According to Cust & Cust, Kolarian is a word first used by George Campbell. He described it as one of the three non-Aryan language families of India, which he made up, along with the Tibeto-Burman and the Dravidian.
Cust & Cust conjecture that the language family originated in the plateau of Tibet, its speakers were found in the then colonial provinces of Bengal, Madras and the Central provinces. They include the following languages as belonging to the group:
- Sonthal
- Mundari, Bhumij, Ho, or Kol
- Kharia
- Juanga
- Korwa
- Kur
- Savara
- Mehto
- Gadaba
- Mal-Paharia
Characteristics
Genders for animate and inanimate are different. Oblique forms for its nouns do not exist. It has a dual number and doesn't have a negative voice. There are two forms for each tense, which give the verb a transitive and intransitive meaning. There is variation in the meaning of the root achieved by infixing syllables, but the letters of the root remain unchanged Hastings considers Kolarian "radically distinct" from Dravidian, and an extreme example of an Agglutinative language. According to him its morphology "remotely resembles the Finno-Turki branch of the Ural-Altaic family. However on all other parameters it is completely different from "all other known forms of speech".