Hindustani, presently represented by the official languages of India and Pakistan, Standard Hindi and Urdu, originated during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian court language exerted a strong influence on the Indo-Aryan dialects of central India, creating Rekhta or "mixed" speech. It is this which came to be known as Hindustani, was elevated to a literary language, and is the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers in their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular forms.
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Most of the grammar and basic vocabulary of Hindustani descends directly from the medieval language of central India, known as Sauraseni.[1] After the tenth century, several Sauraseni dialects were elevated to literary languages, or khari boli ("standing dialects"), including Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, and the language of Delhi; the latter still goes by the name Khari Boli in the rural areas outside the city of Delhi itself. During the reigns of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which used Persian as their official language and established their capital in Delhi, the imperial court and concomitant immigration infused the Delhi dialect with large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic words from the court, primarily nouns, for cultural, legal, and political concepts. The new court language developed simultaneously in Delhi and Lucknow, which is in an Awadhi-speaking area; thus modern Hindustani, though based primarily on Khari Boli, has a noticeable Awadhi influence.
The term Hindustani derives from Hindustan, the Persian name for the subcontinent. The term Ordu, or "camp language" (cognate with the English word horde), was used to describe the common language of the Mughal army. The works of the 13th century scholar Amir Khusro are typical of the Hindustani language of the time:
Sej vo sūnī dekh ke rovun main din rain,
Piyā piyā main karat hūn pahron, pal bhar sukh nā chain.
"Seeing the empty bed I cry night and day
"Calling for my beloved all day, not a moment's happiness or rest."
Persian was crucial in the formation of a common language of the Central, North and Northwest regions of the South Asia. Following the Mughal conquest of South Asia and the resulting vast Islamic empire, especially in the northern and central regions of the South Asia, a hybrid language of Arabic, Pashto, Turkish, Persian, and local dialects began to form around the 16th and 17th centuries CE, one that would eventually be known as Urdu (from a Turkish word "Ordu" meaning "army", in allusion to the army barracks of visiting troops).
Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built a new walled city of Shahjahanabad in Delhi in 1639. The market close to the royal fort (Red Fort) came to be called Urdu Bazar and the language was eventually termed "Urdu". It grew from the interaction of (often Persian-speaking) Muslim soldiers and native peoples. Soon, the Persian script and Nasta'liq form of cursive was adopted, with additional figures added to accommodate the South Asian phonetic system, and a new language based on the South Asian grammar with a vocabulary largely divided between Persian (and indirectly some Arabic) and local Prakrit dialects. Elements peculiar to Persian, such as the enclitic ezāfe, and the use of the takhallus, were readily absorbed into Hindustani literature both religious and secular. This language was developed by Kashmiri Pandits and nowadays widely spoken in South Asia.
The poet Wali Deccani (1667–1707) visited Delhi in 1700.[2] He is termed "Bava Adam" (founding father) of Urdu poetry by Maulana Muhammad Husain Azad wrote in the monumental Aab-e-Hayat (Water of Life).[3] His visit is considered to be of great significance for Urdu Gazals. His simple and melodious poems in Hindustani, stunned the Persian loving nobles of Delhi and made them aware of the beauty and capability of "Rekhta" or "Hindawi" (an old name for Hindustani) as a medium of poetic expression. His visit thus stimulated the development of Urdu Gazal in the imperial city of Old Delhi.
Hindustani soon gained distinction as the preferred language in courts of South Asia and eventually replaced Persian among the nobles. To this day retains an important place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals and nazms, came to both influence and be affected by South Asian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritages. A famous cross-over writer was Amir Khusro, whose Persian and Urdu couplets are to this day read in the subcontinent. Persian has sometimes been termed an adopted classical language of the South Asia alongside Sanskrit due to its role in South Asian tradition.
The vocabulary of Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu includes loan words from Sanskrit, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, and English.
There are only 24 Turkish words which are used in Urdu all the rest which are attributed to Turkish are either Persian or Arabic, according to Dr. Syed Mohammed Anwer.[4]
Loan words were borrowed from English into Hindustani through interaction with the British East India Company and later British rule. English-language education for the native administrative and richer classes during the period of British rule accelerated the adoption of English vocabulary in Hindustani. Many technical and modern terms were borrowed from English, such as doctor /ˈɖɔkʈɻ/, taxi /ˈʈɑksi/, and meter /ˈmiʈɻ/. The influence of English and incidence of new loan words continue to the present day.
Islamic empires in India in the late Medieval to Early Modern period.
Modern Hindi literature emerges during the Colonial period.
The 1947 partition of India sees the separation of Hindustani (Khariboli) into two standardized dialects, Urdu and Standard Hindi.
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