In quest of Mahakiranti

After the author's grammatical studies of Limbu and Dumi, he undertook to make a study of Lohorung. Before this could be completed, he was called to Bhutan in 1989 where he was asked to write a first grammar of Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan. At the same time, the Royal Government of Bhutan asked him to undertake the "First Linguistic Survey of Bhutan" in order to establish the number of speakers, genetic affinity and distribution of all the languages in the kingdom. This ultimately led to The Languages and Linguistic History of Bhutan and to the establishment of a permanent Linguistic Survey of Bhutan under the Dzongkha Development Commission in line with the Royal Government's language policy of studying and preserving the country's diverse native linguistic heritage. During the course of this work, the author was keen to find a language in Bhutan that was like the Kiranti languages he had studied in Nepal. Initially, no such language presented itself, but he ran across a speaker of the language known as Gongduk in Monggar, later finding this was not the only language in Bhutan with a Kiranti-type verbal agreement structure.