panini press wrote:I suspect the goal is to download the entire internet to this thread. At least the duckini-cluckini section of the internet. If I had to guess the current project status, I'd say he is 60% done.

i am disappointed with Charvaka's repeated disparaging of the Dakhini language which is the lingua franca of the great city of Hyderabad. In my opinion Indians should avoid disparaging any Indian language.

------

In an article in Outlook magazine titled 'Quo Vadis, Hyderabad?', Bakhtiar Dadabhoy writes:

Whatever happens, the Dakhini in their souls will unite the people of this city.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?263401

Dadabhoy, it is mentioned at the end of the article, is a civil servant whose family has lived in Hyderabad for over four generations. By Dakhini he is referring to the Dakhini language, whose variant Hyderabadi or Hyderabadi Dakhini, is the lingua franca of Hyderabad. By 'whatever happens' he is referring to the agitation for a separate Telangana state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh (with Hyderabad as its capital), with some suggesting that the city be made a union territory if a division of the state indeed takes place.

Rashmun wrote:

panini press wrote:Oh, the contradictions that result from copy-pasting articles without bothering to understand their implications...

https://such.forumotion.com/t5730p100-telangana-telugu-an-offshoot-of-dakhni#45228
https://such.forumotion.com/t5730p350-telangana-telugu-an-offshoot-of-dakhni#63478

The Hindustani language may have originally travelled to South India through the sufi mystics who travelled to South India and preached in the Hindustani language and helped popularized it. One of the most notable of such sufi mystics of north india who travelled to the south in order to spread their teachings was this gentleman:


“A Deccani, on being once asked whom he considered the greater personage, the Prophet Muhammad or the Saiyid, replied, with some surprise at the question, that although the Prophet was undoubtedly a great man, yet Saiyid Muhammad Gisu-daraz was a far superior order of being.” Muhammad Qasim Firishta (d. 1611)

In July 1321, about the time Ulugh Khan's army was sent to Warangal to recover the unpaid tribute owed by Pratapa Rudra, an infant son was born in Delhi to a distinguished family of Saiyids – that is, men who claimed descent from the Prophet. Although he lived most of his life in Delhi, Saiyid Muhammad Husaini Gisu Daraz would become known mainly for his work in the Deccan, where he died in 1422 at the ripe age of just over a hundred years.

As seen in the extract from Firishta's history quoted above, this figure occupies a very special place in Deccani popular religion: soon after his death his tomb-shrine in Gulbarga became the most important object of Muslim devotion in the Deccan. It remains so today. He also stands out in the Muslim mystical tradition, as he was the first Indian shaikh to put his thoughts directly to writing, as opposed to having disciples record his conversations. But most importantly, Gisu Daraz contributed to the stabilization and indigenization of Indo-Muslim society and polity in the Deccan, as earlier generations of Sufi shaikhs had already done in Tughluq north India. In the broader context of Indo-Muslim thought and practice, his career helped transform the Deccan from what had been an infidel land available for plunder by north Indian dynasts, to a legally inviolable abode of peace.

http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521254847_CHOL9780521254847A004

The above (in bold) is an extract from the chapter on Gisu-Daraz from the book 'A social history of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives' (part of the New Cambridge History of India series) by Richard Eaton. I am surprised that we do not have more information on Gisu-Daraz available online.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:
i find it interesting that even the word 'Hindi' originates in South India:

A twentieth-century Kerala Hindi scholar, Dr. Muhammad Kunj Mettar, established Dakhni as source for modern Hindi. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay also maintained that it was Deccan that established the use of Khari Boli replacing Braj in the North. In fact, even the name Hindi for the language originated in the South. A Tamilian, Kazi Mahamud Bahari in 17th century used the word Hindi for Dakhni in his Sufi poetry called Man Lagan.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

wow! that is indeed interesting. dakhini to hindi -- geographical area expanded while renaming it.

The wikipedia page on Dakhini* has some glaring inaccuracies. In particular, it wants the reader to believe that there is no connection between Hindustani and Dakhini. I know that you have a lot of experience writing and editing wikipedia pages and i would request you to clean up this article. You would be doing a great social service by doing so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini

sure, i'll do it. t. vijayendra has cited credible references in his article and his phone no. is also available. if necessary i can ask him for source (in case a wikipedian questions my edit).

i have added two subsections in the article's "history" encapsulating the findings of t. vijayendra:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini#History

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:
i find it interesting that even the word 'Hindi' originates in South India:

A twentieth-century Kerala Hindi scholar, Dr. Muhammad Kunj Mettar, established Dakhni as source for modern Hindi. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay also maintained that it was Deccan that established the use of Khari Boli replacing Braj in the North. In fact, even the name Hindi for the language originated in the South. A Tamilian, Kazi Mahamud Bahari in 17th century used the word Hindi for Dakhni in his Sufi poetry called Man Lagan.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

wow! that is indeed interesting. dakhini to hindi -- geographical area expanded while renaming it.

The wikipedia page on Dakhini* has some glaring inaccuracies. In particular, it wants the reader to believe that there is no connection between Hindustani and Dakhini. I know that you have a lot of experience writing and editing wikipedia pages and i would request you to clean up this article. You would be doing a great social service by doing so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini

sure, i'll do it. t. vijayendra has cited credible references in his article and his phone no. is also available. if necessary i can ask him for source (in case a wikipedian questions my edit).

i have added two subsections in the article's "history" encapsulating the findings of t. vijayendra:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini#History

Great job. Many thanks. I have just one issue. Please consider the following:

Hindi-Urdu (हिंदी उर्दू, ہندی اردو) is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan.[5][6] It is also known as Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی, Hindustānī, IPA: [ɦɪ̃n̪d̪ʊsˈt̪aːni], literally: "of Hindustan"),[7] and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta. It derives primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, and incorporates a large amount of vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and Turkic.[8][9] It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu,[10] which are standardized registers of it. The colloquial languages are all but indistinguishable, and even the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, though they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit.[11][12] Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today.[13] The term Hindustani is still used for the colloquial language and lingua franca of India and Pakistan, for example for the language of Bollywood films, as well as for several quite different varieties of Hindi spoken outside of the Subcontinent, such as Fijian Hindustani and the Caribbean Hindustani of Suriname and Trinidad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu

As may be seen in the above, the term 'Hindustani' encapsulates both Hindi and also Urdu. Considering this, is it possible to remove or modify the following sentence from the page on Dakhini:

Though popularly considered as a dialect of Urdu, there is no strong evidence supporting the claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini

Rashmun wrote:

Great job. Many thanks. I have just one issue. Please consider the following:

Hindi-Urdu (हिंदी उर्दू, ہندی اردو) is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan.[5][6] It is also known as Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی, Hindustānī, IPA: [ɦɪ̃n̪d̪ʊsˈt̪aːni], literally: "of Hindustan"),[7] and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta. It derives primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, and incorporates a large amount of vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and Turkic.[8][9] It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu,[10] which are standardized registers of it. The colloquial languages are all but indistinguishable, and even the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, though they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit.[11][12] Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today.[13] The term Hindustani is still used for the colloquial language and lingua franca of India and Pakistan, for example for the language of Bollywood films, as well as for several quite different varieties of Hindi spoken outside of the Subcontinent, such as Fijian Hindustani and the Caribbean Hindustani of Suriname and Trinidad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu

As may be seen in the above, the term 'Hindustani' encapsulates both Hindi and also Urdu. Considering this, is it possible to remove or modify the following sentence from the page on Dakhini:

Though popularly considered as a dialect of Urdu, there is no strong evidence supporting the claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini

done. i have removed the line you cite and other insinuations to the effect that urdu and dakhini evolved in culturally insulated spheres. i've brought the article in line with the premise that both evolved from a khadi boli base (and later influenced each other).

When you listen carefully to Telangana Telugu, it sounds quite ancient (compared to coastal Telugu which is, these days, mixed with English words).

I bet, Telangana Telugu is much older than Hindi or Urdu. It may even be the second oldest language in SI.

I leave it to Rashmun and Panini to "sort" this out.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Great job. Many thanks. I have just one issue. Please consider the following:

Hindi-Urdu (हिंदी उर्दू, ہندی اردو) is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan.[5][6] It is also known as Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی, Hindustānī, IPA: [ɦɪ̃n̪d̪ʊsˈt̪aːni], literally: "of Hindustan"),[7] and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta. It derives primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, and incorporates a large amount of vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and Turkic.[8][9] It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu,[10] which are standardized registers of it. The colloquial languages are all but indistinguishable, and even the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, though they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit.[11][12] Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today.[13] The term Hindustani is still used for the colloquial language and lingua franca of India and Pakistan, for example for the language of Bollywood films, as well as for several quite different varieties of Hindi spoken outside of the Subcontinent, such as Fijian Hindustani and the Caribbean Hindustani of Suriname and Trinidad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu

As may be seen in the above, the term 'Hindustani' encapsulates both Hindi and also Urdu. Considering this, is it possible to remove or modify the following sentence from the page on Dakhini:

Though popularly considered as a dialect of Urdu, there is no strong evidence supporting the claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhini

done. i have removed the line you cite and other insinuations to the effect that urdu and dakhini evolved in culturally insulated spheres. i've brought the article in line with the premise that both evolved from a khadi boli base (and later influenced each other).

thank you very much.

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:When you listen carefully to Telangana Telugu, it sounds quite ancient (compared to coastal Telugu which is, these days, mixed with English words).

I bet, Telangana Telugu is much older than Hindi or Urdu. It may even be the second oldest language in SI.

I leave it to Rashmun and Panini to "sort" this out.

Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

true. there is a remote chance that it could be ardh magadhi too.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

My understanding is that Telangana telugu is a hybrid of the telugu spoken in coastal andhra and hindustani. from what i recall, on sulekha CH Vakavaka had said the same thing.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

true. there is a remote chance that it could be ardh magadhi too.

i don't know about ardh magadhi, but the other potential common source is munda.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

true. there is a remote chance that it could be ardh magadhi too.

i don't know about ardh magadhi, but the other potential common source is munda.

munda? austro-asiatic family? but there are many languages in it and not mutually intelligible i'd reckon?

ardh magadhi is ashokan times. notwithstanding the current theory that sanskrit is evolved from ardh magadhi, ashoka took care to have his edicts chiseled in the local language or script of the land. for instance his edicts in afghanistan are in kharoshti and in the local language. in orissa and maharashtra (i think), his edicts are in ardh magadhi. they spoke to the people south of those areas. i reckon people south spoke or understood ardh magadhi. PP has read charles allen -- he can correct me.

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:I bet, Telangana Telugu is much older than Hindi or Urdu. It may even be the second oldest language in SI.

I leave it to Rashmun and Panini to "sort" this out.

pressulu (panini-ji) doesn't need these - the ages of telugu, hindi, and urdu - to "sort" out; he "sorts" whenever he starts itching for a "sort," which is about once every hour. indeed, he started this forum with one purpose: to "sort" without hindrance.

Jeremiah Mburuburu wrote:

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:I bet, Telangana Telugu is much older than Hindi or Urdu. It may even be the second oldest language in SI.

I leave it to Rashmun and Panini to "sort" this out.

pressulu (panini-ji) doesn't need these - the ages of telugu, hindi, and urdu - to "sort" out; he "sorts" whenever he starts itching for a "sort," which is about once every hour. indeed, he started this forum with one purpose: to "sort" without hindrance.

i no comprehendo. better you spiki southindian so i can comprehendo.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

Indeed, inferring from common words that one language is an offshoot of another is stupid at best. As I showed Rashmun elsewhere in this thread, Telugu grammar is distinct from Sanskrit grammar, and Telangana Telugu follows Telugu grammar rules rather than those of Hindi. In fact, there are some grammatical features that Hyderabadi / Dakhani Urdu shares with Telangana Telugu (and Telugu elsewhere) which it does not share with Hindi.

I totally understand that Rashmun's agenda here is to provoke me by attacking my language and praising long-dead despots who oppressed the people of my region. If that requires him to take stupid positions, so be it!

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

approximately 60% of words in classical telugu are of sanskrit origin and the traditional grammars for telugu written by telugu grammarians are all in sanskrit. so there is no getting away from sanskrit for a telugu.

panini press wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

Indeed, inferring from common words that one language is an offshoot of another is stupid at best. As I showed Rashmun elsewhere in this thread, Telugu grammar is distinct from Sanskrit grammar, and Telangana Telugu follows Telugu grammar rules rather than those of Hindi. In fact, there are some grammatical features that Hyderabadi / Dakhani Urdu shares with Telangana Telugu (and Telugu elsewhere) which it does not share with Hindi.

I totally understand that Rashmun's agenda here is to provoke me by attacking my language and praising long-dead despots who oppressed the people of my region. If that requires him to take stupid positions, so be it!

i have never attacked Telangana Telugu, and i think Charvaka should appreciate the fact that there are different views about the Nizam's legacy. Charvaka should keep in mind that the Nizam was appointed the Governor of AP after Indian independence. This would not have been the case if he would have been a Nazi-like figure as Charvaka imagines him to be.

In my opinion, Charvaka should be more tolerant of views that are not in harmony with his own views. He should not resort to personal attacks if someone articulates views on certain issues that are different from his own views on the same.

Rashmun wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

approximately 60% of words in classical telugu are of sanskrit origin and the traditional grammars for telugu written by telugu grammarians are all in sanskrit. so there is no getting away from sanskrit for a telugu.

you seem to have poor reading comprehension skills. i am not disputing the common vocabulary, but suggesting that some of this common vocabulary could have originated in proto dravidian.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

approximately 60% of words in classical telugu are of sanskrit origin and the traditional grammars for telugu written by telugu grammarians are all in sanskrit. so there is no getting away from sanskrit for a telugu.

you seem to have poor reading comprehension skills. i am not disputing the common vocabulary, but suggesting that some of this common vocabulary could have originated in proto dravidian.

i am not disputing that either. even the Rig Veda is said to contain words of proto-dravidian origin.

The language known as Khari Boli is being discussed in another thread and in fact it is being ridiculed by the same people who have also ridiculed Dakhini in the past. Curiously enough, these same hypocriticial people beat their chests and loudly proclaim that all languages should be treated with respect.

----
My own understanding of Khari Boli was always that it is no different from spoken Hindustani in the cities of India (and not in villages where a local dialect of hindustani, or even some other language, may be the lingua franca). T. Vijayendra in his scholarly article on Dakhini writes:

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

-----
Based on what i have read on internet articles, i now believe that Khari Boli has a second meaning, and that is to refer to the hindi dialect spoken in certain parts of India like western U.P.. There is thus an unfortunate ambiguity in that the term 'Khari Boli' has two meanings. But that does not mean that any Indian should start ridiculing either spoken Hindustani (the first meaning of Khari Boli) or the hindi dialect of western U.P. and a few other regions in India (the second meaning of Khari Boli). As i mentioned earlier, it is ironic that the ridiculing is being done by the same hypocrites who thump their chests and protest that all languages should be respected.

Rashmun wrote:The language known as Khari Boli is being discussed in another thread and in fact it is being ridiculed by the same people who have also ridiculed Dakhini in the past. Curiously enough, these same hypocriticial people beat their chests and loudly proclaim that all languages should be treated with respect.

----
My own understanding of Khari Boli was always that it is no different from spoken Hindustani in the cities of India (and not in villages where a local dialect of hindustani, or even some other language, may be the lingua franca). T. Vijayendra in his scholarly article on Dakhini writes:

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

-----
Based on what i have read on internet articles, i now believe that Khari Boli has a second meaning, and that is to refer to the hindi dialect spoken in certain parts of India like western U.P.. There is thus an unfortunate ambiguity in that the term 'Khari Boli' has two meanings. But that does not mean that any Indian should start ridiculing either spoken Hindustani (the first meaning of Khari Boli) or the hindi dialect of western U.P. and a few other regions in India (the second meaning of Khari Boli). As i mentioned earlier, it is ironic that the ridiculing is being done by the same hypocrites who thump their chests and protest that all languages should be respected.

--------

Tara Chand in his book 'The Problem of Hindustani' writes that Khari Boli and Hindustani mean the same thing:

Let us take the name Hindi first. As every student of Indian philology knows, the name Hindi or Hindvi has been used in a number of diverse senses. Three of the most important are listed below:

(1) Hindi or Hindvi has been used to denote generally things Indian, as distinguished from things non-Indian. This usage goes back to the earliest period of Muslim contact with India, and gave rise to the name of the Indo-Aryan dialect which the Muslims began to employ when they settled down in and around Lahore and Delhi. Here are some illustrations of this use.

In 1228, Muhammad Aufi compiled an anthology of poems in which he mentions one Khwaja Masud Saad Salman and attributes to him a Diwan composed in Hindvi. In the reign of Alauddin Khilji (1295-1315), Fakhruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi compiled a dictionary in which he gives the Hindi equivalents of Persian words. Amir Khusrau, who died in 1325, uses the terms Hindvi and Hindi. Shah Miranji Shamsul-Ushshaq, who died in 1495, calls the language of his composition Hindi. In the Deccan, the name Hindi was commonly used along with the name Dakhini. Nusrati, who was a poet of the court of Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1656-1673), speaks of his Hindi verses.

When the Mughal court became the patron of the poetry which the Deccan had developed, the poets of Delhi also used the name Hindi for the language they used. Numerous illustrations of this use can be found in the works of poets commencing from Shah Hatim and coming down to Ghalib, and of prose writers from the earliest times to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Hindi in this usage is thus identical with what came to be known as Urdu.

(2) The second use of the term Hindi is to denote a group of dialects which belong to what Grierson calls the Tertiary Prakrits, or Dr. S. K. Chatterji calls 'new Indo-Aryan languages.' The region in which they have prevailed extends roughly from the meridian of Sirhind in the West to that of Benares in the East, and from the Himalayan Terai in the North to the watershed of the Narbada in the South. They are the dialects of the ancient Madhyadesha or Midlands, and of the ancient northern and southern Kosala. They comprise the two linguistic families known as Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi.

The name Hindi thus includes the following well-recognized dialects: i.) Bundeli; ii.) Kanauji; iii.) Braj Bhasha; iv.) Bangru; v.) Hindustani (Grierson), or Khari Boli (tradition and Bharatendu Harishchandra), or Dehlavi (Sheikh Bajan and Amir Khusrau); vi.)Avadhi; vii.) Bagheli; and viii.) Chhattisgarhi. Some scholars add to these eight, Rajasthani (Pts. Surya Karan Pareek and Narottam Das Swami) and Magahi (Rahula Sankrityayana). In this sense Hindi tends to stand for all the spoken dialects of Northern India.

(3) In the third place the name Hindi is specifically used for the modern language which is the literary form of the speech known by the names Hindustani, Khari Boli, or Dehlavi. Phonetically and morphologically, modern Hindi is distinct from the other sister speeches included in the groups of Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, and identical with Urdu.....

The name Zaban-i-Hindustan occurs in the writings of Wajahi (1635), in the history compiled by Ferishta (b. 1590), and in the Badshah Nama of Abdul Hamid Lahori (d.1654). This name for the language was thus quite well known in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was adopted by the Europeans who travelled in India at this time. Thus Terry (1616) and Fryer (1673) called it 'Indostan.' Amaduzzi refers to the manuscript of a lexicon Linguae Indostanicae (1704), and Ketelaer wrote the first grammar and vocabulary of Lingua Hindostanica about 1715.

The term Hindustani obtained currency in the 18th century. When Mir Amman composed the Bagh-o-Bahar in 1801, he deliberately set himself to use theth Hindustani. Gilchrist used the name Hindustani in the title of his books, e g., Angrezi Hindustani Dictionary, and Garcin de Tassy lectured in Paris on the history of 'Hindouie' and 'Hindoustanie' (Hindvi and Hindustani). The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The language known as Khari Boli is being discussed in another thread and in fact it is being ridiculed by the same people who have also ridiculed Dakhini in the past. Curiously enough, these same hypocriticial people beat their chests and loudly proclaim that all languages should be treated with respect.

----
My own understanding of Khari Boli was always that it is no different from spoken Hindustani in the cities of India (and not in villages where a local dialect of hindustani, or even some other language, may be the lingua franca). T. Vijayendra in his scholarly article on Dakhini writes:

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

-----
Based on what i have read on internet articles, i now believe that Khari Boli has a second meaning, and that is to refer to the hindi dialect spoken in certain parts of India like western U.P.. There is thus an unfortunate ambiguity in that the term 'Khari Boli' has two meanings. But that does not mean that any Indian should start ridiculing either spoken Hindustani (the first meaning of Khari Boli) or the hindi dialect of western U.P. and a few other regions in India (the second meaning of Khari Boli). As i mentioned earlier, it is ironic that the ridiculing is being done by the same hypocrites who thump their chests and protest that all languages should be respected.

--------

Tara Chand in his book 'The Problem of Hindustani' writes that Khari Boli and Hindustani mean the same thing:

Let us take the name Hindi first. As every student of Indian philology knows, the name Hindi or Hindvi has been used in a number of diverse senses. Three of the most important are listed below:

(1) Hindi or Hindvi has been used to denote generally things Indian, as distinguished from things non-Indian. This usage goes back to the earliest period of Muslim contact with India, and gave rise to the name of the Indo-Aryan dialect which the Muslims began to employ when they settled down in and around Lahore and Delhi. Here are some illustrations of this use.

In 1228, Muhammad Aufi compiled an anthology of poems in which he mentions one Khwaja Masud Saad Salman and attributes to him a Diwan composed in Hindvi. In the reign of Alauddin Khilji (1295-1315), Fakhruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi compiled a dictionary in which he gives the Hindi equivalents of Persian words. Amir Khusrau, who died in 1325, uses the terms Hindvi and Hindi. Shah Miranji Shamsul-Ushshaq, who died in 1495, calls the language of his composition Hindi. In the Deccan, the name Hindi was commonly used along with the name Dakhini. Nusrati, who was a poet of the court of Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1656-1673), speaks of his Hindi verses.

When the Mughal court became the patron of the poetry which the Deccan had developed, the poets of Delhi also used the name Hindi for the language they used. Numerous illustrations of this use can be found in the works of poets commencing from Shah Hatim and coming down to Ghalib, and of prose writers from the earliest times to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Hindi in this usage is thus identical with what came to be known as Urdu.

(2) The second use of the term Hindi is to denote a group of dialects which belong to what Grierson calls the Tertiary Prakrits, or Dr. S. K. Chatterji calls 'new Indo-Aryan languages.' The region in which they have prevailed extends roughly from the meridian of Sirhind in the West to that of Benares in the East, and from the Himalayan Terai in the North to the watershed of the Narbada in the South. They are the dialects of the ancient Madhyadesha or Midlands, and of the ancient northern and southern Kosala. They comprise the two linguistic families known as Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi.

The name Hindi thus includes the following well-recognized dialects: i.) Bundeli; ii.) Kanauji; iii.) Braj Bhasha; iv.) Bangru; v.) Hindustani (Grierson), or Khari Boli (tradition and Bharatendu Harishchandra), or Dehlavi (Sheikh Bajan and Amir Khusrau); vi.)Avadhi; vii.) Bagheli; and viii.) Chhattisgarhi. Some scholars add to these eight, Rajasthani (Pts. Surya Karan Pareek and Narottam Das Swami) and Magahi (Rahula Sankrityayana). In this sense Hindi tends to stand for all the spoken dialects of Northern India.

(3) In the third place the name Hindi is specifically used for the modern language which is the literary form of the speech known by the names Hindustani, Khari Boli, or Dehlavi. Phonetically and morphologically, modern Hindi is distinct from the other sister speeches included in the groups of Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, and identical with Urdu.....

The name Zaban-i-Hindustan occurs in the writings of Wajahi (1635), in the history compiled by Ferishta (b. 1590), and in the Badshah Nama of Abdul Hamid Lahori (d.1654). This name for the language was thus quite well known in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was adopted by the Europeans who travelled in India at this time. Thus Terry (1616) and Fryer (1673) called it 'Indostan.' Amaduzzi refers to the manuscript of a lexicon Linguae Indostanicae (1704), and Ketelaer wrote the first grammar and vocabulary of Lingua Hindostanica about 1715.

The term Hindustani obtained currency in the 18th century. When Mir Amman composed the Bagh-o-Bahar in 1801, he deliberately set himself to use theth Hindustani. Gilchrist used the name Hindustani in the title of his books, e g., Angrezi Hindustani Dictionary, and Garcin de Tassy lectured in Paris on the history of 'Hindouie' and 'Hindoustanie' (Hindvi and Hindustani). The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

I am particularly impressed by the usage of the term 'Zaban-i-Hindustan' (language of India) to refer to the Hindustani language.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:Vakavaka, in your estimate what would be the approximate percentage of hindi/urdu words in Telangana Telugu?

that question is fraught with risk isn't it? of late i am finding that i can understand many telugu words, though not the grammar nor syntax, for many words words in both languages have the common base in sanskrit.

or a common base in proto-dravidian which then migrated to sanskrit (just being briefly serious for a minute).

true. there is a remote chance that it could be ardh magadhi too.

i don't know about ardh magadhi, but the other potential common source is munda.

you are right insofar as it is a "possible" candidate. when i read your post last night, i was aware that romila thapar had hazarded in one place that the IVC language could have been proto munda or partly proto munda and partly proto dravidian or all conceivable combinations of those two. well, i just used web wisdom. the munda speakers, of which santhali constitute 95%, are in bengal, jharkhand, orissa, assam and bangladesh. it would be tempting to say they have been pushed east. as we learn more about ourselves, we find that there was never a "pushing" as suggested by theories of mass migration based on language markers. (at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned). the fact is that there are other adivasi languages in the central and western regions which do not fall under munda. some, i feel, have been loosely classified as or have been absorbed by IE languages like bhil. another example is nihali. my point is that, to a layman like me, it is very remote that munda speakers would have been present in IV thousands of years ago when sanskrit was evolving (for there were already non-munda adivasi languages present in those regions and munda is an adivasi language). the second point is that not enough research has gone into investigating munda and other isolate adivasi languages of the subcontinent. who will fund such research? perhaps a munda ambani sometime.

This article may be of interest to Huzefa and Max:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/IndusLang.pdf

thanks for the link rashmun. i will read it tomorrow. but what is its gist?

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:thanks for the link rashmun. i will read it tomorrow. but what is its gist?

i thought the article may be of interest to you because Witzel, among other things, argues that the IVC language was related to the Munda language.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:the munda speakers, of which santhali constitute 95%, are in bengal, jharkhand, orissa, assam and bangladesh. it would be tempting to say they have been pushed east. as we learn more about ourselves, we find that there was never a "pushing" as suggested by theories of mass migration based on language markers. (at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned).

Per my understanding, there is a big difference between societies / cultures / linguistic groups that are agricultural and those that do not rely on agriculture. If someone posits a prehistoric invasion or mass-migration of one agricultural society at the expense of another agricultural society, I would be wary of that theory. That is because prehistoric agricultural societies did not have overwhelming technological advantages over each other. But they did have overwhelming technological superiority over non-agricultural societies. Around the world, non-agricultural societies have been pushed to marginal, isolated spots by agricultural societies. So while I am wary of the invasion / migration theories with respect to the Aryan-Dravidian divide, I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

panini press wrote:I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

true. notwithstanding that, the "racial" composition was probably the same 5000 years ago in my opinion. only language and a bit of culture changed with every millenia.

panini press wrote:PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

you are suggesting that the IV people were NOT munda (or munda influenced) because mundas (as a people) were pre-agricultural then. i would tend to agree with that.

panini press wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:the munda speakers, of which santhali constitute 95%, are in bengal, jharkhand, orissa, assam and bangladesh. it would be tempting to say they have been pushed east. as we learn more about ourselves, we find that there was never a "pushing" as suggested by theories of mass migration based on language markers. (at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned).

Per my understanding, there is a big difference between societies / cultures / linguistic groups that are agricultural and those that do not rely on agriculture. If someone posits a prehistoric invasion or mass-migration of one agricultural society at the expense of another agricultural society, I would be wary of that theory. That is because prehistoric agricultural societies did not have overwhelming technological advantages over each other. But they did have overwhelming technological superiority over non-agricultural societies. Around the world, non-agricultural societies have been pushed to marginal, isolated spots by agricultural societies. So while I am wary of the invasion / migration theories with respect to the Aryan-Dravidian divide, I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

not necessarily. the aryans were pastoral people and the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) people were agriculturalists. And yet the aryans do not seem to have had any disadvantage when it came to weapons of war--both offensive and defensive weapons. In the archaeological findings in the IVC region there is no evidence of the sword and no evidence of any defensive armor. The spears that the IVC people did have appear to be very unimpressive. The lack of defensive armor is particularly significant. Furthermore, the IVC people had not learnt to domesticate the horse, while the Aryans had been able to do so.

Rashmun wrote:

panini press wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:the munda speakers, of which santhali constitute 95%, are in bengal, jharkhand, orissa, assam and bangladesh. it would be tempting to say they have been pushed east. as we learn more about ourselves, we find that there was never a "pushing" as suggested by theories of mass migration based on language markers. (at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned).

Per my understanding, there is a big difference between societies / cultures / linguistic groups that are agricultural and those that do not rely on agriculture. If someone posits a prehistoric invasion or mass-migration of one agricultural society at the expense of another agricultural society, I would be wary of that theory. That is because prehistoric agricultural societies did not have overwhelming technological advantages over each other. But they did have overwhelming technological superiority over non-agricultural societies. Around the world, non-agricultural societies have been pushed to marginal, isolated spots by agricultural societies. So while I am wary of the invasion / migration theories with respect to the Aryan-Dravidian divide, I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

not necessarily. the aryans were pastoral people and the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) people were agriculturalists. And yet the aryans do not seem to have had any disadvantage when it came to weapons of war--both offensive and defensive weapons. In the archaeological findings in the IVC region there is no evidence of the sword and no evidence of any defensive armor. The spears that the IVC people did have appear to be very unimpressive. The lack of defensive armor is particularly significant. Furthermore, the IVC people had not learnt to domesticate the horse, while the Aryans had been able to do so.

All quotes below from the book 'History of Science and
Technology in Ancient India' published by NISTADST

Two points:

1. Kosambi
on Tools of Violence in the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), pg
347:Finally, the tools of violence were curiously weak, though nothing
is known of the social mechanism for wielding force, which we call
state. The weapons found in the Indus cities are flimsy,particularly the
ribless leaf-blade copper spearheads which would have crumpled up at
the first good thrust. There is nothing like a sword in the main Indus
strata. Archers occur in the ideograms, arrowheads of stone and copper
have been discovered. The bow would be a survival of the hunting age. Of
course, iron was not known, so that a few weapons in the hands of a
small minority might have sufficed; but the contrast with the excellent,
sturdy though archaic, tools proves that the use of weapons was not
very important. Therefore, the state mechanism, whatever it was, must
have had some powerful adjunct that reduced the need for violence to a
minimum. The cities rested upon trade, not fighting; but if the army or
police were not very strong, what helped the trader maintain his unequal
sharing of profits? The answer seems to lie in religion.

2. Marshall on
Tools of Violence in IVC (pg 348):Their weapons of war and of the case
are the bow and arrow, spear, axe, dagger and mace. The sword they have
not yet evolved; unor is there any evidence of defensive body armour.These two facts-- that the Harappans did not have superior tools of
violence, and further they had not evolved defensive body armor--must be
borne in mind when studying the IVC people. It would not be that
difficult a task to militarily subdue such people (as the Aryans may
have done).

http://forums.sulekha.com/forums/coffeehouse/ivc-tools-of-violence.htm

Rashmun wrote:the aryans were pastoral people and the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) people were agriculturalists.

Pastoral societies are a subset of the set of agricultural societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture

Agriculture is also called farming or husbandry. It is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel and other products used to sustain life.

panini press wrote:

Rashmun wrote:the aryans were pastoral people and the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) people were agriculturalists.

Pastoral societies are a subset of the set of agricultural societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture

Agriculture is also called farming or husbandry. It is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel and other products used to sustain life.

Pastoral societies are to be distinguished from agricultural societies according to modern anthropologists.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

panini press wrote:PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

you are suggesting that the IV people were NOT munda (or munda influenced) because mundas (as a people) were pre-agricultural then. i would tend to agree with that.

My point is that the so-called Aryan and Dravidian peoples were both agricultural peoples, and that they differed from the hunter-gatherer peoples who had inhabited the subcontinent for at least 40,000 years before them. The native people of the subcontinent were the ancestors of today's adivasis, and they are very likely very different from both the Aryans and Dravidians who made India their home.

Rashmun wrote:

I am particularly impressed by the usage of the term 'Zaban-i-Hindustan' (language of India) to refer to the Hindustani language.

there are three categories of people who prefer the term hindustan for india:

-- northindian hindus
-- pakistanis (to distinguish themselves as being from a place not of the hindus)
-- southern indian toadies, particularly tamil brahmin men from an older generation who have lived long outside of TN and served in organizations like the merchant navy.

i reject the term hindustan. there is no question of a language of india. there never will be.

panini press wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

panini press wrote:PS: Just to clarify, I am suggesting that those non-agricultural societies of 5,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of the various adivasi groups in India today like the Santhals and Bhils. Many of those groups have absorbed agricultural practices over the millennia.

you are suggesting that the IV people were NOT munda (or munda influenced) because mundas (as a people) were pre-agricultural then. i would tend to agree with that.

My point is that the so-called Aryan and Dravidian peoples were both agricultural peoples, and that they differed from the hunter-gatherer peoples who had inhabited the subcontinent for at least 40,000 years before them. The native people of the subcontinent were the ancestors of today's adivasis, and they are very likely very different from both the Aryans and Dravidians who made India their home.

yup. agreed.

Rashmun wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:thanks for the link rashmun. i will read it tomorrow. but what is its gist?

i thought the article may be of interest to you because Witzel, among other things, argues that the IVC language was related to the Munda language.

very interesting article. i skipped the etymological details he gives to support his contentions and took his contentions at face value. let me try to tackle it from my layman, non scholarly, perspective. but first let me reiterate my point:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned

i believe so for the following reasons:

• genetic tests of the indian population have confirmed that we are pretty much an endogamous bunch with little or no infiltration from outside (central asia, europe, elsewhere).
  
  
• genetic tests of the remains of the IVC people have revealed that they are of the same stock as the people that exist in that area today
  
  
• most indic theories of mass migration have failed to find support in archaeology. this does not mean there are no archaeological remains that might be unearthed in future to support these theories. but it does mean that till such time that these remains are unearthed, it must not be taken for a certainty that there were mass migrations of any kind in SA.

as to the point PP raises,

panini press wrote:I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

i agree with this. but this should not be taken to mean that these hunter gatherers were "pushed" east or inland. many of these hunter-gatherers or adivasis changed their language and culture. those that did not continue to exist as adivasis today in isolated pockets.

now to witzel.

witzel introduces an interesting sketch in the aryan-dravidian dialogue (that has hogged bandwidth for decades). if the aryan-dravidian hypothesis merits any serious thought, his merits even more serious thought. both (his argument and the AIT or AMT argument), as he acknowledges, are unsubstantiated by archaeological proof. simply put, he says that aryans and dravidians were both pastoral societies. both were intruders into the indian landscape in sindh and punjab in IV times. aryans arrived, possibly, from the steppes or central asia. dravidians arrived from eastern iran via sindh (in sindh they had already come into contact with the IV people). the three met in the cemetery H phase of the IV (late IV stage, viz. in harappa). if any, the IV people, were speaking a para munda language. the aryans, dravidians and the para mundas coalesced and jointly adopted and developed pastoral society (after the collapse of the mature IV agricultural society). they became a bilingual or trilingual public (this has been suggested quite emphatically by thapar too). over time the dravidians moved to gujarat (to found lothal). the aryans and para mundas (one culture now) moved down the ganges.

while i am skeptical of "mass" migration theories, some migration did and does occur. his hypothesis is based on language markers or words in rig veda that can be distinguished as being either dravidian, para munda, or unknown (language x). many of those languages have become lost (and we cannot retrace the etymology). others have undergone a massive change. bhil, for one, an adivasi language, is now mostly an IE language -- yet there is strong indication that it descends from para munda. nihali is another MP adivasi language that has strong para munda affinity though is not classified as munda (it is considered isolate). it has many loan words from dravidian family (just as bhil has from IE family). so it is entirely plausible that para munda was spoken all over india then but is now found only in the east. and this, in my opinion, happened without migration. the para munda speakers of IV were bi or trilingual and over time they shed one language over another.

many of the secrets of the meluhan (and proto dravidian) may lie in the sindhi language! this is because the melhuans, in punjab, as per witzel, encountered an influx of dravidians from sindh. then witzel shockingly declares that, "There is no etymological dictionary of Sindhi."

having summarized his argument, it is important to stress that such exercises have perils and witzel states them at the outset. one is,

Still another problem is posed by the form of certain words which seem to allow for multiple, competing etymologies, for example from IA/IE, Drav. and Munda. A typical case where no solution is in sight involves Ved. kalasa 'mug, beaker, pot' which has been variously explained from IE (Mayrhofer EWA 321), Dravidian (Kuiper 1955: 150, DEDR
1305), or Munda (Berger 1959: 58).

here is an interesting observation on dravidians:

It is indeed possible that the Dravida constituted a first wave of central Asian tribes that came to Iran before the IA, just as the (only very marginally IA) Kassites entered Mesopotamia before the Mitanni Indo-Aryans. The Dravida knew the horse already in Central Asia, as indicated its non-Indo-Aryan word in Brahui (h)ulli, O.Tam. ivui 'horse', etc., different from IIr. ava). The early introduction of horse and camel from the Iranian plateau into Sindh (Pirak and Kachi plain in western Sindh, (c. 1700 BCE, Kenoyer 1998: 178; Allchin 1995: 31) may have been due to the Dravidian speakers. But they apparently did not preserve a word for 'camel' (Tam. oai < IA ura).

and here is the central tenet:

Against this background, it seems possible that (some) bands of speakers of early IA and Drav. entered South Asia independently of each other, perhaps even at about the same time: the IA via the Khyber and maybe some other passes in E. Afghanistan, and the Drav. via Baluchistan, both as pastoral peoples with very little agriculture; both exploited the system collapse of the Indus civilization, and occupied the newly open lands which could now profitably be used for pastoralism. In other words, the whole convoluted, and by now highly emotionalized, question of the so-called Aryan (and Dravidian) 'invasion' or mmigration/trickling in may boil down to the decision of some opportunistic transhumant tribes of Greater Iran who opted to stay on in their winter quaters in the Indus plains, instead of returning to their mountain pastures in the spring... While this could have provided the initial trigger for the introduction of IndoAryan language, spiritual and material culture into Gandhara and the adjoining Panjab, it would also have set the stage for the expansion of the suddenly much more attractive pastoral economy which was quickly copied by the original Para-Munda speakers of the Panjab. In other words, Ehret's scenario of a 'billiard ball like' expansion of a newly synthesized culture and its status kit (Ehret 1988) applies. This model provides all ingredients for the subsequent spread of the Vedic language and eastwards into Haryana and beyond, and it also explains why the term arya seems to be so vague in the RV: some local people (with 'foreign' names) had opted to become 'cultural Aryans', others, the dasyu, did not.

so he is suggesting that the pre harappan, civilized stage IV (with town halls, granaries, drainage and public baths) was a para munda spectacle and was visited by pastoral dravidians from iran. the society broke down (cataclysmic events perhaps) and the para mundas, along with the dravidians who followed them to punjab and where they were joined by aryans, jointly honed the pastoral way of life.

lastly, as witzel notes, "In fact, all the four great language families present in modern South Asia: Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burmese, have left traces in the Vedic texts"

here is his timeline:

Using the earliest available evidence, the loan words in the Ri
gveda (and a few words transmitted in Mesopotamian documents), we can establish the following spheres of influence. (The dates given below are, as always, very approximate).

• Before c. 1450 BCE.
In the Greater Panjab, the prefixing Para-Mundic or Para-Austroasiatic Harappan language was spoken, along with a few hints of Masica's more eastern (Haryana/U.P.) "Language X"; the Central Asian substrate, brought into the Panjab by the oldest layer of
gvedic, probably was of little consequence during the Harappan period.

• From c. 1450-1300 BCE
The Greater Panjab saw the first influx of Dravidian words, most likely from Sindh; the situation in Sindh and Baluchistan is less clear: a variety of the Para-Mundic Harappan was amalgamated with Munda influences from the east, with the immigrant(?) ProtoDravidian, and the immigrant early Old Indo-Aryan and in Baluchistan also some preIranian. Amalgamation of Indo-Aryan, Para-Munda and Dravidian elements in the Greater Panjab and in Haryana.

• After c. 1300 BCE.
Continuing amalgamation, evidenced by increase of 'foreign' words in the late
gveda. The trend continues in the post-RV texts (YV, AV Mantras and in later Vedic) with a continuing influx of the same types of vocabulary into the educated Vedic speech of the Brahmins. By this time, the increasing amount of textual materials allows to detail the existence of some other languages in the Greater Panjab or on its rim: Proto-Burushaski in the northwest, Tibeto-Burmese in the Himalayas and in Kosala, Dravidian in Sindh, Gujarat and Central India, and predecessors of remnants language groups, now found in isolated pockets of the subcontinent.

so, in conclusion,

(i) max is right (there is a (para) munda influence on sanskrit);
(ii) i am right (there was no mass migration and even 5000 years ago we were just like this, kashmir to kanyakumari, dacca to karachi and i feel witzel's theory can stand without mass migration though i don't know if it would stand on its feet or hands);
(iii) PP is right (one should be wary of theories positing agricultural societies (aryans and dravidians) exhibit dominance over each other as opposed to hunter-gatherers (adivasis));
(iv) rashmun is -- well we will put this one to poll.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned

i believe so for the following reasons:

• genetic tests of the indian population have confirmed that we are pretty much an endogamous bunch with little or no infiltration from outside (central asia, europe, elsewhere).

i just used web wisdom. my knowledge of archaeogentics of indian populations is a bit dated to be frank. i had read about it last in 2006. i notice that more study has been done since and the current findings do suggest an AMT type event and belie my statements above (and even those of witzel). oh well, i am signing off from this troubled topic. it's true that it is a complicated subject and findings are not yet complete. meh, who cares.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned

i believe so for the following reasons:

• genetic tests of the indian population have confirmed that we are pretty much an endogamous bunch with little or no infiltration from outside (central asia, europe, elsewhere).
  

i just used web wisdom. my knowledge of archaeogentics of indian populations is a bit dated to be frank. i had read about it last in 2006. i notice that more study has been done since and the current findings do suggest an AMT type event and belie my statements above (and even those of witzel). oh well, i am signing off from this troubled topic. it's true that it is a complicated subject and findings are not yet complete. meh, who cares.

not sure about his current position, but witzel used to be a big supporter of AMT (because of which he was attacked by hindutva historians).

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The language known as Khari Boli is being discussed in another thread and in fact it is being ridiculed by the same people who have also ridiculed Dakhini in the past. Curiously enough, these same hypocriticial people beat their chests and loudly proclaim that all languages should be treated with respect.

----
My own understanding of Khari Boli was always that it is no different from spoken Hindustani in the cities of India (and not in villages where a local dialect of hindustani, or even some other language, may be the lingua franca). T. Vijayendra in his scholarly article on Dakhini writes:

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

-----
Based on what i have read on internet articles, i now believe that Khari Boli has a second meaning, and that is to refer to the hindi dialect spoken in certain parts of India like western U.P.. There is thus an unfortunate ambiguity in that the term 'Khari Boli' has two meanings. But that does not mean that any Indian should start ridiculing either spoken Hindustani (the first meaning of Khari Boli) or the hindi dialect of western U.P. and a few other regions in India (the second meaning of Khari Boli). As i mentioned earlier, it is ironic that the ridiculing is being done by the same hypocrites who thump their chests and protest that all languages should be respected.

--------

Tara Chand in his book 'The Problem of Hindustani' writes that Khari Boli and Hindustani mean the same thing:

Let us take the name Hindi first. As every student of Indian philology knows, the name Hindi or Hindvi has been used in a number of diverse senses. Three of the most important are listed below:

(1) Hindi or Hindvi has been used to denote generally things Indian, as distinguished from things non-Indian. This usage goes back to the earliest period of Muslim contact with India, and gave rise to the name of the Indo-Aryan dialect which the Muslims began to employ when they settled down in and around Lahore and Delhi. Here are some illustrations of this use.

In 1228, Muhammad Aufi compiled an anthology of poems in which he mentions one Khwaja Masud Saad Salman and attributes to him a Diwan composed in Hindvi. In the reign of Alauddin Khilji (1295-1315), Fakhruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi compiled a dictionary in which he gives the Hindi equivalents of Persian words. Amir Khusrau, who died in 1325, uses the terms Hindvi and Hindi. Shah Miranji Shamsul-Ushshaq, who died in 1495, calls the language of his composition Hindi. In the Deccan, the name Hindi was commonly used along with the name Dakhini. Nusrati, who was a poet of the court of Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1656-1673), speaks of his Hindi verses.

When the Mughal court became the patron of the poetry which the Deccan had developed, the poets of Delhi also used the name Hindi for the language they used. Numerous illustrations of this use can be found in the works of poets commencing from Shah Hatim and coming down to Ghalib, and of prose writers from the earliest times to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Hindi in this usage is thus identical with what came to be known as Urdu.

(2) The second use of the term Hindi is to denote a group of dialects which belong to what Grierson calls the Tertiary Prakrits, or Dr. S. K. Chatterji calls 'new Indo-Aryan languages.' The region in which they have prevailed extends roughly from the meridian of Sirhind in the West to that of Benares in the East, and from the Himalayan Terai in the North to the watershed of the Narbada in the South. They are the dialects of the ancient Madhyadesha or Midlands, and of the ancient northern and southern Kosala. They comprise the two linguistic families known as Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi.

The name Hindi thus includes the following well-recognized dialects: i.) Bundeli; ii.) Kanauji; iii.) Braj Bhasha; iv.) Bangru; v.) Hindustani (Grierson), or Khari Boli (tradition and Bharatendu Harishchandra), or Dehlavi (Sheikh Bajan and Amir Khusrau); vi.)Avadhi; vii.) Bagheli; and viii.) Chhattisgarhi. Some scholars add to these eight, Rajasthani (Pts. Surya Karan Pareek and Narottam Das Swami) and Magahi (Rahula Sankrityayana). In this sense Hindi tends to stand for all the spoken dialects of Northern India.

(3) In the third place the name Hindi is specifically used for the modern language which is the literary form of the speech known by the names Hindustani, Khari Boli, or Dehlavi. Phonetically and morphologically, modern Hindi is distinct from the other sister speeches included in the groups of Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, and identical with Urdu.....

The name Zaban-i-Hindustan occurs in the writings of Wajahi (1635), in the history compiled by Ferishta (b. 1590), and in the Badshah Nama of Abdul Hamid Lahori (d.1654). This name for the language was thus quite well known in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was adopted by the Europeans who travelled in India at this time. Thus Terry (1616) and Fryer (1673) called it 'Indostan.' Amaduzzi refers to the manuscript of a lexicon Linguae Indostanicae (1704), and Ketelaer wrote the first grammar and vocabulary of Lingua Hindostanica about 1715.

The term Hindustani obtained currency in the 18th century. When Mir Amman composed the Bagh-o-Bahar in 1801, he deliberately set himself to use theth Hindustani. Gilchrist used the name Hindustani in the title of his books, e g., Angrezi Hindustani Dictionary, and Garcin de Tassy lectured in Paris on the history of 'Hindouie' and 'Hindoustanie' (Hindvi and Hindustani). The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

I am particularly impressed by the usage of the term 'Zaban-i-Hindustan' (language of India) to refer to the Hindustani language.

Hindustani is thus no new-fangled name, invented to replace Hindi and Urdu, but a well-recognized and old established term for the speech which is the common basis of its two divergent forms, Hindi and Urdu.
Misconception about the name has created curious misunderstandings about the language itself. Even professed historians of language and literature have fallen into mistakes concerning the origin and development of Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani. These mistakes are due either to ignorance of the literature in its different forms, or to the mixing up of the three meanings of the term Hindi given above, especially the second and third. When some people speak about the development of Hindi they fail to take note of the fact that the history of Hindi is distinct from the history of languages like Rajasthani, Braj Bhasha, and Avadhi; and they equally ignore the fact that a great deal is common to the history of Hindi and Urdu.

Hindustani or Khari Boli, which developed from one of the branches of the new Indo-Aryan dialects, has a continuous history from the time (somewhere about the 12th century) that it separated itself from the other midland dialects. As everyone knows, this basic dialect was and continues to be the spoken language of the people inhabiting the Upper Gangetic Doab and the neighboring region. This spoken language was adopted by the Muslims when they settled down in and about Delhi at the end of the 12th century. From the tongues of the new speakers a number of new sounds passed into the sound system of Khari Boli, which was a purely Indo-Aryan speech. The morphology of Khari Boli also underwent slight and rather unimportant changes, and it began to absorb loan words from the languages of the Muslim conquerors.

This modified speech became the vehicle of literary expression. Amir Khusrau is said to have employed it in the 14th century, but in the absence of any documents of his time, the matter is not free from doubt. In the Deccan, however, the speech became the medium of both prose and poetry, and here a rich literature grew up between the 14th and 18th centuries. The language used in the literature is replete with tadbhavas (indigenous words), and the literature is not encumbered with exclusively foreign elements. The authors of the Deccan very justifiably considered themselves writers of Hindi, the name which they adopted for the language which they used in their composition in prose and verse.

In Northern India the situation was very curious. Although Khari Boli or Hindustani was a northern speech, it mainly developed as a literary language in the Deccan, for there is scarcely any important independent work in the language which may be assigned to a time preceding the 17th century. The reason appears to be this. When Khari Boli emerged as a language fit for polite speech and literary expression in the 13th century, it had to face the rivalry of Rajasthani, which was the popular literary language of Northern India in that period, the language in which Jaina works were written, and Narpati Nalha and other poets wrote their heroic and other poems.

The rise of the Bhakti movement in the 15th century led to the establishment of three sects—Nirakar Bhakti, Krishna Bhakti, and Ram Bhakti. The saints of the first school, like Kabir, Nanak, Dadu, employed Khari Boli or Hindustani along with other dialects to popularize their faith; the propagators of the second sect, Surdas, Nand Das, etc., employed Braj Bhasha in their hymns and songs exclusively; the leaders of the third sect ,headed by Goswami Tulasidas, used Avadhi in their compositions.

Thus the main currents of literature in the 15th and succeeding centuries flowed in two channels, Braj Bhasha and Avadhi. Not only did Hindu writers use them; Muslim poets also made them their own. Rahim, Raskhan, Raslin are as well known in the history of Braj Bhasha poetry as any Hindu poets; and everyone recognizes that but for Malik Muhammad Jayasi's foundational work, Avadhi might never have produced the glorious structure of Ramacharitamanas.

During this period Modern Hindi or Sanskritized Hindustani lived only a furtive existence. Khari Boli was, of course, the living medium of conversation, but so far as literary work was concerned, Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), Braj Bhasha, and Avadhi occupied the field, and continued to do so till the end of the 18th century. Some recent writers on Hindi literature have sought to prove that Modern Hindi had a literature in centuries preceding the 18th, but these attempts are hardly successful.

A 16-page pamphlet bearing the title Chand Chhand Barnan ki Mahima written by Ganga Bhatt in the 16th century is supposed to be the first specimen of modern Hindi prose, and, longo intervallo, in the 17th century comes Jatmal's Gora Badal Ki Bat. The first, however, is written in mixed Braj Bhasha and Khari Boli; and the second has been proved to belong to the 19th century, and is the prose rendering of the Rajasthani original in verse. It is said that there are two or three other pieces, dated [to] the 18th century, like Mandovar ka Varnan, Chakatia ki Patsyahi ki Parampara, in which Khari Boli has been used. But it is scarcely possible to treat them as works of real literary value at all comparable with contemporary works of prose in Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), Braj, and Avadhi.

Throughout these centuries, Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), and not Modern Hindi (Sanskritized Hindustani), was the lingua franca of India, and the speech of polite society, whether Hindu or Muslim. So [as] late as 1871, Bharatendu Harishchandra stated in the preface of his book on the origin of the Agarwal community, 'the speech of the Agarwals, of all their men and women, is Khari Boli or Urdu (in ki boli stri aur purush sab ki, khari boli arthat Urdu hai). What was true of the Agarwal community was equally true of the other communities of Northern India.


http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:thanks for the link rashmun. i will read it tomorrow. but what is its gist?

i thought the article may be of interest to you because Witzel, among other things, argues that the IVC language was related to the Munda language.

very interesting article. i skipped the etymological details he gives to support his contentions and took his contentions at face value. let me try to tackle it from my layman, non scholarly, perspective. but first let me reiterate my point:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned

i believe so for the following reasons:

• genetic tests of the indian population have confirmed that we are pretty much an endogamous bunch with little or no infiltration from outside (central asia, europe, elsewhere).
  
  
• genetic tests of the remains of the IVC people have revealed that they are of the same stock as the people that exist in that area today
  
  
• most indic theories of mass migration have failed to find support in archaeology. this does not mean there are no archaeological remains that might be unearthed in future to support these theories. but it does mean that till such time that these remains are unearthed, it must not be taken for a certainty that there were mass migrations of any kind in SA.

as to the point PP raises,

panini press wrote:I do think the pre-agricultural societies of India used to occupy much larger swathes of land 5,000 years ago than they do today.

i agree with this. but this should not be taken to mean that these hunter gatherers were "pushed" east or inland. many of these hunter-gatherers or adivasis changed their language and culture. those that did not continue to exist as adivasis today in isolated pockets.

now to witzel.

witzel introduces an interesting sketch in the aryan-dravidian dialogue (that has hogged bandwidth for decades). if the aryan-dravidian hypothesis merits any serious thought, his merits even more serious thought. both (his argument and the AIT or AMT argument), as he acknowledges, are unsubstantiated by archaeological proof. simply put, he says that aryans and dravidians were both pastoral societies. both were intruders into the indian landscape in sindh and punjab in IV times. aryans arrived, possibly, from the steppes or central asia. dravidians arrived from eastern iran via sindh (in sindh they had already come into contact with the IV people). the three met in the cemetery H phase of the IV (late IV stage, viz. in harappa). if any, the IV people, were speaking a para munda language. the aryans, dravidians and the para mundas coalesced and jointly adopted and developed pastoral society (after the collapse of the mature IV agricultural society). they became a bilingual or trilingual public (this has been suggested quite emphatically by thapar too). over time the dravidians moved to gujarat (to found lothal). the aryans and para mundas (one culture now) moved down the ganges.

while i am skeptical of "mass" migration theories, some migration did and does occur. his hypothesis is based on language markers or words in rig veda that can be distinguished as being either dravidian, para munda, or unknown (language x). many of those languages have become lost (and we cannot retrace the etymology). others have undergone a massive change. bhil, for one, an adivasi language, is now mostly an IE language -- yet there is strong indication that it descends from para munda. nihali is another MP adivasi language that has strong para munda affinity though is not classified as munda (it is considered isolate). it has many loan words from dravidian family (just as bhil has from IE family). so it is entirely plausible that para munda was spoken all over india then but is now found only in the east. and this, in my opinion, happened without migration. the para munda speakers of IV were bi or trilingual and over time they shed one language over another.

many of the secrets of the meluhan (and proto dravidian) may lie in the sindhi language! this is because the melhuans, in punjab, as per witzel, encountered an influx of dravidians from sindh. then witzel shockingly declares that, "There is no etymological dictionary of Sindhi."

having summarized his argument, it is important to stress that such exercises have perils and witzel states them at the outset. one is,

Still another problem is posed by the form of certain words which seem to allow for multiple, competing etymologies, for example from IA/IE, Drav. and Munda. A typical case where no solution is in sight involves Ved. kalasa 'mug, beaker, pot' which has been variously explained from IE (Mayrhofer EWA 321), Dravidian (Kuiper 1955: 150, DEDR
1305), or Munda (Berger 1959: 58).

here is an interesting observation on dravidians:

It is indeed possible that the Dravida constituted a first wave of central Asian tribes that came to Iran before the IA, just as the (only very marginally IA) Kassites entered Mesopotamia before the Mitanni Indo-Aryans. The Dravida knew the horse already in Central Asia, as indicated its non-Indo-Aryan word in Brahui (h)ulli, O.Tam. ivui 'horse', etc., different from IIr. ava). The early introduction of horse and camel from the Iranian plateau into Sindh (Pirak and Kachi plain in western Sindh, (c. 1700 BCE, Kenoyer 1998: 178; Allchin 1995: 31) may have been due to the Dravidian speakers. But they apparently did not preserve a word for 'camel' (Tam. oai < IA ura).

and here is the central tenet:

Against this background, it seems possible that (some) bands of speakers of early IA and Drav. entered South Asia independently of each other, perhaps even at about the same time: the IA via the Khyber and maybe some other passes in E. Afghanistan, and the Drav. via Baluchistan, both as pastoral peoples with very little agriculture; both exploited the system collapse of the Indus civilization, and occupied the newly open lands which could now profitably be used for pastoralism. In other words, the whole convoluted, and by now highly emotionalized, question of the so-called Aryan (and Dravidian) 'invasion' or mmigration/trickling in may boil down to the decision of some opportunistic transhumant tribes of Greater Iran who opted to stay on in their winter quaters in the Indus plains, instead of returning to their mountain pastures in the spring... While this could have provided the initial trigger for the introduction of IndoAryan language, spiritual and material culture into Gandhara and the adjoining Panjab, it would also have set the stage for the expansion of the suddenly much more attractive pastoral economy which was quickly copied by the original Para-Munda speakers of the Panjab. In other words, Ehret's scenario of a 'billiard ball like' expansion of a newly synthesized culture and its status kit (Ehret 1988) applies. This model provides all ingredients for the subsequent spread of the Vedic language and eastwards into Haryana and beyond, and it also explains why the term arya seems to be so vague in the RV: some local people (with 'foreign' names) had opted to become 'cultural Aryans', others, the dasyu, did not.

so he is suggesting that the pre harappan, civilized stage IV (with town halls, granaries, drainage and public baths) was a para munda spectacle and was visited by pastoral dravidians from iran. the society broke down (cataclysmic events perhaps) and the para mundas, along with the dravidians who followed them to punjab and where they were joined by aryans, jointly honed the pastoral way of life.

lastly, as witzel notes, "In fact, all the four great language families present in modern South Asia: Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burmese, have left traces in the Vedic texts"

here is his timeline:

Using the earliest available evidence, the loan words in the Ri
gveda (and a few words transmitted in Mesopotamian documents), we can establish the following spheres of influence. (The dates given below are, as always, very approximate).

• Before c. 1450 BCE.
In the Greater Panjab, the prefixing Para-Mundic or Para-Austroasiatic Harappan language was spoken, along with a few hints of Masica's more eastern (Haryana/U.P.) "Language X"; the Central Asian substrate, brought into the Panjab by the oldest layer of
gvedic, probably was of little consequence during the Harappan period.

• From c. 1450-1300 BCE
The Greater Panjab saw the first influx of Dravidian words, most likely from Sindh; the situation in Sindh and Baluchistan is less clear: a variety of the Para-Mundic Harappan was amalgamated with Munda influences from the east, with the immigrant(?) ProtoDravidian, and the immigrant early Old Indo-Aryan and in Baluchistan also some preIranian. Amalgamation of Indo-Aryan, Para-Munda and Dravidian elements in the Greater Panjab and in Haryana.

• After c. 1300 BCE.
Continuing amalgamation, evidenced by increase of 'foreign' words in the late
gveda. The trend continues in the post-RV texts (YV, AV Mantras and in later Vedic) with a continuing influx of the same types of vocabulary into the educated Vedic speech of the Brahmins. By this time, the increasing amount of textual materials allows to detail the existence of some other languages in the Greater Panjab or on its rim: Proto-Burushaski in the northwest, Tibeto-Burmese in the Himalayas and in Kosala, Dravidian in Sindh, Gujarat and Central India, and predecessors of remnants language groups, now found in isolated pockets of the subcontinent.

so, in conclusion,

(i) max is right (there is a (para) munda influence on sanskrit);
(ii) i am right (there was no mass migration and even 5000 years ago we were just like this, kashmir to kanyakumari, dacca to karachi and i feel witzel's theory can stand without mass migration though i don't know if it would stand on its feet or hands);
(iii) PP is right (one should be wary of theories positing agricultural societies (aryans and dravidians) exhibit dominance over each other as opposed to hunter-gatherers (adivasis));
(iv) rashmun is -- well we will put this one to poll.

Bookmarked -- will read later tonight.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

I am particularly impressed by the usage of the term 'Zaban-i-Hindustan' (language of India) to refer to the Hindustani language.

there are three categories of people who prefer the term hindustan for india:

-- northindian hindus
-- pakistanis (to distinguish themselves as being from a place not of the hindus)
-- southern indian toadies, particularly tamil brahmin men from an older generation who have lived long outside of TN and served in organizations like the merchant navy.

i reject the term hindustan. there is no question of a language of india. there never will be.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose disagrees with you.

--------


The problem of national language continues to plague India even today. There have been language riots in South India where there is a revulsion against Hindi and a constant apprehension of it being forcibly superimposed. A uniform national language policy, is yet to be evolved, and the linguistic impediment to national integration still remains. He thoughts of Netaji Subhas on the problem are worthy of careful consideration.

In his speech delivered as the Chairman of the reception Committee, Rastra Bhasa Sammelan on 28/12/28, Subhas expressed his admiration for the Hindi Language and sought to allay the misgivings of the Hindi speaking people that Bengalis were opposed to the adoption of Hindi as national language. He recalled the contribution of eminent Bengalis to Hindi literature and journalism particularly Bhudev Mukherjee, Navin Chandra Roy and Amiya Chakroborty. Subhas who was an ardent believer in provincial autonomy, remarked that for exchange of ideas with people of a different province, we ought to learn Hindustani as an inter-provincial language. He added prophetically 'The day is not distant when Hindi will be the national language of Swadhin Bharat'.

The question may be raised as to why Subhas, who was extremely proficient in Sanskrit, did not champion the cause of Sanskrit as India's national language. It may be surmised, that he did not consider it feasible in the days of the national movement when it was necessary to mobilize people of different provinces under one banner in a united struggle against British imperialism. Subhas's concern for provincial sentiments is noteworthy. He was aware of the psychological aspects of nationalism and wanted to convince people of all provinces that due respect was being shown to their provincial language, so as to prevent any feeling of resentment from developing in their minds. In present India, the contemptuous attitude of some intellectuals towards regional languages and dialects, has contributed to the rise of a reactionary form of linguistic nationalism. Subhas Chandra Bose's open minded and liberal approach ought to be emulated in this regard to prevent the simmering fire from developing into a gigantic conflagration. One of the causes behind the Kamtapuri movement of North Bengal, is the disdainful attitude of a section of Bengali intellectuals towards the local language of the Rajbanshis. Perhaps, if Netaji had been at the helm of affairs, he would have assuaged their wounded feelings and ensured that the rising tide of linguistic nationalism receded to a low ebb. However, he would never have supported the cause of a separate state because that would have militated against national unity to which he assigned topmost priority.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/netaji/education_2.htm

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The language known as Khari Boli is being discussed in another thread and in fact it is being ridiculed by the same people who have also ridiculed Dakhini in the past. Curiously enough, these same hypocriticial people beat their chests and loudly proclaim that all languages should be treated with respect.

----
My own understanding of Khari Boli was always that it is no different from spoken Hindustani in the cities of India (and not in villages where a local dialect of hindustani, or even some other language, may be the lingua franca). T. Vijayendra in his scholarly article on Dakhini writes:

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/dakhni.htm

-----
Based on what i have read on internet articles, i now believe that Khari Boli has a second meaning, and that is to refer to the hindi dialect spoken in certain parts of India like western U.P.. There is thus an unfortunate ambiguity in that the term 'Khari Boli' has two meanings. But that does not mean that any Indian should start ridiculing either spoken Hindustani (the first meaning of Khari Boli) or the hindi dialect of western U.P. and a few other regions in India (the second meaning of Khari Boli). As i mentioned earlier, it is ironic that the ridiculing is being done by the same hypocrites who thump their chests and protest that all languages should be respected.

--------

Tara Chand in his book 'The Problem of Hindustani' writes that Khari Boli and Hindustani mean the same thing:

Let us take the name Hindi first. As every student of Indian philology knows, the name Hindi or Hindvi has been used in a number of diverse senses. Three of the most important are listed below:

(1) Hindi or Hindvi has been used to denote generally things Indian, as distinguished from things non-Indian. This usage goes back to the earliest period of Muslim contact with India, and gave rise to the name of the Indo-Aryan dialect which the Muslims began to employ when they settled down in and around Lahore and Delhi. Here are some illustrations of this use.

In 1228, Muhammad Aufi compiled an anthology of poems in which he mentions one Khwaja Masud Saad Salman and attributes to him a Diwan composed in Hindvi. In the reign of Alauddin Khilji (1295-1315), Fakhruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi compiled a dictionary in which he gives the Hindi equivalents of Persian words. Amir Khusrau, who died in 1325, uses the terms Hindvi and Hindi. Shah Miranji Shamsul-Ushshaq, who died in 1495, calls the language of his composition Hindi. In the Deccan, the name Hindi was commonly used along with the name Dakhini. Nusrati, who was a poet of the court of Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1656-1673), speaks of his Hindi verses.

When the Mughal court became the patron of the poetry which the Deccan had developed, the poets of Delhi also used the name Hindi for the language they used. Numerous illustrations of this use can be found in the works of poets commencing from Shah Hatim and coming down to Ghalib, and of prose writers from the earliest times to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Hindi in this usage is thus identical with what came to be known as Urdu.

(2) The second use of the term Hindi is to denote a group of dialects which belong to what Grierson calls the Tertiary Prakrits, or Dr. S. K. Chatterji calls 'new Indo-Aryan languages.' The region in which they have prevailed extends roughly from the meridian of Sirhind in the West to that of Benares in the East, and from the Himalayan Terai in the North to the watershed of the Narbada in the South. They are the dialects of the ancient Madhyadesha or Midlands, and of the ancient northern and southern Kosala. They comprise the two linguistic families known as Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi.

The name Hindi thus includes the following well-recognized dialects: i.) Bundeli; ii.) Kanauji; iii.) Braj Bhasha; iv.) Bangru; v.) Hindustani (Grierson), or Khari Boli (tradition and Bharatendu Harishchandra), or Dehlavi (Sheikh Bajan and Amir Khusrau); vi.)Avadhi; vii.) Bagheli; and viii.) Chhattisgarhi. Some scholars add to these eight, Rajasthani (Pts. Surya Karan Pareek and Narottam Das Swami) and Magahi (Rahula Sankrityayana). In this sense Hindi tends to stand for all the spoken dialects of Northern India.

(3) In the third place the name Hindi is specifically used for the modern language which is the literary form of the speech known by the names Hindustani, Khari Boli, or Dehlavi. Phonetically and morphologically, modern Hindi is distinct from the other sister speeches included in the groups of Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, and identical with Urdu.....

The name Zaban-i-Hindustan occurs in the writings of Wajahi (1635), in the history compiled by Ferishta (b. 1590), and in the Badshah Nama of Abdul Hamid Lahori (d.1654). This name for the language was thus quite well known in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was adopted by the Europeans who travelled in India at this time. Thus Terry (1616) and Fryer (1673) called it 'Indostan.' Amaduzzi refers to the manuscript of a lexicon Linguae Indostanicae (1704), and Ketelaer wrote the first grammar and vocabulary of Lingua Hindostanica about 1715.

The term Hindustani obtained currency in the 18th century. When Mir Amman composed the Bagh-o-Bahar in 1801, he deliberately set himself to use theth Hindustani. Gilchrist used the name Hindustani in the title of his books, e g., Angrezi Hindustani Dictionary, and Garcin de Tassy lectured in Paris on the history of 'Hindouie' and 'Hindoustanie' (Hindvi and Hindustani). The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

I am particularly impressed by the usage of the term 'Zaban-i-Hindustan' (language of India) to refer to the Hindustani language.

Hindustani is thus no new-fangled name, invented to replace Hindi and Urdu, but a well-recognized and old established term for the speech which is the common basis of its two divergent forms, Hindi and Urdu.
Misconception about the name has created curious misunderstandings about the language itself. Even professed historians of language and literature have fallen into mistakes concerning the origin and development of Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani. These mistakes are due either to ignorance of the literature in its different forms, or to the mixing up of the three meanings of the term Hindi given above, especially the second and third. When some people speak about the development of Hindi they fail to take note of the fact that the history of Hindi is distinct from the history of languages like Rajasthani, Braj Bhasha, and Avadhi; and they equally ignore the fact that a great deal is common to the history of Hindi and Urdu.

Hindustani or Khari Boli, which developed from one of the branches of the new Indo-Aryan dialects, has a continuous history from the time (somewhere about the 12th century) that it separated itself from the other midland dialects. As everyone knows, this basic dialect was and continues to be the spoken language of the people inhabiting the Upper Gangetic Doab and the neighboring region. This spoken language was adopted by the Muslims when they settled down in and about Delhi at the end of the 12th century. From the tongues of the new speakers a number of new sounds passed into the sound system of Khari Boli, which was a purely Indo-Aryan speech. The morphology of Khari Boli also underwent slight and rather unimportant changes, and it began to absorb loan words from the languages of the Muslim conquerors.

This modified speech became the vehicle of literary expression. Amir Khusrau is said to have employed it in the 14th century, but in the absence of any documents of his time, the matter is not free from doubt. In the Deccan, however, the speech became the medium of both prose and poetry, and here a rich literature grew up between the 14th and 18th centuries. The language used in the literature is replete with tadbhavas (indigenous words), and the literature is not encumbered with exclusively foreign elements. The authors of the Deccan very justifiably considered themselves writers of Hindi, the name which they adopted for the language which they used in their composition in prose and verse.

In Northern India the situation was very curious. Although Khari Boli or Hindustani was a northern speech, it mainly developed as a literary language in the Deccan, for there is scarcely any important independent work in the language which may be assigned to a time preceding the 17th century. The reason appears to be this. When Khari Boli emerged as a language fit for polite speech and literary expression in the 13th century, it had to face the rivalry of Rajasthani, which was the popular literary language of Northern India in that period, the language in which Jaina works were written, and Narpati Nalha and other poets wrote their heroic and other poems.

The rise of the Bhakti movement in the 15th century led to the establishment of three sects—Nirakar Bhakti, Krishna Bhakti, and Ram Bhakti. The saints of the first school, like Kabir, Nanak, Dadu, employed Khari Boli or Hindustani along with other dialects to popularize their faith; the propagators of the second sect, Surdas, Nand Das, etc., employed Braj Bhasha in their hymns and songs exclusively; the leaders of the third sect ,headed by Goswami Tulasidas, used Avadhi in their compositions.

Thus the main currents of literature in the 15th and succeeding centuries flowed in two channels, Braj Bhasha and Avadhi. Not only did Hindu writers use them; Muslim poets also made them their own. Rahim, Raskhan, Raslin are as well known in the history of Braj Bhasha poetry as any Hindu poets; and everyone recognizes that but for Malik Muhammad Jayasi's foundational work, Avadhi might never have produced the glorious structure of Ramacharitamanas.

During this period Modern Hindi or Sanskritized Hindustani lived only a furtive existence. Khari Boli was, of course, the living medium of conversation, but so far as literary work was concerned, Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), Braj Bhasha, and Avadhi occupied the field, and continued to do so till the end of the 18th century. Some recent writers on Hindi literature have sought to prove that Modern Hindi had a literature in centuries preceding the 18th, but these attempts are hardly successful.

A 16-page pamphlet bearing the title Chand Chhand Barnan ki Mahima written by Ganga Bhatt in the 16th century is supposed to be the first specimen of modern Hindi prose, and, longo intervallo, in the 17th century comes Jatmal's Gora Badal Ki Bat. The first, however, is written in mixed Braj Bhasha and Khari Boli; and the second has been proved to belong to the 19th century, and is the prose rendering of the Rajasthani original in verse. It is said that there are two or three other pieces, dated [to] the 18th century, like Mandovar ka Varnan, Chakatia ki Patsyahi ki Parampara, in which Khari Boli has been used. But it is scarcely possible to treat them as works of real literary value at all comparable with contemporary works of prose in Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), Braj, and Avadhi.

Throughout these centuries, Hindi (Persianized Hindustani), and not Modern Hindi (Sanskritized Hindustani), was the lingua franca of India, and the speech of polite society, whether Hindu or Muslim. So [as] late as 1871, Bharatendu Harishchandra stated in the preface of his book on the origin of the Agarwal community, 'the speech of the Agarwals, of all their men and women, is Khari Boli or Urdu (in ki boli stri aur purush sab ki, khari boli arthat Urdu hai). What was true of the Agarwal community was equally true of the other communities of Northern India.


http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/03misconceptions.html

The last stage in the history of India's linguistic evolution begins in the period which saw India invaded by the Ghaznavides and the Ghoris. The modern languages of India, grouped together as the new Indo-Aryan languages or tertiary Prakrits, developed from the Apabhramshas, and possibly in some cases directly from the secondary Prakrits. Unfortunately their history is largely enveloped in obscurity.

Among the Prakrits of Northern India, Saurseni and Ardha Magadhi were important. But what relation they bore to the Apabhramshas known as western and eastern Nagar, it is extremely difficult to state. In all likelihood, the western Apabhramshas gave rise to such western modern languages as Rajasthani, Punjabi, and Western Hindi; while the eastern Apabhramsha developed into Avadhi and the Purbi dialects.

Western Hindi is a modern name which is used to cover the group of dialects spoken in the region watered by the upper reaches of the Jumna and the Ganges. They include Khari Boli, Braja, and Bundeli. Punjabi is spoken to their north, Rajasthani to their west, Avadhi to their east, and Marathi to their south. Khari Boli is the dialect of the northern region from Sirhind to Delhi, and Meerut to Bijnor; Braj belongs to the middle region whose centre is Mathura; and Bundeli lies to the south.

Of this group of dialects, Punjabi need not be considered here. Rajasthani played an important part in the early middle ages in the greater part of northern India, for it had the patronage of Rajput princes, especially the Sisodias of Mewar. It was used as the medium of heroic ballads and bardic poems, as well as of religious and devotional verse. It had a prose literature too, consisting of narratives of notable deeds of princes. The famous Prithviraja Raso, of Chand Bardai, however, is written in such mixed dialects as to be of little value for determining the history of Rajasthani. Gauri Shanker Hirachand Ojha, a well-known scholar of Rajputana, does not consider its date to be earlier than the 16th century. The use of Rajasthani continued from the end of the 14th to the end of the 18th century, but after the 15th century it was confined to Rajputana.

Avadhi or Purbi Hindi, which traces its descent from Ardha Magadhi Prakrit, through a possible eastern Apabhramsha, has had a chequered career. The Jainas had employed Ardha Magadhi in their religious books, but the relation of Jaina Ardha Magadhi with modern Avadhi is not clear. The language of the compositions of the Siddhas is an eastern dialect claimed by some as akin to old eastern Hindi, and by others to Bengali. In the 15th ocentury, when the eastern districts of ancient Avadha sprang into fresh activity as a result of the establishment of the Sharqi dynasty, Avadhi seems to have received a new stimulus.

Kabir, a speaker of Avadhi, presumably composed his Bani (Sayings) in this dialect. Some doubt has been thrown upon Kabir's language on account of the fact that his printed works, published by the Nagari Pracharini Sabha on the basis of what the editor considered a 16th century manuscript, is mixed Purabi, Panjabi, and Rajasthani. On the other hand, Kabir's poems contained in the Adigranth of the Sikhs, a compilation of [the] early 17th century, are in almost unmixed Avadhi.

Kabir lived in the 15th century. He had many followers who used his native dialect. But a school of Sufi poets also arose here which employed Avadhi. Among them Qutban was the first. He wrote a poem entitled Mrigavati, in 1501, which is the story of the love of the Prince of Chandranagar and Princess Mrigavati of Kanchanpur. There were other poets of the same school, but Malik Muhammad Jayasi is the most famous among them. He composed the well-known poem Padmavat in 1540 AD.

All poets of Avadhi, however, were eclipsed by Tulasidas, the author of the immortal Ramcharitamanas, who lived in the 17th century. Tulasidas had really no successor of eminence, although Avadhi claims a considerable number of poets. Ultimately, the language was eclipsed by the greater popularity of Braj. The origin of Braj, like that of a number of other dialects, is still shrouded in darkness. There are no certain data yet available to carry back the story of its literature beyond the commencement of the 16th century. As a spoken dialect it must have come into vogue in the 13th century, and it is likely that popular songs in Braj were current from the very beginning, but its employment as a literary vehicle appears to have begun when Vallabhacharya came to settle down in Brajmandal at the end of the 15th century. He founded a new sect in which devotion to Krishna was the central object. He gathered round him many disciples, among whom eight attained fame.

The greatest of them was Surdas, whose padas (songs) are recognised as giving most adequate expression to the deepest emotions of a devotee towards his beloved deity. With Surdas, Braj leapt into fame as a fit medium for song and poetry. Its sweetness so enraptured northern India that it spread all over the north as the language of literature. Even Bengal, which had its own literary language, made use of a corrupt Braj called Brajbuli, for Krishnaite poetry. The domination of Braj lasted till well into the 19th century. Only during the last 50 years it has been gradually displaced by modern Hindi.

Hindustani, the northern dialect of western Hindi, named Khari Boli to distinguish it from Braj; called Rekhta and Hindwi by Amir Khusru; Dakhini and Urdu by its southern and northern speakers, is one of those obscure dialects which the ancient midland, the home of Sanskrit, evolved. Saurseni Prakrit, Nagar or Saurseni Apabhramsha, were its predecessors. Its phonetic and morphological systems were derived from the secondary Prakrits. But while it was still a spoken dialect, it came under the influence of people who spoke Persian and Arabic. It received new sounds from them, and evolved an ampler phonetic system. Along with new sounds, many new words of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic origin entered into its vocabulary. So far as its grammar was concerned, it underwent very little modification, though the structure of phrases and the methods of derivation of words and compounds were changed to a small extent, and minor grammatical forms and usages were adopted from Persian.

The dialect thus developed had an extraordinarily curious history. In its own homeland it remained a more or less despised mongrel patois, employed as a means of communication between the foreigner and the people, more or less as pidgin English is used in Madras and other cantonments, where there is a considerable colony of the British. But there is hardly any authentic literary work which might testify to its use in literature till later.

Against this statement, mention may be made of the use of Hindi words in the poems of Persian poets, instances of which are found in the works of Farrukhi, Manuchehri, Mukhtari, Hakim Sanai, and others of the Ghaznavide period. Even more important than this is the fact that Masud Saad Salman is reported to have composed a whole Diwan in Hindi. He was born in Mahmud Ghaznavi's reign, and acquired fame in Sultan Ibrahim's time. What form of Hindi language he used it is impossible to determine, but the lines of his Diwan give instances of the Khari Boli forms, e.g.:

Ae parastare sang-o-sukh darpan
Wai giriftare ishq-e-sbam'a-o-lagan
Dil na mi arzad ki az mastiash kas
Warihanadya ba byohare dihad

It may, therefore, be inferred that those Persian poets who resided in the Punjab were employing Khari Boli. Again Amir Khusrau, who was born in 1253 and died in 1325, is described as the author of quite a considerable number of verses in Hindi. The statement is gravely doubted, but the preface to his Diwan, Ghurratual Kamal, contains a line:—

Ari ari haman bayari aeyi
Maree maree birah ki maree aeyee

Apart from this, Hindi words are scattered through his verses. Again, Fariduddin Ganj Shakar, who died in 1265, is quoted in his biographies as having used the phrase

Poonon ka Chand bala hota hai
—a fine Khari Boli sentence. His poems are included in the Adigranth too, but their language is Punjabi. Similarly, phrases of Hamiduddin Nagori, Bu Ali Qalandar, Sharafuddin Yahya Muniri are reproduced. It has been asserted that Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti too employed Hindi in his talks. However that may be, the fact remains that these centuries up to the 15th furnish little evidence of independent Khari Boli literature in the north. Though undoubtedly it must have flourished as a spoken tongue, and might even have produced songs and poems whose record is lost.
What the north failed to achieve, strangely enough, the Deccan accomplished. Alauddin Khilji's conquests had opened the country, and numerous Sufi saints and Dervishes visited the south in order to spread their message. In the south Persian was an almost unknown tongue, and they were compelled to use the dialect of Delhi, which they knew, in order to carry on their work. Among these saints the one who created the greatest impression was Khwaja Gesu-daraz Banda-nawaz. He left the north when Timur invaded the Punjab in 1398, and settled down in the Deccan. He probably is the first writer of the Khari Boli who made it a literary language. His Risala, Mi’raj-ul Ashiquin, edited from a manuscript of 1500 AD, gives an example of his language. Here are a few sentences from the Risala: Insan ke boojoe kon panch tan. Har ek tan ko panch darwaze hain hor panch darban hain. Pahla tan wajbul wajood. Muqam iska shaitani nafs iska ammara. (The authenticity of this Risala is doubted.)

Next to him is Shams-ul-Ushshaq Shah Miranji, who died in 1496. Many of his works have been preserved, and they illustrate the language of the 15th century.

The 15th century produced quite a number of writers of this language. Bahauddin Bajan, who lived at Berhampur, was a Sufi poet. He wrote:

Yun bajan baje re asrar chhaje
Mandal man men dhamke, rabab rang men jhamke, soofi un par thumke.

Nizami was a poet at the court of Sultan Ahmad Shah III, and lived in the 15th century. He is the author of the first known allegorical poem (Masnavi) in the language, entitled Masnavi Kadorn Rao aur Padam.

From this period—that is, the end of the 14th century—this language, which may be called Hindustani, continues to progress rapidly. When Aurangzeb began the conquest of Bijapur and Golkonda in the 17th century, the poets of the Deccan began to visit the North, and the consequence was that Hindustani poetry became known to the writers of Delhi and other places. The return of the prodigal to the paternal home led to a new development. The courtiers of the Emperors of Delhi were mainly speakers and writers of Persian, but the Hindustani which came to them from the Deccan was the true representative of the mixture of Hindu-Muslim culture which prevailed among the peoples of India.

They found it rather uncouth for their tastes, and in their misguided zeal started to reform and, according to their judgment, purify it. Thus non-Persian sounds were regarded by them as harsh and heavy, and they began to abandon all the words containing such sounds. Again, the Hindustani of the Deccan was the language originally of the ordinary common people, which the Sufis had adopted for the reason that it was popular. It contained many expressions which struck the ears of the aristocratic courtiers as vulgar.

Thus the language was shorn of a great deal of its naturalness, and the growing degeneracy and demoralization of the Mughal court favored the development of an artificial language and literature. During the 18th century, Hindustani was transformed into Urdu-i-Mualla. The patronage of the high and the mighty increased the number of its votaries. Unfortunately, in the sequel it suffered from this change. Although it became the language of both Hindu and Muslim upper classes, its contact with the common people was weakened. At the end of the 18th century, the Mughal Empire broke down. The British seized power, and they began the search for a language which could be used for popular purposes. At Fort William College, Calcutta, which was established to teach British officers Indian languages besides other subjects, a number of them were taken up for study.

Among them were Braj and Urdu. Braj, as has been indicated above, was the language of poetry, and did not lend itself readily for the purposes of prose. Urdu, which was studied by both Hindus and Muslims, was naturally selected as the common language of India. Unfortunately the zeal for finding distinctions led the professors of the College to encourage attempts to create a new type of Urdu, from which all Persian and Arabic words were removed and replaced by Sanskrit words. This was done ostensibly to provide the Hindus with a language of their own. But the step had far-reaching consequences, and India is still suffering from this artificial bifurcation of tongues.

The Hindustani, which the Deccanese developed, came into literary use at the end of the 14th or the beginning of the15th century; that is, more than a quarter of a century previous to the establishment of Mughal rule in India. So far as the sister languages were concerned, Rajasthani and Avadhi were its contemporaries, but both went out of literary use before the end of the Mughal rule. Braj began a century later and continued its literary career till recent times, but it remained the language of poetry only, and therefore condemned itself as the medium of serious prose; for a poetic language, howsoever fine, could not live long.

Hindustani thus is the only survivor which has a history of unbroken service during a period of five centuries. If it desires to avoid the fate of its sisters, the only course before it is that it should return to the common people from whom it sprang, and become the medium of expression of their longings and fears, hopes and aspirations.

The evolution of Hindustani language shows the same processes of assimilation at work in medieval India as had led to the development of a common religious and mystical philosophy. A purely Indo-Aryan dialect was adopted by the missionaries of the Sufi religion of love, for the propagation of their message—not only among the Muslims, but also among the Hindus. By their efforts, the dialect became a literary language.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/02medieval.html

-------------------

So the first person who made Khari Boli (Hindustani) a literary language was a north indian sufi preaching in south india in the 14th century. strangely enough, a few misguided south indians continue to attack khari boli thinking it is a threat to their regional language.

Rashmun wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:at this age, and from the little i've read, i've come to believe that if one were able to travel back 5000 years into the past, one would see the same composition of people over the indian or south-asian landscape, in a cultural and "racial" sense insofar as "aryan" and "dravidian" and perhaps, i should add to do full justice, "munda" and "bhil" are concerned

i believe so for the following reasons:

• genetic tests of the indian population have confirmed that we are pretty much an endogamous bunch with little or no infiltration from outside (central asia, europe, elsewhere).
  

i just used web wisdom. my knowledge of archaeogentics of indian populations is a bit dated to be frank. i had read about it last in 2006. i notice that more study has been done since and the current findings do suggest an AMT type event and belie my statements above (and even those of witzel). oh well, i am signing off from this troubled topic. it's true that it is a complicated subject and findings are not yet complete. meh, who cares.

not sure about his current position, but witzel used to be a big supporter of AMT (because of which he was attacked by hindutva historians).

Also, see this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/5853

Witzel debunks the Indian population genetic analysis paper published last year. Witzel's comments in two parts:

Part 1: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/15640

Part 2: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/15643

This is a very exciting field.

I enjoyed reading the posts of Subhash Reddy:


I seldom give my interpretations. It was Bipin of New Age (a non-andhra and non-Telanganite) who wrote about the mindless Language Fanaticism imposed on Andhra Maha Sabha and how Ravi Naryana Reddy Garu inflicted a crushing defeat on the Language Fanaticism.

I, too, am fond of my mother tongue which is Telugu but I am NOT a fanatic. Besides being fond of Telugu, I also love Urdu which is another very sweet language. I also love Hindi and I also love English. I love Bhojpuri which is even sweeter than shuddh Hindi. Languages are not for fanaticism. They are means to attain knowledge via communication of ideas and truths.

Ravi Naryana Reddy garu loved his mother tongue but again he was NOT a Language Fanatic. That's why he opposed and defeated language fanatics of Andhra Mahasabha. Like Ravi Narayan Reddy, Telangana people are NOT language fanatics because they have lived harmoniously with people of different languages and even enjoyed communicating in those languages.

I would have loved Tamil and Kannada equally if I had learnt them like my mother did. My mother could speak Marathi and Kannada (those old days, Hyderabad State was comprised of Telugu, Maratha, Kannada districts).

Language Unity - Samaikya Andhra is absurd and preposterous and senseless. Unity based on a language? If there is one language that does the ruling and the governing, it is English.

Again, to quote our beloved and most august nationalist and a founding father of Indian Republic and a foremost author of India's Constitution commented on Linguistic States thus: (THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES)
"This scheme of dividing India in the name of Linguistic States cannot be overlooked. It is not so innocuous as the Commission thinks. It is full of poison. The poison must be emptied right now.

The formula one State, one language must not be confused with the formula of one language, one State.



The formula one language, one State means that all people speaking one language should be brought under one Government irrespective of area, population and dissimilarity of conditions among the people speaking the language. This is an absurd formula and has no precedent for it. It must be abandoned.

A people speaking one language may be cut up into many States as is done in other parts of the world.


Into how many States a people speaking one language should be cut up, should depend upon (1) the requirements of efficient administration, (2) the needs of the different areas, (3) the sentiments of the different areas, and (4) the proportion between the majority and minority."



Subhash C. Reddy, Ph.D.

Rashmun wrote:I enjoyed reading the posts of Subhash Reddy:


I seldom give my interpretations. It was Bipin of New Age (a non-andhra and non-Telanganite) who wrote about the mindless Language Fanaticism imposed on Andhra Maha Sabha and how Ravi Naryana Reddy Garu inflicted a crushing defeat on the Language Fanaticism.

I, too, am fond of my mother tongue which is Telugu but I am NOT a fanatic. Besides being fond of Telugu, I also love Urdu which is another very sweet language. I also love Hindi and I also love English. I love Bhojpuri which is even sweeter than shuddh Hindi. Languages are not for fanaticism. They are means to attain knowledge via communication of ideas and truths.

Ravi Naryana Reddy garu loved his mother tongue but again he was NOT a Language Fanatic. That's why he opposed and defeated language fanatics of Andhra Mahasabha. Like Ravi Narayan Reddy, Telangana people are NOT language fanatics because they have lived harmoniously with people of different languages and even enjoyed communicating in those languages.

I would have loved Tamil and Kannada equally if I had learnt them like my mother did. My mother could speak Marathi and Kannada (those old days, Hyderabad State was comprised of Telugu, Maratha, Kannada districts).

Language Unity - Samaikya Andhra is absurd and preposterous and senseless. Unity based on a language? If there is one language that does the ruling and the governing, it is English.

Again, to quote our beloved and most august nationalist and a founding father of Indian Republic and a foremost author of India's Constitution commented on Linguistic States thus: (THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES)
"This scheme of dividing India in the name of Linguistic States cannot be overlooked. It is not so innocuous as the Commission thinks. It is full of poison. The poison must be emptied right now.

The formula one State, one language must not be confused with the formula of one language, one State.



The formula one language, one State means that all people speaking one language should be brought under one Government irrespective of area, population and dissimilarity of conditions among the people speaking the language. This is an absurd formula and has no precedent for it. It must be abandoned.

A people speaking one language may be cut up into many States as is done in other parts of the world.


Into how many States a people speaking one language should be cut up, should depend upon (1) the requirements of efficient administration, (2) the needs of the different areas, (3) the sentiments of the different areas, and (4) the proportion between the majority and minority."



Subhash C. Reddy, Ph.D.

I am glad we have a brave Telanganga Telugu telling the telugu (and other) language chauvinists where to get off.

the only linguistic fanatics in india are those wishing to impose one language on all indians like subhash c reddy. i am glad the NCERT text writers got a rather rude and timely reminder recently not to mess with language sentiments and inappropriate portrayals in history textbooks of the history of anti-hindi agitations in tamil nadu.