sprachbund

The introduction of the new term Proto-Munda is justified by the fact that, as early as the Vedic period, the Munda languages had departed considerably from the Austro-Asiatic type of language and developed a character of their own brought about by a number of dialectal phonetic changes and the introduction of suffixes in the word-formation. Both phenomena mark the beginning of a process of "Dravidization" of the Munda tongues which has ultimately given them the character of agglutinating languages and has thus contributed to the growth of the Indian linguistic league (Sprachbund).