsor the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru - all deserve unqualified praise for this important work.
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