Medley Of Various Dialects Of Hindi
Introduction
In India there are 52,83,47,193 native Hindi speakers, which includes those who speak different forms and dialects of Hindi like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Bundelkhandi, Khari Boli, Magadhi, Marwari, amongst others[1]. Since the census recorded in 1971, the percentage of Hindi speakers in India has gone up from 36.99 to 43.63 in 2011, the last conducted census. It is interesting to note that the percentage of speakers of other regional languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and others has depreciated since 1971.[2] The Government of India in late 20th century took efforts to distinguish various languages from each other. Grierson was appointed to compile, edit and conduct the Linguistic Survey of India. In the course of his survey he was able to trace the roots of the languages in north India to two main sources — Sanskrit, and Persian.[3] It was during this time that the Hindi and the Sanskrit departments of the Allahabad University undertook and completed several theses claiming that ‘Awadhi’, ‘Braj’, and other regional languages called the ‘bhasas’ were the dialects of Hindi[4]. This attempt immediately declared the unworthiness of the ‘bhasas’ to be languages — Hindi was adopted as the mother of all these alleged dialects.
Language and Dialect
To understand the basic idea of this paper, it is necessary to understand the technicalities involved in distinguishing a language from a dialect. An argument states that languages are written and standardized and have a literature, while dialects are oral, without codified rules, and have no literature.[5] In popular usage, a language is written in addition to being spoken, while a dialect is just spoken.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word language implies, “the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community.” On the other hand the word dialect implies, “a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language.”
Sanskritised Hindi and its “Dialects”
Confining ourselves to strictly the (western) Hindi heartland we may divide Hindi into two main dialects — Braj and Khari Boli.
Brajbhasha has 15,56,314 number of native speakers as per the 2011 Census[6]. Braj is important chiefly on account of its past. For centuries it was the principal medium of poetical composition.[7] Today, the word ‘Brajbhasha’ is likely to evoke immediate associations with Krishna devotion; meaning ‘language of Braj’, the term proclaims Brajbhasha’s mytho-poetic associations with Krishna lore and the Vaishnava efflorescence that took Mathura and Vrindavan by storm from the sixteenth century onward.[8] Braj literary patronage is rarely discussed in studies of Mughal India, which as a rule focus on Persian poets[9].
Khari Boli has a humble 50,195 number of native speakers as per the 2011 Census[10]. It is categorised as a dialect of Hindi and had accounted for the total number of native Hindi speakers in the country. Badri Narayan Caudhri had said bhāşā had two forms, Braj for poetry, and bol cāl ki bhāşā for prose; but he disliked all names.
“Don’t say Hindi”, he cried, “Hindi is a foreign word; don’t say Khari Boli, there is
only one bhasa; you may call it khari if you like, for it alone is pure, for it differs
very slightly from the original Devvani[11].”
Khari Boli is used by Indian literati of today to mean (a) modern literary Hindi, (b) speech of the Hindustani type from the earliest times when Persian and Arabic words were few to the present day when they are numerous, and (c ) fragments in prose or verse which occur from time to time in writers from Amir Khusro onwards and show a similar type of speech[12].
For the last 125 years it has been less and less employed, and since educated Hindus are to an ever-increasing extent speaking Hindustani in everyday life, varying it with a more Sanskritic kind of Khari Boli in special sabhas and sammelans. Khari is important as the language of the present and the future.[13]
The name first appeared in 1803. Literary Khari has existed since the time of Amir Khusro in the thirteenth century. Indians usually say Khari Boli, but one may also find Khari Bol Cāl, or simply Khari, or “the language in its Khari form”.
The Bhojpuri dialect is the most spoken recorded dialect of Hindi. As per 2011 Census data there are 5,05,79,447 native Bhojpuri speakers in India[14]. The dialect is widely spoken across Eastern UP and Bihar which historically includes the districts of Chumparun, Sarun, Shahabad, Ghazipoor, Azimgurh, and Goruckpore[15]. Historically it was largely developed as a written medium of communication by native merchants, and in all the transactions of the rural population, such as village accounts, leases, receipts, and so forth. The name Bhojpuri, usually applied to this dialect, is derived from the ancient town of Bhojpur, in the district of Shahabad, situated a few miles south of the Ganges, and about sixty miles west of Patna.
The vocabulary is mainly identical with Hindi, but there are many words which are not to be found in ordinary dictionaries.[16]
Persianised Hindi and its “Dialects”
Literally the word Urdu means “military camp” in Turkish, though it is not clear how the word had its origin in military camps. Granted that the Turks who established their rule in northern India from the 11th century onwards must have needed to communicate with the local populace through a mutually intelligible vernacular, but the most likely place for such a language of communication to emerge would be the bazaars and not army camps[17].
In India, there are 5,07,72,631 native Urdu speakers who have been categorised separately with respect to Hindi. This portrays a fall from 5.22% of native Urdu speakers out of the total population in 1971 to 4.19% of native Urdu speakers out of the total population in 2011. [18]
Yule and Burnell, the authors of Hobson Jobson (A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, Delhi, revised ed 1986), cite a reference from 1560 in support of “urdù bazaar” or camp-market. They also claim that the word “urdù” came to India with the Mughals. That Hindi/Hindvi/Dehlvi was a language that existed in the Delhi region we learn from the contemporary histories as well as records of sufi discourses. It is certain that no new language grew out of Mughal camps in northern India. The creation and development of a new language is a complex process that takes place over a period of time. Then there is also the marked difference between the colloquial and the literary form of the language. It is in this context that the “military camp theory” becomes even more difficult to believe. “Urdu” as nomenclature for a language seems to have gained currency when the colloquial form which was generally known as Hindi/Hindvi developed into a sophisticated language with literary potent[19]
The grammar and the syntactical structure of Urdu are based on the local speech of the times in the region around Delhi (later identified as ‘khari boli’). However, this language was not the chosen vehicle for literary production. Awadhi and Brajbhasha were the languages of poetry and other literary pursuits to the extent that they were used for such a purpose at this early period. [20]
Conclusion
Out of the general discussions mentioned above there are few questions to be answered.
One of the questions that arise is why Bhojpuri is considered as a dialect and not a separate language on its own right? It would be interesting to note here, that Nepal, Mauritius and Fiji has classified Bhojpuri as a separate language.[21] Bhojpuri on its own has primary dialects or as academically established, sub dialects which are Southern Standard, Northern Standard, Eastern Standard. Bhojpuri has the usage of “awagrahí whereas in Hindi it is not used. United Nations Organisation has published declaration of human rights in 154 languages of the world and Bhojpuri is one of them.[22] One of the reasons why Bhojpuri is not portrayed independently from Hindi could be that post 1894, it switched to Devnagri script from the original Kaithi script.[23] Apart from that there could be various socio-political reasons to this. The question has also been debated in the Lok Sabha several times[24].
[Another argument presents Bhojpuri as a dialect of Kosali language which is not within the ambit of this paper.]
Another question which arises is that by what virtue is Urdu considered as a separate language and not Khari Boli and Braj bhasha both of which has existed for a greater period of time?
The difference between Modem Hindi and Urdu is not a difference of the fundamental and stable aspects of language, but is a difference merely of vocabulary, which is an ever-varying element of language[25]. The structure of Urdu as mentioned prior takes the form of the local language of that area. Modern Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible to each other due to the presence of common structure; and hence there is legitimate reason as to why Urdu should not be considered a separate language. Going by the same logic; even Khari Boli and Brajbhasha deserve the status of ‘Language-hood’ as they have a different set of vocabulary borrowing heavily from the tadbhav words of Sanskrit. In fact it would be safe to assert that Modern Day Hindi is a product of these two major ‘dialects.’
The reason behind the ‘language-hood’ of Urdu can be derived from the political reasons involving the Hindu-Muslim tiff in the Indian subcontinent; where it is a battle of civilization and culture. Both the communities have been trying to showcase theirs as a superior culture, forgetting in the meanwhile that the modern day culture of the Indian subcontinent is a happy by-product of the otherwise grim years of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Rule, Nawabi exchange and the British Raj.
REFERENCES:
[1] ABSTRACT OF SPEAKERS’ STRENGTH OF LANGUAGES AND MOTHER TONGUES — 2011, available on http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/Language-2011/Statement-1.pdf; last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[2] COMPARATIVE SPEAKERS’STRENGTH OF SCHEDULED LANGUAGES — 1971, 1981, 1991,2001 AND 2011, available on http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/Language-2011/Statement-5.pdf, last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[3] THE FARCE THAT IS HINDI; Srivastava, S.; Economic and Political Weekly, 35(43/44).
[4] Ibid.
[5] WHAT’S A LANGUAGE, ANYWAY?; McWorther, J.; available at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/, last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[6] Supra note 1.
[7] THE USE AND MEANING OF THE TERM KHARI BOLI; T. Grahame Bailey; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, №4.
[8] HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW: BRAJBHASHA POETS AT THE MUGHAL COURT; Allison Busch; Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 44, №2.
[9] ‘THE PURSUIT OF PERSIAN: LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITIES’; Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, №2 (1998), pp. 317–349
[10] Supra note 1.
[11] KHARI BOLI; T. Grahame Bailey; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, №4 (Oct.,
1927), pp. 847–848.
[12] Supra note 7.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Supra note 1.
[15] NOTES ON THE BHOJPURI DIALECT OF HINDI, SPOKEN IN WESTERN BEHAR; Beames, J.. Magistrate of Chumparun,; 17th February, 1867.
[16] Ibid.
[17] THE ‘HINDI’ OF THE ‘URDU’; Mehr Afshan Farooqi; Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43, №9.
[18] Supra note 2.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21]POPULATION MONOGRAPH OF NEPAL; Volume — 02; available at: https://nepal.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Population%20Monograph%20V02.pdf; last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[22] UDHR; available at; https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/bhj.pdf, last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[23] SOCIAL SCIENTIST 23(4/6); Srivastava, S. (1995). 108–116. doi:10.2307/3520218
[24] Available at: https://eparlib.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/736737/1/343.pdf; last seen on 21st September, 2019.
[25] ‘The Problem of a Common Language for India’; Tara Chand; available at; columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/tarachand/01problem.html
