Languages In India 4

SANSKRIT

Sanskrit language is truly a fountainhead, if one surveys its three thousand years of its existence. The story of the origin of Sanskrit began right from the Vedic age, sailing through the post-Vedic years and centuries later till today. The Aryans collected the mass of hymns, rituals and poems about their gods in the four Vedas (10th century BC) which document the various dialects that they brought to India (but that wasn’t the Sanskrit we know of today). From the Punjab, where the Aryans settled first after they came from Central Asia, their speech spread along the east as far as present Bihar by about 600 BC. Obviously this Vedic or Old Indo-Aryan language met with the language of the Dravidians (who were then not restricted to just the southern regions) and Austrics, and some give and take happened. The result was Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan dialect which soon engulfed the whole country in the north, east and centre. The Aryan invasion was moving towards completion.

Meanwhile, the ‘pure’ Aryans in Punjab were very unhappy about their sacred language getting ‘defiled’. So between 8th and 4th century BC, they came up with Classical Sanskrit, based on the old Vedic speech. But for all practical purposes, the origin of the language is taken to be the old Vedic Sanskrit.

But Prakrit dialects were already on their steady journey of spreading and mixing. Buddhists picked up one of these dialects around the 6th century BC and developed it into Pali. The process of simplification of the dialects continued throughout the Middle Indo-Aryan stage, culminating in the Apabhramsa stage in 600AD. Further modification of the regional Apabhramsas during 600-1000AD gave rise to the New Indo-Aryan languages of the present day.

But even while other languages were taking shape, Sanskrit continued to be the vehicle of creative and all other scholarly work. The sheer volume of work in Sanskrit is formidable. With the Vedas was laid the foundation stone of Vedic literature and all Sanskrit literature thereafter. From religion and philosophy to grammar, phonetics, etymology, lexicography, astronomy, astrology, sociology, sex, politics, arts and aesthetics, Sanskrit ruled. Sanskrit is also the language of India’s two most talked about epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Puranas are perhaps the most interesting collection of works in Sanskrit. The Puranas contain all the fodder for stories about the Hindu gods and goddesses.

Literary activities burst forth with the playwright Bharata’s (200BC) Natya Shastra, the Bible of dramatic criticism. The earliest plays were those of Bhasa, but were soon overshadowed by Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, a model for ages. History tells us that Kalidasa was the greatest of fools in his early years. He is known to have hacked at the very branch he was sitting on! Anyway, Shakuntala was a heroic play, while Shudraka’s Mrichchhakatika, was a play of the social class. Bhavabhuti (circa 700AD) was another well-known figure, his best being Malatimadhava and Uttaramacharita, the latter based on the story of the Ramayana.

Some of the greatest Sanskrit poems are Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa and Kumarasambhava, Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi (550AD), Sishupalavadha of Magha (7th century AD) and Naishadhiyacharita of Sriharsha (12th century AD). All of them draw from the Mahabharata, the source for many writers even today. Shorter poems of great depth were composed on a single theme like love, morality, detachment and sometimes of grave matters. The earliest and best collections of such verses called Muktakas are those of Bhartrihari and Amaruka.

Much of the early prose work in Sanskrit has not survived. Of the remaining, some of the best are Vasavadatta of Subandhu, Kadambari and Harshacharita of Bana (7th century AD) and Dasakumaracharita of Dandin (7th century AD). The Panchatantra and Hitopadesha are collections of wit and wisdom in the Indian style, teaching polity and proper conduct through animal fables and aphorisms.

With a glorious life of over 3000 years, Sanskrit continues to be a living language even today, bobbing up during Hindu ceremonies when mantras (ritual verses) are chanted. And though restricted, it’s still a medium of literary expression, but ‘great works’ have long stopped being written.

Santhali

Santali language is mainly spoken by people who live near the areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in India. It is basically spoken by the tribal people of India. It is estimated that approximately 6 million people speak the Santhali language in the country. There is not a very regular distribution of people who speak the Santhali language. One can find some speakers of this language in states like Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura and West Bengal. The Santhali language originated from the Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari.

The alphabets of the language are known as Ol Chiki, though people are not very well versed in it. The literacy rate in Santali speaking regions is very low, just around 20-30%. The tribe that speaks this language is known as Santhal. One finds the greatest number of Santali speakers in Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. This language is actually a dialect of the Munda language. The tribe that speaks this language is quite backward as far as the standard of living is concerned. Most of them work in the coal mines or the steel factories in Asansol and Jamshedpur.

These days, though the language is not much in use, some educated Santhals use it to write books and other literary pieces. During the British rule, this language used to be written in the Roman script. But now, it is written in the Devanagari script. Due to its similarities with the Bengali language, many educated Santhali writers prefer writing it in Bengali because of its similarities in the use of phonetics. It is estimated that the Santali language is older than the Aryan languages.

SINDHI

Sindhis are across the border in Pakistan too. There they write in the Perso-Arabic script, while in India the Devanagari is used.

History of Sindhi Language:
Sindhi is actually an offshoot of some of the dialects of the Vedic Aryans. Sindh, on the north west of undivided India, had always been the first to bear the onslaught of the never-ending invaders, and as such absorbed Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English and even Portuguese. Sindh is where Persian and Indian cultures blended, for the area was introduced to Islam in 712AD. Thus, very little of Sindhi literature of the earlier period has survived. The Summara and Summa periods are virtually blank except for the few poems of Hamad, Raju and Isack. The heroic ballads of this period set to music by Shah Abdul Karim (1538-1625) are the earliest records of the Sindhi language.

Real flourish of Sindhi poetic talent came during the last stages of the 18th century. Although the time was not appropriate for cultural developments as invaders repeatedly plundered the country during this period. Several works like Shah Abdul Latif's Shah-Jo-Rasalo, the magnum opus of Sindhi literature, were produced.

Shah-Jo-Rasalo describes the life of common man, the sorrows and sufferings of the ill-starred heroes of ancient folklore. Sachal, another eminent, poet closely followed Shah Abdul Karim. He was a Sufi rebel poet who did not adhere to any religion and denounced religious radicals. The poet Saami was a complete contrast to Kari, more pious than poetical, yet possessing a charm of his own. There was an excess of songsters in Sindhi who recited similar ideas and themes in varied tones. The notables among them are Bedil, his son Bekas, and Dalpat. Gul Mohamad introduced Persian forms of poetry replacing the native baits and Kafees. Mirza Kaleech Beg who composed on the same lines contributed a lot to Sindhi literature.

Dayaram Gidumal and Mirza Kaleech were two of the early prose writers. The former was a great scholar and he was famous mainly for his metaphysical writings. The noted lexicographer and essayist Parmanand Mewaram wrote essays that educated and instructed both the young and the old. This peer group also comprised of Bherumal Meherchand, Lalchand Amardinomal and Jethmal Parsram, and Acharya Gidwani, N. R. Malkani and Dr H. M. Gurbuxani. The Partition of India, however, did not put a brake on the literary output of Sindhi. Plays and poetry have continued to develop, but their themes have changed. Music and beauty are no longer favoured, while poverty, filth and moral degradation rule the mind of the poets. A very crude variety of stories, though popular, are now the representatives of the Sindhi literature. Essay writing has witnessed a far greater interest on the side of the writers. Sindhi literature is thus a far more junior member of the family of Indian literature.

TAMIL

Tamil is the oldest and purest of the four Dravidian languages.

Ancient Indian literature is not all about the Vedas; it’s about Sangam literature too. Tamil, the oldest and truest of the Dravidian speeches, boasts of this literary tradition of more than 2,200 years, the most remarkable body of secular poetry extant in India. While other pre-Aryan languages were happily courting Sanskrit and Prakrit (600 BC-600AD), Old Tamil stood firm in its corner refusing to yield. However, the evolutionary story of the language and script are a controversy among scholars even today.

The Sangam compositions are anthologies of poems grouped into two - the Eight Collections (Ettuttokai) and the Ten Idyls (Pattu-p-pattu). There are also few individual long narrative poems (Kavyas). Based on two distinct themes, akam (romantic) and puram (martial), the poems are replete with imageries of seasons, places, plants and animals, enabling scholars to know the world of these ancient poets. The literary output till about 500AD is simply amazing.

By the next century, Shaiva (in praise of Shiva) and Vaishanva (in praise of Vishnu) writers began rising from sleep, leading to a religious renaissance. It was the turn of devotional literature to hog the limelight. The corpus of Shaiva hymns, sung till today, were compiled in Tirumurarais (early 11th century). The Vaishnava saints lay the foundation of the Bhakti cult not only for South India (500-1000AD), but for the whole of India. Their songs were put together in the colossal Nal-ayira-p-pirapantam or the ‘Book of 4000 Hymns’.

Some of the great Tamil poets lived in the times of the mighty Chola kings (10th-13th centuries), a period of literary revival. Kampan’s Ramayana is the best in Tamil till today; Ottakkuttan wrote the Uttara Kanda, the last canto of the Ramayana; Pukazhenti popularized the Mahabharata with his simple adaptations in Tamil, and Chayam Kontar wrote a long war poem Kalingattu Parani, in the Sangam style. Didactic works, grammatical treatises and lexicons were produced from time to time by Jain writers.

The following centuries were the age of learned commentaries on Sangam poetry, Shaiva and Vaishnava philosophies, and literature influenced by Sanskrit. Some of these were the esteemed Bharatham by Villiputthurar, Thiruppuhazh (hymns) by Arunagirinathar and translations of many Puranas. Some brilliant stray verses of this period have been collected in late anthologies like Kalamegham, Satthimutthapulavar and Padikkasu Thambiran. European Christian missionaries also took to Tamil in the 16th century, and the first book was printed in 1579. Muslim poets like Sakkari Pulavar and Umaru Pulavar brought new themes in Tamil writings in the 18th century.

A modern trend in Tamil literature was begun in the 19th century by a group of writers influenced by English, Vedanayakam Pillai (1824-1889) being among them who wrote the first original novels and dramas. A literary giant of the 20th century was Subramania Bharathi, whose poems and patriotic songs are well known. Although the development of prose has been pretty slow, the historical romances of C R Srinivasa Aiyangar, social novels like Padmavati and Vijaya Marttandam of A. Madhavayya, Kamalambal by Rajam Iyer and S. Venkataramani’s Murugam are prominent. The short story was popularized by V V S Iyer and Rajaji, while Sambanda Mudaliar’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays contributed to Tamil drama greatly.

TELUGU

Telegu is a richly developed language and the biggest linguistic unit in India, second only to Hindi. Linguistically, the language has deviated a good deal from its southern sisters – Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. It is the state language of Andhra Pradesh. It’s an old one too, with origins as early as the 1st century AD, or perhaps even before as one of the later Vedas (700BC) mention the Andhras, another name for the people of Andhra Pradesh. Early inscriptions of the language date from around the 6th century, but a proper literary career starts five centuries later. The script, almost similar to that of Kannada, took shape in 1000AD from the Pahlava script of 7AD.

History of Telugu:
Most literatures began with translations from Sanskrit. So did Telegu with Nannayabhatta (1020AD), the adikavi or ‘first poet’ of Telegu translating the Mahabharata. It was a unusual translation, with lots of clever innovations but no deviations from the story. But Nannayabhatta couldn’t complete the job. Tikanna came along sometime in the 13th century and furthered it. However, it was Yerrapragada (14th century) was finally able to clinch it. Nannaya, Tikanna and Yerrapragada are known as the kavitraya or ‘the three great poets’ of Telegu for this mammoth effort. Other such translations followed, like Marana’s Markandeya Purana, Ketana’s Dasakumara Charita, Yerrana’s Harivamsa and others. Shaivite (in praise of Shiva) works like Sivatattwa Sara, Basavapurana and Panditaradhya Charitra were a part of this initial stash too.

By the time the Telegu poets wrote down some original stuff along with translations, it was almost the end of the 14th century. Slowly but steadily they picked up, some landmarks being Srinatha’s Sringara Naishadha, Potana’s Dasamaskandha, Jakkana’s Vikramarka Charitra and Talapaka Himmakka’s Subhadra Kalyana. Literary activities flourished, especially during the mighty Vijayanagara emperors. The 16th century was the golden age in the history of Tamil literature, thanks to the king Krishna Deva Raya. The raja, a poet himself, introduced the prabandha (a kind of love poetry) in Telegu literature in his Amukta Malyada. He had in his court the Ashtadiggajas (literal: eight elephants) who were the greatest of poets of the times. Original verse compositions and stories were written in a new zeal. Of those eight, Allasani Peddana (1510-1575AD) is known as Andhra Kavita Pitamahudu or ‘Grandfather of Andhra Poetry’.

In the following years, poets still wrote their prabandhas, but kind of overdid on the love bit which make some critics dismiss it as ‘a decadent age’. Of the dozens of poets of the 18th to mid 19th century, the only bright spot was Kankanti Paparaju whose Uttara Ramayana in campu style and the play Vishnumayavilasa were admirable. But other genres bloomed. Innumerable Yakshagansa or indigenous dramas of song and prose works were also produced. Tyagaraya of Tanjore (19th century) composed devotional songs in Telegu which form the repertoire of the classical ragas of South India.

Although the first printed Telegu book was out in 1796, it took some time before the modern period in literature set in. Young men acquainted with English literature tried to imitate Shelly, Keats and Wordsworth, and a new type of romantic poetry called the Bhavakavithwa was born. Bengali novelists like Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutta were a major influence on modern Telegu fiction. Viresalingam Pantulu (1848-1919) wrote the first novel in Telegu, Rakashekharacharitramu. Other writers joined forces to build modern Telegu literature, like the dramatist Dharmavaram Krishnamachari, Chilakamarti Lakshminarasimham (also called the ‘blind poet of Andhra Desha’) the poets and dramatists Gurujada Apparavu and D. Krishnamacharlu.

The literary group Sahiti Samiti was set up in 1921, and their ‘progressive and rationalist’ journal Sahiti was followed by several others. Even now many writers preferred the old traditional style, like Tirupati Venkata Kavulu, Sripada Krishnamurthy Shastry and Vavilakolanu Subbarao. The other school was that of the Neo-classicist group of Sri Vishwanatha, Katuri, Pingali, Gadiyaram, G. Joshuan and others. Today the drama, novel, short story, essay and criticism in Telegu have reached high standards although they started only a century ago.

URDU

Urdu is probably the most poetic of all languages. Urdu language is spoken by more than 28 million heads in India. It is written in the Perso-Arabic script. The word Urdu (court or camp) stems from the Persianized Turkish word (Ordu) which meant ‘the camp of a Turkish army’. North Indian Muslims with their own dialects moved to South and Central India and settled among the Marathas, Kannadigas and Telugus. These dialects formed the basis of a literary speech known as Dakhni or the ‘Southern Speech’, and was spoken in the Deccan. Later, north Indian Muslims, who came with Aurangzeb for his conquests down south and some Dakhni writers, saw the possibility of evolving a new language. This language would be based on the literary traditions of Dakhni and have the Persian script alongwith generous usage of Perso-Arabic words, idioms and theme ideas. Shamsuddin Waliullah a famous poet of the Dakhni actually started the North Indian Urdu. Other poets also joined in this new literary upsurge and came to Delhi subsequently. Delhi style of Urdu thus took birth. Court circles, Persian and Arabic scholars and especially the Muslims of Delhi adapted this language with great eagerness and by the end of the 18th century the Mughal house turned only to Urdu. For the first 60 years or so the influence of Dakhni poets, Sufi thinking and Indianness of diction prevailed over Urdu. The term Four Pillars of Urdu is attributed to the four early poets: Mirza Jan-i-Janan Mazhar (1699-1781) of Delhi, Mir Taqi (1720-1808) of Agra, Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) and Mir Dard (1719-1785). During this time Lucknow became a rival centre for the patronage of Urdu literature and masters of Urdu poetry received patronage from the court of the Nawab. The most illustrious poets of the pre-modern period were Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq (1789-1854) of Delhi and Nazmuddaulah Dabiru-i-Mulk. However, Urdu literature can never be complete without the mention of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869). A Sufi mystic, Ghalib wrote both in Urdu and Persian and through his letters he brought in literary history and criticism. The humane feelings, Sufi sentiments, simplicity of his lines and the depth of his observations made Ghalib the greatest Urdu and Persian poet.

Modern Urdu literature covers the time from the last quarter of the 19th century till the present day and can be divided into two periods: the period of the Aligarh Movement started by Sir Sayyid Ahmad and the period influenced by Sir Muhammad Iqbal. However, Altaf Husain Panipati (1837-1914), known as Hali or ‘the Modern One’, is the actual innovator of the modern spirit in Urdu poetry. Hindu writers of Urdu were not far behind, and among the earliest writers was Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar (author of Fisana-e-Azad) and Brij Narain Chakbast (1882-1926). One of the most famous poets of modern Urdu is Sayyid Akbar Husain Razvi Ilahabadi (1846-1921) who had a flair for extempore composition of satiric and comic verses. After 1936, Urdu picked up a progressive attitude and leaned more towards the problems of life. Poetry, novels, short stories and essays were the avenues of the liberal expression. The main exponents of this new line of approach were the short story writers Muhammad Husain Askari, Miranji, Faiz Ahmad ‘Faiz’, Sardar Ali Jafari and Khwajah Ahmad Abbas. Munshi Premchand, the greatest novelist of Hindi, began writing in Urdu and later switched to Hindi.

Inspite of Urdu being considered a little tilted towards Islamic lines, there were some great Hindu writers who made Urdu their very own, like Krishan Chandar, Rajindar Singh Bedi and Kanhaiyalal Kapur. Unfortunately, the lyrical language of Urdu no longer enjoys the same position that it used to. However, Urdu is still encouraged in Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Hyderabad. Present day Hindi borrows a lot from Urdu – for grammar, diction and idiom.