History of the Punjabi language

[Sarvar_Gill]

@sarvar: She actually notes the facts that one reason why Urdu was intorduced because of administrative continuity in terms of trained personnel etc. with the areas where Urdu had already been used as an official language i.e North West Provinces or UP

I think in North-Western Provinces Urdu was introduced in 1837, before that Only Persian was official language... and North-Western Provinces includes modern UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and even Punjab south of Satluj...

despite many officials like Lawrence stating that urdu or persian were not the languages of Punjab.

but Persian was already there in Punjab from the times of Mahmud Ghaznavi...

Also, they first implemented Urdu in eastern parts of Punjab and Persian in the west and later switched to Urdu all lover.

yeah as I said modern Haryana and Punjab south of Satluj were parts of North-Western Provinces, where Urdu was implemented in 1837... whereas rest of Punjab came under Britishers in 1849... where Urdu was introduced alongwith already existing Persian language... then in 1854 Persian was removed...

Another more strategic reason for not adopting Punjabi, which essentially at that time in British circles was associated with Grumukhi since all missionary work in Punjabi had until then been done in Gurmukhi, was its association with the sikhs of whom it was still weary of and later this disregard of Punjabi took a life of its own when various flawed reasons started being given to put the language down now that Urdu was estabished in the provincial administration....to avoid implementing act 29 of 1837 in Punjab.

I think it is not possible that Britishers were not aware of the fact that Punjabi is also wriiten in Indo-Persian script... I think rather than Britishers, Muslim League is responsible for promoting Urdu as a language of Muslims... In think despite of a lot of pressure from Congress and other Hindu Organisations Britishers never implemented Hindi instead of Urdu, rather Urdu continued until 1947... I think they do not want to change this act of 1837 to avoid some controversies

Guru Nanak Dev ji's bani includes a composition known as Patti in Raag Asa. It is composed in a poetic form similar to the western “acrostic” style using the letters of the alphabet we still use today in grumukhi, one can see all the names of the present gurmukhi characters almost in the same sequence and their pronounciation being described as we do now i.e as kakka, khakha, gaga etc.

I think in Lande also characters are same...

shastri was the script used ot write horoscopes and sanskrit texts and is quite distinct from modern devnagri but is almost identical to old Sharada script(to which gurmukhi is also related) which was used to write Sanskrit all over North West India before the switiching over to Devnagri for writing sanskrit happened in the 19th century. Some hindu communities in the North used Shastri script for birth horoscopes and family records even upto the begining of the 20th century.....

yeah I agree, I came across one paiting from Himachal of British era, where Sanskrit was wriiten in some different script not Devanagari...

Guru Angad dev ji then asked one of the Sikhs to bring Bahi Mokha from Sultanpur Lodhi who knew the Shastri script and also knew the varitey of lande used by Guru Nanak in his bani(by which name siddh matrika, the closest to gurmukhi, was also known by then, as one of the 10 variants of lande) so that the horoscope could be transliterated into the latter which was the script used by almost all trader/commoners in the Punjab. Also, standardization and widespread learning of gurmukhi characters by ordinary folk(in religious congregations) happened under the second and subsequent Gurus starting in 1539 as the bani increased...thats when it started being called gurmukhi and appeared by that name in various historical accounts after that hence the agreement on gurmukhs as regards to the etymology..

yeah I agree that there were lot of variants of Lande, but most of them existed in South-western Punjabi (Multan and Jhang area) which remained unaltered until early 20th century... Sikh Gurus used the variant that was popular in Majha region... I partly do not agree with this that Guru Angad standardised the script as upto the times of Ranjit Singh Damdami script was used in Eastern Punjab whereas in Pothohar a little different script was used to write Sikh scriptures... however when Britishers standardised this Damdami script as they are in touch with this script from 1800's whereas Pothohari variant was ignored because of British ignorance and fell out of use in 1900's as all the printing presses were using this Damdami script...

P.S. I think this little difference between the script of Sikh Gurus and Damdami script is because of variation in Lande script in Majha and Malwa region...

[5jabiportal]

Sarvar, she was talking of the time in the initial years after 1849 when Punjab becamne a province of the crown and cis-satluj and Haryana(and Jalandhar Doab which they annexed in 1846 and attached to the cis-sutlej territories)etc. were included in the new province at that time they kept Urdu as the language of these eastern areas and persian as the language of Majha and West for a few years after that in the 1850's they switched to Urdu all over.

Also, when she was talking about lawrence saying urdu or persian were not the languages of Punjab it meant that they were not spoken vernaculars of Punjab...official use of persian was there all along through the medieval times.



Also, damdami is not the name of the script variant....its not a linguistic term or a variety of script, please disregard any refrences you might have read anywhere they started appearing recently(and by one particular person who has drawn flak from historians and linguists for a lot of other claims as well) it was the version of the sikh scripture i.e SGGS compiled by Guru Gobind singh in the same gurmukhi script as was used by the previous Gurus and the pothis and literature was handed from Guru Nanak to Guru Angad Dev at coronation and so on after each subsequent coronation of whatever was written.... (i really don't know why this Majha, Malwa thing is even mentioned in this context when there is no historical arguement about it that the same script was used for SGGS by subsequent Gurus after its standardization by the inital gurus). Damdama sahib was established because the scribes were brought there by the Guru with him(who were well versed in the writing system of previous Gurus) as he stayed there in the 1700's before that there was no activity related to Sikh religious scriptures there. Damdami beerh was chosen by a draw at Darbar Sahib in the 1860's as the first version to go to press when a request was sent by Lala Harsukh Rai a Printer of Lahore to Publish the scripture and bring out the first print version in modern book form. The decision as to which scripture should be sent was taken by a lottery draw at the Amrit sarovar and slip with Damdami beerh came up hence the Damdami version of the Beerh(not script as all of three versions chosen are in the same script and were also published later) was sent for printing. Now, its important to note that all surviving pothis and mauscripts from the 16th and 17th century(from Khadoor sahib , kartarpur etc.) i.e before the compilation of the final SGGS by Guru Gobind Singh at Damdama sahib have the SAME version of Grumukhi as by that time the learning and writing of grumukhi(as used by the gurus) was well established among sikhs or gurmukhs(again it points to the ridiculous folly of using damdami as the name of the script by this one person who is not even a sikhism scholar per se, when gurmukhi was the actual name all along)......some of these are at the London museum dunno why they are not being asked to be repatriated, kohinoor da taan bohat dukh ae sade leaders nu. The porthohari situation was different most of the conversions there happened after the establishment of Sikh misl rule and among trading communities who were already using lande versions and started writing them in their versions mixed with gurmukhi which was then corrected soon after during the time of Ranjit singh itself. The Brtish did not do anything to the script at all they just learnt it the way it was used by sikhs.

Also, the variety of lande prevalant(even before the use by Gurus) for religious inscriptions over most of central and eastern Punjab was the same, as is evident from the inscriptions relating to the jogis and other religious sects. There were different versions used in different trading and priestly caste communities though and some other varieities in Northern and South Western Punjab i.e Multan were present as well.

[Sarvar_Gill]

Sarvar, she was talking of the time in the initial years after 1849 when Punjab becamne a province of the crown and cis-satluj and Haryana(and Jalandhar Doab which they annexed in 1846 and attached to the cis-sutlej territories)etc. were included in th enew province at that time they kept Urdu as the language of these eastern areas and persian as the language of Majha and West for a few years after that in the 1850's they switched to Urdu all over.

I agree with all this, but my point is that there was no such thing that Britishers introduced Urdu in Punjab as a part of some conspiracy...

Urdu was official language of cis-Satluj Punjab because initially it was part of North-Western Province...

and Persian was official language of trans-Satluj Punjab because it was part of Ranjit Singh's Kingdom...

when Britishers combined both the Punjabs, they want to introduce Urdu as it was closer to the language of Punjabis and Persian was neglected because they want to introduce English, they never completely removed Persian, it was taught in the schools of Punjab till 1947 and is still taught in the schools of Pakistan...

Priority List of British Govt was as follow:
1.) Urdu - (introduced from class 1st)
2.) English - (introduced from class 5th)
3.) Punjabi (Gurmukhi) - (introduced from class 9th)
4.) Persian - (introduced from class 9th)
Punjabi (Gurmukhi) and Persian were optionals you can choose anyone of them...

However the priority list of Arya Schools, Islamia Schools and Khalsa Schools were different...

Also, damdami is not the name of the script variant....its not a linguistic term or a variety of script, please disregard any refrences you might have read anywhere they started appearing recently(and by one particular person who has drawn flak from historians and linguists for a lot of other claims as well)

I agree it could be a false claim... I agree that script of all the Sikh Gurus was almost same, but we have to keep this point in mind that all Sikh Gurus except Guru Nanak were from same geographical background, i.e. Majha Region..

However after the death of Guru Gobind Singh, when Talwandi Sabo (Damdama Sahib) became the center of Sikh Learning how come the Script changed in just 30-40 years if it was already standardised by Sikh Gurus ??

and I agree that British didnt do anything to the Script...

[5jabiportal]

Actually, the British imposed Urdu upto Lahore first(as they did with newly annexed Jalandhar Doab in 1946) as soon as they annexed it but kept persian as the lanugage beyond Ravi upto Khyber. It wasn't according to the official lanugages of sikh region or british region and after cis-sutlej territories became part of british Punjab after 1849 they instead of making Punjabi an official language of the new entity imposed Urdu upto Lahore and later in the 1850s upto Peshawar. The main point she was making was that they completely ignored or even shot down any suggestions about implementing Act 29 which had already been implemented in provinces like Bengal, UP, Bombay, Madras etc. and tried to justify the continuation of Urdu in the early years(remember that there was no muslim league until 1906 and in punjab it came even later so there was no organized muslim pressure groups until the late 1890's) by suggesting punjabi was not a language at all etc.(later such points were carried forward by Arya Samaj). Also, Madras and Bombay had two official languages like Tamil for tamil areas and telugu for telugu areas and same with Gujarati and Marathi in Bombay province. Same could've been done with cis-sutlej territories when they were part of North Western Provinces but it didnot happen.

[gbssungha]

another take: it is known fact that "nature likes entropy"..similarly the linguistic evlution of man kind is towards simplication of words and creation of rhythms in music..(aka beautification of words). it is a known fact that punjabi people have difficulty speaking englsih..??? may be the reason is that our brain is already adjusted to simpler lingusitic circuits and thus not adjust to complexity of englsih.. however when is comes to south indians.. due to teh more complex phonetics of primitve dravidian languages their brains are quick in adapting to englsih... now if we compare the phonetics of punjabi/hindi/urdu one can easily differentiate the difference in syntax and sound..punjabi dialects gives prominence to those words which sounds musical eg ਣ like toon, main, while hindi dailects give priminence to words ਝ eg tujhe , mujhe... infact punajbi dialect jhilmil sounds more simpler than hindi jhhmill.... thus when it comes to music punjabi words emphasize a similar feeling in a more rhythmic and concrete manner eg kach vs kaaanch, akh vs aaankh.. try listening to any modern bollywood song...one can easily find which words of punajbi are taking over the indian musical scene... it is all about simplification of phoetics and evolution of expression... urdu has a very complex way of saying same syntax... no doubt illiteracy is rampant in pakistan as it must not be easy to learn urdu... the british were at ease with englsih and thus wanted to keep it as the language of their communiacation.. but at thet same time their langague experts would ahve analysed the syntax and behaviour of langauges which could be a threat to the exustence of englsih and thus they devised the scheemes to kill the existence of those langauges... however, once again ... nature likes entropy... punjabi could not be killed.. most punajbi people could not learn englsih...those punjabis who were forced to take to urud and hindi in childhoood were at ease in converting to englsih .... those punjabi whose mother tongue was punajbi but had more than avg IQ and easily learned englsih in childhood... kept longing for the mother tongue punjabi afterwards .. as it was a simpler and may be more beautiful language for hte human brain to quantify..despite regualr usage of englsih in their dtd life ...!!

[Sarvar_Gill]

@5jabiportal: I agree with your point that Muslim League and Arya Samajis entered the scene later on..

East India Company and later British Govt divided their empire in India into Madras Presidency, Bombay Presidency and Bengal Presidency... Punjab was part of Bengal Presidency... and don't now why British Govt altogether neglected the languages of the Western parts of Bengal Presidency... Urdu was imposed all over Bihar, UP, CP, Central India, Rajputana, J&K and Punjab...

@gbssungha: Entropy Theory tah Chemistry vich parhi si... tusi linguistics vich implement kar ditti

[5jabiportal]

Rajputana and J&K were not under British provincial jurisdictions so they were on their own anf free to implement anything as far official languages in their princely states were concerned.....Punjab stands alone here they even chose Sindhi as the provincial lanugage when they carved out the new province of Sindh from Bombay. While Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil press and literature flourished and they got more respect as official languages and their vocabulary also is more or less original and has one standard whether in east or west bengal as it was standardized when the province was united(even marathi retains a lot of its original vocab as was spoken then hence a lot of persian sounding words), ours suffered as a result cuz by the time Punjabi got official status here the chance for composite and "from the soil" developement of the lanugage for official purposes was gone with partition hence we have a sanskritized and hindified unrecognizable punjabi language as our official one.

[Sarvar_Gill]

^^ haanji... par hun tah British Raj khatam hoye nu 65 saal ho gaye... hun tah Punjabi da future Punjabiyaan de hath vich ae...

[5jabiportal]

^^^ thats for the "future of punjabi language" thread lol.

[gbssungha]

Code: Select all

http://www.apnaorg.com/research-papers-pdf/A-postcolonial-sociolinguistics-of-Punjabi-in-Pakistan.pdf

[5jabiportal]

Puadhi: a transitional variety of the dialect spoken in northern Haryana, east and south of Ambala.





Dharme dunggal varge jhoteyan varge halwai lol

Beas ka dera aajo thonu peg paawan lol

[jswaich]

While visiting relatives in Rajpura, I almost thought I had entered Haryana. Amongst the current dialects spoken in East Punjab, would Powadhi be the farthest from the core Majhi Punjabi dialect (if ever there's a thing called a core dialect)?

[Sarvar_Gill]

lol... Great Sharing bai... you will encounter the word "gail" as soon as you enter Distt Fatehgarh Sahib... and this word prevails all over Haryana till Alwar in Rajasthan..

eg: 'mere gail challo' instead of 'mere naal challo' or 'mere saath chalo'

[5jabiportal]

@jswaich: Yes, in the east Puadhi is the farthest from the core dialect i.e taksali or standard punjabi of central majha around Lahore as it goes upto parts of Yamunanagar and Kurukshetra districts.

[gbssungha]

this research disapproves that sanskrit is a orignal indian language.. interestign it is done with one of hte most sophisticated simulation technologies..

http://www.nature.com/news/2003/031124/ ... -6.html#B1

[jswaich]

@gbss, saw that news yesterday. This shouldn't be so surprising news though. Since most IE groups originated from outside India, isnt it plausible they brought to India some of the components of their languages as well? Perhaps only the hardened saffron historian would claim Sanskrit to be an original Indian language without any smattering of external components.

[Sarvar_Gill]

the article is about Proto-Indo-European, the great-grand-mother of Sanskrit, not Sanskrit itself.

[5jabiportal]

Thats the point..hindutva factions have been trying to disprove any outside origins of indo-european languages of north india and sanskrit being the oldest and the language of 'dharma' for caste hindus is the first one that appears in the subcontinent(its the closest survivng link to the proto indo-european language in india). An outside origin shuts down their claims that austro-asiatic and dravidian lanugage speakers were not the original, older inhabitiants.