origin in the English occupation of India and the need for text-books for the college of Fort William. It has had a prosperous career since the commencement of the 19th century, but some writers, especially those of Lucknow, have so overloaded it with Persian and Arabic that little of the original Indo-Aryan character remains, except, perhaps, an occasional pronoun or auxiliary verb. The Hindi form of Hindostani was invented simultaneously with Urdu prose by the teachers at Fort William. It was intended to be a Hindostani for the use of Hindus, and was derived from Urdu by ejecting all words of Persian or Arabic birth, and substituting for them words either borrowed from Sanskrit (tatsamas) or derived from the old primary Prakrit (tadbhavas) (see Indo-Aryan Languages). Owing to the popularity of the first book written in it, and to its supplying the need for a lingua franca which could be used by the most patriotic Hindus without offending their religious prejudices, it became widely adopted, and is now the recognized vehicle for writing prose by those inhabitants of northern India who do not employ Urdu. This Hindi, which is an altogether artificial product of the English, is hardly ever used for poetry. For this the indigenous dialects (usually Awadhi or Braj Bhasha) are nearly always employed by Hindus. Urdu, on the other hand, having had a natural growth, has a vigorous poetical literature. Modern Hindi prose is often disfigured by that too free borrowing of Sanskrit words instead of using home-born tadbhavas, which has been the ruin of Bengali, and it is rapidly becoming a Hindu counterpart of the Persianized Urdu, neither of which is intelligible except to persons of high education.
Not only has Urdu adopted a Persian vocabulary, but even a few peculiarities of Persian construction, such as reversing the positions of the governing and the governed word (e.g. báp mērā for mērā bāp), or of the adjective and the substantive it qualifies, or such as the use of Persian phrases with the preposition ba instead of the native postposition of the ablative case (e.g. ba-khushí for khushī-sē, or ba-ḥukm sarkār-kē instead of sarkār-kē ḥukm-sē) are to be met with in many writings; and these, perhaps, combined with the too free indulgence on the part of some authors in the use of high-flown and pedantic Persian and Arabic words in place of common and yet chaste Indian words, and the general use of the Persian instead of the Nāgarī character, have induced some to regard Hindostani or Urdu as a language distinct from Hindi. But such a view betrays a radical misunderstanding of the whole question. We must define Urdu as the Persianized Hindostani of educated Mussulmans, while Hindi is the Sanskritized Hindostani of educated Hindus. As for the written character, Urdu, from the number of Persian words which it contains, can only be written conveniently in the Persian character, while Hindi, for a parallel reason, can only be written in the Nagari or one of its related alphabets (see Sanskrit). On the other hand, “Hindostani” implies the great lingua franca of India, capable of being written in either character, and, without purism, avoiding the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. It is easy to write this Hindostani, for it has an opulent vocabulary of tadbhava words understood everywhere by both Mussulmans and Hindus. While “Hindostani,” “Urdu” and “Hindi” are thus names of dialects, it should be remembered that the terms “Western Hindi” and “Eastern Hindi” connote, not dialects, but languages.
The epoch of Akbar, which first saw a regular revenue system established, with toleration and the free use of their religion to the Hindus, was, there can be little doubt, the period of the formation of the language. But its final consolidation did not take place till the reign of Shah Jahān. After the date of this monarch the changes are comparatively immaterial until we come to the time when European sources began to mingle with those of the East. Of the contributions from these sources there is little to say. Like the greater part of those from Arabic and Persian, they are chiefly nouns, and may be regarded rather as excrescences which have sprung up casually and have attached themselves to the original trunk than as ingredients duly incorporated in the body. In the case of the Persian and Arabic element, indeed, we do find not a few instances in which nouns have been furnished with a Hindi termination, e.g. kharīdnā, badalnā, guzarnā, dāghnā, bakhshnaā, kamīnapan, &c.; but the European element cannot be said to have at all woven itself into the grammar of the language. It consists, as has been observed, solely of nouns, principally substantive nouns, which on their admission into the language are spelt phonetically, or according to the corrupt pronunciation they receive in the mouths of the natives, and are declined like the indigenous nouns by means of the usual postpositions or case-affixes. A few examples will suffice. The Portuguese, the first in order of seniority, contributes a few words, as kamarā or kamrā (camera), a room; mārtōl (martello), a hammer; nīlām (leilão), an auction, &c. &c. Of French and Dutch influence scarcely a trace exists. English has contributed a number of words, some of which have even found a place in the literature of the language; e.g. kamishanar (commissioner); jaj (judge); ḍākṭar (doctor); ḍākṭarī, “the science of medicine” or “the profession of physicians”; inspēkṭar (inspector); isṭanṭ (assistant); sōsayaṭí (society); apīl (appeal); apīl karnā, “to appeal”; ḍikrī or ḍigrī (decree); ḍigrī (degree); inc (inch); fut (foot); and many more, are now words commonly used. Some borrowed words are distorted into the shape of genuine Hindostani words familiar to the speakers; e.g. the English railway term “signal” has become sikandar, the native name for Alexander the Great, and “signal-man” is sikandar-mān, or “the pride of Alexander.” How far the free use of Anglicisms will be adopted as the language progresses is a question upon which it would be hazardous to pronounce an opinion, but of late years it has greatly increased in the language of the educated, especially in the case of technical terms. A native veterinary surgeon once said to the present writer, “kuttē-kā saliva bahut antiseptic hai” for “a dog’s saliva is very antiseptic,” and this is not an extravagant example.[1]
The vocabulary of Panjabi and Eastern Hindi is very similar to that of Western Hindi. Panjabi has no literature to speak of and is free from the burden of words borrowed from Persian or Sanskrit, only the commonest and simplest of such being found in it. Its vocabulary is thus almost entirely tadbhava, and, while capable of expressing all ideas, it has a charming rustic flavour, like the Lowland Scotch of Burns, indicative of the national character of the sturdy peasantry that employs it. Eastern Hindi is very like Panjabi in this respect, but for a different reason. In it were written the works of Tulsī Dās, one of the greatest writers that India has produced, and his influence on the language has been as great as that of Shakespeare on English. The peasantry are continually quoting him without knowing it, and his style, simple and yet vigorous, thoroughly Indian and yet free from purism, has set a model which is everywhere followed except in the large towns where Urdu or Sanskritized Hindi prevails. Eastern Hindi is written in the Nāgarī alphabet, or in the current character related to it called “Kaithi” (see Bihari). The indigenous alphabet of the Punjab is called Laṇḍā or “clipped.” It is related to Nāgarī, but is hardly legible to any one except the original writer, and sometimes not even to him. To remedy this defect an improved form of the alphabet was devised in the 16th century by Angad, the fifth Sikh Guru, for the purpose of recording the Sikh scriptures. It was named Gurmukhī, “proceeding from the mouth of the Guru,” and is now generally used for writing the language.
Grammar.—In the following account we use these contractions: Skr. = Sanskrit; Pr. = Prakrit; Ap. = Apabhraṁśa; W.H. = Western Hindi; E.H. = Eastern Hindi; H. = Hindostani; Br. = Braj Bhasha; P. = Panjabi.
(A) Phonetics.—The phonetic system of all three languages is nearly the same as that of the Apabhraṁśas from which they are derived. With a few exceptions, to be noted below, the letters of the alphabets of the three languages are the same as in Sanskrit. Panjabi, and the western dialects of Western Hindi, have preserved the old Vedic cerebral l. There is a tendency for concurrent vowels to run into each other, and for the semi-vowels y and v to become vowels. Thus, Skr. carmakāras, Ap. cammaāru, a leather-worker,
- ↑ This and the preceding paragraph are partly taken from Mr Platts’s article in vol. xi. of the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia.
