The Banjari Alphabet

Banjari (ISO 639-3: lmn; also called Lambadi or Lamani) is the Maharashtra and Central India name for the Rajasthani Indo-Aryan language of the Banjara people. In Maharashtra, it is spoken in the Marathwada (Aurangabad, Nanded, Osmanabad, Latur, Beed, Parbhani, Hingoli, Jalna districts) and Vidarbha (Nagpur, Amravati, Yavatmal, Akola, Washim districts) regions.

Banjari is written in Devanagari script in Maharashtra — the same script used for Marathi. The Vidarbha variety has been described as "an admixture of Hindi, Rajasthani and Marathi", reflecting the intense language contact in central India. The same language is known as Lambadi in Telangana/AP and Lamani in Karnataka.

The Banjara were the dominant long-distance goods transporters of pre-railway Deccan India. Known to the British as "Brinjarries" (from Banjara/Vanjara), they moved in massive convoys (tandas) of several hundred families, with herds of bullocks carrying salt, grain, bamboo, and other commodities across the Deccan Plateau.

In the Deccan, they held a near-monopoly on salt transport before the British East India Company disrupted these trade routes. They supplied grain to Mughal armies and Maratha kingdoms — Chhatrapati Shivaji's campaigns depended on Banjara supply chains. The British railway network, completed in the late 19th century, effectively ended their traditional livelihood and forced the community into permanent settlement. The settled Banjara villages of Maharashtra are still called tandas — preserving the name of the original nomadic convoy unit.

In Maharashtra, Banjari is written in Devanagari script — the same script used for Marathi, Hindi, and Sanskrit. This page uses Devanagari as the regional and pan-Indian standard.

In other regions, the same language is written differently: Telugu script in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Kannada script in Karnataka. Since Banjari/Lambadi is primarily an oral language with no single native script, communities adopt whichever regional script is locally dominant. A proposed dedicated "Gormati script" (2008) exists but remains unadopted and unencoded in Unicode.

Banjari belongs to the Western Rajasthani branch of Indo-Aryan (Indo-European → Indo-Iranian → Indo-Aryan → Rajasthani). Its closest relatives are other Rajasthani varieties — Marwari, Mewari, Shekhawati — reflecting the Banjara people's origins in the Mewar region of Rajasthan before their southward migration into the Deccan.

The Maharashtra variety of Banjari has been shaped by centuries of contact with Marathi (an Indo-Aryan Dardic language) and Hindi. Unlike the Karnataka variety (Lamani, which shows strong Kannada/Dravidian influence) or the Telangana variety (Lambadi, with Telugu influence), Maharashtra Banjari's contact languages are both Indo-Aryan, making it closer to the presumed original Rajasthani base while adding distinct Marathi lexical influences.

Banjari, Lambadi, and Lamani are all regional names for the same language, sharing ISO 639-3 code lmn and Glottolog code lamb1269:

• Banjari — Maharashtra and Central India name; Marathi and Hindi influence; used in colonial-era records ("Brinjarries")
• Lambadi — general/ISO formal name; Telangana and Andhra Pradesh; Telugu influence; local name "Sugali"
• Lamani (Lambani) — Karnataka name; Kannada influence; associated with the GI-tagged Lambani embroidery craft

The differences between varieties are primarily lexical and phonological — products of contact with different regional languages (Marathi, Telugu, Kannada) — rather than structural. All share the same core grammar: SOV word order, two grammatical genders, postpositions, and Rajasthani Indo-Aryan vocabulary base.

Banjari/Lambadi is not in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (the 22 officially recognised languages). However, the Banjara people as a community are recognised as a Scheduled Tribe in Maharashtra, giving the community access to reservations and welfare schemes.

There is no formal state-level language recognition for Banjari in Maharashtra comparable to what Telangana has done (producing Lambadi-language primary school textbooks). UNESCO classifies the language as "Vulnerable" in its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger — meaning most children still speak it within the community, but it faces pressure from Marathi and Hindi in Maharashtra's public sphere.