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Home , Bihari languages, Fort William College

INTRODUCTION

Hindi, an Indo-European language, is the official language of , spoken by about 40% of the more than one billion citizens of India. It is also the official language in certain of the territories where a sizeable diaspora settled such as the Republic of Mauritius1. But the label ‘’ covers considerably distinct speeches, as evidenced by the number of regional varieties covered by the category Hindi in the various Censuses of India: 91 mother tongues in the 1961 Census, up to 331 languages or speeches according to Srivastava 1994, totalizing to six hundred millions speakers (Bhatia 1987: 9). On the other end, the notion that Standard Hindi, more or less corresponding to the variety used in written literature and media, does not exist as a mother tongue, has gained currency during the seventies and eighties: according to Gumperz & Naim (1960), modern standard Hindi is a second or third speech for most of its speakers, being a native language for a small section of the urban population, which until recently was itself a small minority of the global Indian population. However, due to the rapid increase in this urban population, Hindi native speakers can no longer be considered as a non-significant minority, as noticed by Ohala (1983) and Singh & Agnihotri (1997). Many scholars still consider that the modern colloquial language, used for instance in popular movies, does not differ from modern colloquial . Similarly, many consider that the higher registers of both languages are still only two styles of one and the same language. According to Abdul Haq (1961), “the language we speak and write and call by the name Urdu today is derived from Hindi and constituted of Hindi”. Kelkar’s coining of the term “Hirdu” aimed at countering both the academic polemics about the historical origin of the language and the politization of language debates hardened by the choice of Hindi as the official language in 1950.

1 Although the spoken language there, as in Fiji, Trinidad, Goyana, Surinam, is closer to Bhojpuri or Awadhi than to standard Hindi. 2 Introduction

The Hindi/Urdu debate The common assumption about the origin of Hindi is the so-called Hindui or Hindavi, or Rekhta2, a mixed speech spoken between Agra, Delhi and Mathura and elaborated as a lingua franca among the natives and the Turks, Afghans, Persians, present in the area since the thirteenth century. Because this speech was used by the Mughal soldiers it later came to be known by the Turkish word Urdu, “military camp”, from the complete locution zaba¯n-e-urdu¯-e-mualla¯, “the language of the royal (exalted) camp”, that is the Red Fort area in Delhi, location of Shajahan’s court (17th c.), when the cultivate and official language of the time was Persian. As for the word “Hindavi/Hindi”, related to the North Western area, it is also a foreign designation (from Persian, Grierson 1916: 46) used by the first Turko- Afghan invaders when they entered the Subcontinent to refer to the local population (Hind, Sindh, Indus have the same origin). A third designation of this mixed speech, also foreign, Hindusta¯ni¯ (Hindostanee), was used currently by the British during the nineteenth century, who are frequently made responsible for the (political) separation of the two, now institutionally distinct, languages known as Hindi and Urdu, respectively associated with Hindu and Muslim cultures. The Fort William College in 1800 headed by Gilchrist in Calcutta, and intended to give a practical knowkedge of the vernaculars to British employees, indeed started teaching both speeches and scripts in a separate way, elaborating the first dictionaries, grammars and text books in both languages. However, this separation has a longer and highly polemical history, still quite conflictual, best accounted for by Amrit Rai (1984) in a book significantly entitled A House Divided. Rai (1984: 11-17) gives meticulous evidence that the British had no deliberate intention to divide Hindi and Urdu, but rather alternately fostered the then dominant language, which was first “Ordoo Hindostanee”, then after 1824-25 “Hindee Hindostanee” or “Hindee Ordoo” (which here means the Hindi aspect of the common language alternately called “Ordoo” or “Hindostanee”3), in keeping with the prevailing shifting dominance outside the College. British policy, mainly “result oriented and

2 ¯ or rekhta¯goi¯ (goi¯ means “speech” in Persian) was in fact a written literary form mixing the local speech and Persian (one line, one phrase, one word) in favour during the second half of 17th c. 3 Another term Gilchrist sometimes uses to refer to this language is Braj bhakha (

Introduction 3 practical”, was then the “recognition of a fait accompli” rather than a deliberate division. This ‘fait accompli’ was already aknowledged by Shah Hatim edicts (Rai 1984: 249) in 1755 which codify the slow transformation of the colloquial Panjabi-Harianvi-Braj-Rajasthani mixed speech spoken in the 14th c. into the persianized speech spoken by the 17-18th c. elites4 and made a symbol of their power when this power started to decline. Most historians of Hindi, as well as Urdu, language and literature, implicitly admit the common origin of both “languages” around the 11th, 12th or 13th century, in the times of the Ghaznavis (Mahmud Ghazni made Lahore his capital in the 12th c.), and Amir Khusrau, who called himself a speaker of Delhavi (and a “Turk”) is commonly considered as one of the earliest writers in both traditions. Most historians of Urdu consider Urdu born as a separate language in the times of Shajahan (17th century: Syed Ahmad Khan, Insha Allah Khan) or Akbar (16th century: Mir), and most historians of and language consider the modern Hindi (khari¯ boli¯, the straight language, theth Hindi, the pure Hindi) to have come into existence either at the end of the 17th century (Fort William College) or slightly before in the sultanates of South India where Dakkhini (“southern”) Hindi developped with the progression of the Muslim conquerors. What happened between the 11/13th and the 16/18th centuries is either left as a blank space in Urdu traditions or occupied in Hindi traditions by the so-called medieval Hindi and the mystical poets of the devotional (bhakti) times (from Kabir to Mira, Tulsidas, Jayasi) developping a “sant” literary language with various regional elements. The theory of the sudden birth of modern Hindi/Urdu as a cultivation of the mixed lingua franca (a pidgin) with very loose links with this medieval literary language raises of course questions but has gained currency since Grierson and Bloch. Bloch (1935) assumed that the genesis of Urdu (and Hindi) was this “polyglotic bazar language” spoken at the time of the arrival of the British, a language apart, more recent than the native language developed by the coming together of Turko-Afghan invaders and indigenous people of Northern India. Such assumptions are partly based on the absence of direct ressemblance between the then well differentiated observable regional vernaculars, and this “lingua franca”. The alternative suggested by Rai

4 Called Urdu, or “the language of Delhi”, in Aurangzeb’s times, and still in the early 18th c. not very different in its spoken form from the old Delhi dialect or Ka¯rkhanda¯ri¯ (Nespital 1994: 149).

4 Introduction

(after Chatterji 1960) relies on the idea of a far weaker differenciation of regional speeches in the 11th-13th centuries and even in the 16th century: the ancient sant poets of the 15th and 16th century are in continuity with the more ancient buddhist Siddhas (Gorakhnath 11th c.), the yogis (or Na¯th, “Nathpanthis”) as well as the Sufis (Baba Farid). They all used a type of speech reflecting the fluidity of the transitional stage of the language resulting in the formation of the New Indo-Aryan speeches. Claiming some of these writers as representing the beginning of Urdu tradition, others, that of Hindi tradition, has no linguistic grounds. Similarly, “Hindostanee”, the mixed lingua franca (“Verkehrsprache” or “business speech” in Chatterji’s terms) represents not a rupture in the form of a somewhat artificial pidgin but the natural evolution of the Western speech (Panjab and ) further extended to the central plains (Madhyadesh). In the same way as it is artificial to distinguish Old Rajasthani from Old Gujarati and even Old Marathi (Tessitori 1914- 15), the distinction of Hindi / Urdu at the beginnings of British colonisation can only be artificial and retroactive, based on an over- estimation of the processes of gradual differenciation in regional vernaculars. But the over-estimation of the difference has also been efficiently used by language politics, and that increasingly during the nationalist struggle, the partition of India and Pakistan, and the present language policies implemented in both the countries.

Institutional policies and politics As stated by Khubchandani (1991: 71), who claims for a fluid Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi zone (HUP), indistinct even today, in North Western India, “the semantic acrobatics over the issue or defining Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani bas been going on in the Census tabulating throughout the past eighty years, sometimes treating all claims under one language (Hindi), or under two languages (Hindi Urdu) or three (Hindi Urdu Hindustani) to suit different audiences”. For instance in 1931, for fear of riots between Muslim and Hindu communities, Hindi and Urdu were clubbed together under Hindustani on political grounds, and in 1961 the returns for Hindustani (distinct from Hindi and Urdu) presented a decline of 99% compared to 1951. The adamant refusal by Gandhi to distinguish Hindi and Urdu when planning for the would-be national language echoed his refusal to divide the Hindu and Muslim religious communities: “the three words, Hindi,

Introduction 5

Hindustani and Urdu, denote the same language”5. His initial choice was for the term Hindustani, “a resultant of Hindi and Urdu”, viewed as “a harmonious blend (...) as beautiful as the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna”6, written in both scripts. This choice failed, when partition was decided, in front of the strong wish of the Constituant members for a distinctively ‘Hindi’ Hindi. However, the moderates, conscious of the future divisions at stake in the linguistic choice, managed to impose an official (not national) language described in the Constitution as composite in order to reflect the composite (articles 343-51). Many still regard the partition between India and Pakistan as a result of this rejection of the composite Hindustani bridging both cultures. The way the official language further developed fostered exclusively its links with and not with Urdu nor with the regional languages and speeches as prescribed by the Constitutional provisions for language development and modernization. Both offices for the elaboration of teaching material and for translation or coining new technical terms tend to priviledge the Sanskrit component. The language described in this grammar is the native standard speech (cf. supra), far less sanscritized than the official language (which is also taken into account, specially in the section on derivational morphology). It corresponds to the actual speech of literate people, both colloquial and written: the corpus has been prepared on the basis of fictional literature of various styles (more or less urduised, easternised, oralised), oral conversation (30 year old artist from Bhopal, 30 year old lady accountant from Bhopal, 65 year old writer from Delhi, 45 years old housewife from Delhi, 45 year old computer expert from rural having studied in Delhi and immigrated to Paris), film dialogues, and newspapers (Nav Bharat Times, India-Today, used only for morphological data).

The genealogy of Hindi As stated initially, Hindi belongs to the Indo-European family and to the Indo-Aryan subgroup. Old Indo-Aryan subgroup in its early stage (Vedic hymns: 1500/1200?) was already differentiated from the Persian subgroup in the Avestic language by few but distinctive features, mainly phonetic. Although precise date for ancient languages phases is clearly hypothetical, specially for India which has long

5 Karnataka Hindi Convocation Address, 1936. 6 Young India 1919 and 1925.

6 Introduction lacked a reliable chronology, the consensus echoed by Chatterji (1926) still grossly holds, with OIA giving place around 600 BC to Middle Indo-Aryan, the Pali languages, emerging in Buddhist times as powerful vernaculars, then the Prakrit languages, spoken and written up to 1000 AD. The end of OIA, to which belongs classical Sanskrit (meaning “refined, cultivated, perfect”, lit. “well done”), did not mean that Sanskrit stopped being written but that other languages emerged as vernaculars. Hindi is commonly said to result from the Western (Saurasenic) Prakrit7 and its later “decayed” forms the Apabhramsha, whose beginnings can be situated as early as the second century BC8. Even in the earlier times of New-Indo-Aryan, regional differenciation was quite weak since Vidyapati in the 14th century writes both in Maithili (born from Eastern or Magadhean Prakrits) and in Avahatta (or Apabrasta) which means (Western) Apabhramsha. One of the distinctive factors in the evolution of New-Indo-Aryan is the integration of some Turkish and many and Persian words, resulting from the invasions of the Turko-Afghan conquerors towards the very end of the 10th c. leading to the settlement of the Delhi Sultanates (12th c.) then the Mughal dynasty in the 16th c. The present vocabulary at the spoken level still prefers a¯dmi¯ (A) to purus (S) for “man”, kita¯b (A) to pustak (S) for “book”, intaza¯r (A) to prati¯ksa¯ (S) for “waiting”, intaza¯m (P) to prabandh (S) for “organization”. The classical division of the lexicon between tatsam (Sanskrit like in their form), tadbhav (such as they have become as a result of historical evolution), des´i¯ (local: with no clear etymology) and alien does not really correspond to practical uses. Some Persian words are perceived as native (band “close”, of the same root as the Indian bandh “attach”), and, moreover, many newly introduced words from Sanskrit are perceived as loans. Most of the tatsam category consequently falls under the same category as Persian or Arabic words, more or less phonetically reshaped, as opposed to native words (those having undergone the regular process of historical change). Within the loans, Arabic and Persian do not need distinction since most of the first were introduced through Persian and are perceived as similar except by scholars, whereas English words represent a more recent stock, increaslingly important in colloquial use.

7 Vajpeyi¯ evolves it from Kaurvi, slightly more Eastern (1958: 5-14). 8 Prakrits are already mentioned in Bharat Muni’s Natya Shastra, and which flourished in the seventh century (Harsha poetry).

Introduction 7

The Hindi grammatical tradition There is a long and rich Hindi grammatical tradition, very well documented by Bhatia (1987). Although Mirza Khan-ibn-Fakkru u- Din’s grammar of , written in Persian, is sometimes considered to be the first grammar of the language in 1676, as an introduction to his Present from India (Tuhfatu-l-Hind), most scholars since Chatterji’s noted paper (1933) however retain as the first Hindi grammar Ketelaar’s Instruction or teaching of the Hindustani and , also called “Moorish” in the book, written in Dutch in 1698. The next major landmarks according to Bhatia are British (Gilchrist’s Grammar of Hindostanee Language in 1796, Oriental Linguist in 1798 and Stranger’s East Indian Guide to the Hindostanee in 1803), before the “silver age” of the Kellogg area; we might only want to add the famous Da¯rya¯-e-lata¯fa¯ of Insha Allah Khan at the end of the 17th c., written in Persian and later translated in Urdu in 1935. Just before Kellogg’s Grammar of Hindi (1876) and after Platts Grammar of Hindustani or Urdu language (1873), which are still current reference books, Raja Shivprasad ‘¯r-e-Hind’, an influent educationist, published a Hindi¯ vya¯karan (1875) in Hindi, aiming at reducing the prejudice resulting from the Hindi/Urdu controversy. Among the abundant European and Indian works, particularly noticeable are those of Duncan Forbes in 1846, Monnier William in 1858, Garcin de Tassy (in French: Rudimens de la langue hindoustanie 1829). The “golden age” opens the modern tradition, first in Hindi (Guru 1920, Varma 1944, Vajpeyi 1958, Saxena 1937, Tiwari 1961, 1966), then in English with the first official grammar produced at the request of the government, Sharma’s Basic Grammar of Hindi (1958). The first three can still be very precious tools, since they draw attention to word order phenomenons, semantic and informational meaning of case morphology, historical linguistics (Vajpeyi), to actual uses and their shades (Varma). The next dominant trends, first structural then generativist, are only alluded to in Bhatia’s history, starting with Kachru’s (1980) syntax, probably because they belong to contemporary linguistic research and not (or not yet) to history. An impressive number of books and articles, mainly in the generative frame (in the wider sense of the term) is now available on every topic of Hindi linguistics. As expected with the weight of the dominating theoretical model, syntax has long dominated contemporary research, government and binding has long dominated syntactic research, but attention is now beginning to be

8 Introduction paid to other fields such as morphology and to the interaction between semantics and syntax.

Objectives of the present book In this context, it made little sense to provide yet another simple outline of Hindi grammar. Hence the global aim of the present book is to provide a comprehensive view of the system, within a functional frame while taking into account the existing literature, and to bridge the gap between the early “golden age” tradition, best exposed by Chatterji and Bloch’s work, which did not see synchronic linguistics as totally alien to philological research, and contemporary research. The history of the forms and syntactic patterns is given apart, in the form of remarks or sub-sections, so as not to interfer with the synchronic description of the system. This answers a wish to allow the reader to better understand ist evolution and provide useful information about grammaticalization paths and change, within a typological perspective. At the same time, dialectal varieties in regional speeches, proceeding from the same stock, may offer a good stand point to observe historical evolution and different paths of grammaticalization. They too have been mentioned. The very partial presentation of regional variations is not aimed at providing a comprehensive or unified description of an imaginary all- encompassing Hindi which could accomodate all the regional varieties within a single grammar. I rather wished to present some of the main specific features in order to emphasize the processes of differenciation operating in those speeches that escaped standardization and “modernization”, and to provide an insight in the gradual merging of one language into the next one while preserving the distinct specificity of major groups of speeches (the Rajasthani group and the Bihari group for instance). The often mentionned fluidity of linguistic boundaries (Khubchandani 1991, 1997), linked to the specific communicational ethos in , may find a concrete illustration here. The map shows the main regional speeches usually clubbed together under the official term “Hindi” when used in a wide acception: from West to East, Rajasthani languages (Jaisalmeri, Marwari, Mewati), Kannauji, Bangaru, Bundeli, Pahari or Northern (lit. “mountain”) languages, typologically very close to Rajasthani (Garhwali, Kumaoni, Bangani), Braj, Awadhi, Bagueli, Chattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, Bihari languages (Maithili, Magahi). They have been diversely classified, since Grierson and Chatterji (1960) to Masica

Introduction 9

(1991), but usually split into a Western group (grammatical gender, ergative) and an Eastern group (no gender, nominative)9. As for Bhojpuri, it is sometimes included in “Pu¯rvi¯ Hindi¯” and sometimes classified together with Bihari dialects. Pu¯rvi¯ hindi¯ or Pu¯rbi¯, which means literally “Eastern Hindi”, is then a sub-group distinct from the Eastern speeches in the meaning most scholars attach to the term and which I use in this grammar, that is, Neo-Magadhean. I have tried to use reliable sources and always compare less reliable grammars with other descriptions of a given speech, and, whenever possible, tested the data from regional languages with native speakers. The book is also an attempt at providing abundant bibliography without theoretical restrictions so that it may serve as a reference for further research, without claiming to be exhaustive; while taking into account the important results of areal linguistics (Bloch, Chatterji, Emeneau), I have also tried to give new information regarding some less explored areas of Hindi grammar such as the meaning of verbal forms and aspect, of discursive particles, the function of the various devices of subordination in the global economy of the system, etc. and an interpretation of the argument structure as role dominated to a large extent. Finally I have opted for a traditional presentation, both for the sake of continuity with the usual descriptions and legibility. Most of the findings could have suggested a more innovative format, with a good case-based morphology accounting for the semantic roles constrained by the morphonological structure of the predicate instead of a separate syntax. Yet the fact that Hindi is still a mixed language in this regard, retaining some syntactic rules, prevented me doing so.

9 The first classification adopted by Grierson for his Linguistic Survey of India echoed the then-prevailing theory of two successive vagues of Indo- Aryan invading tribes: the inner core or first circle of languages (past tense with no personal endings and phonetic distinctive features) corresponds to the first arrived invaders, whereas languages of the outer circle represent the second vague (personal endings in the past tense): Hindi-Urdu-Punjabi- Pahari and closely related dialects are then opposed to Bengali-Marathi- Gujarati-Rajasthani-Sindhi. Chatterji strongly criticized this theory and Grierson abandoned it.

10 Introduction

Note on the glosses

Forms have been glossed in various ways depending on the topic treated (in more or less detail) and according to the function of the unit. For instance the postposition se is sometimes glossed by instr, “instrumental”, sometimes by abl “ablative”, and sometimes translated; similarly, ka¯ which relates two nouns is sometimes glossed by gen “genitive”, sometimes translated, and sometimes fully glossed (with aditional indications on gender, number and case) in the morphological relevant section; the so-called perfective (simple verbal form) is sometimes glossed by the simple mention of gender and number (in the morphological section) since it bears no other mark, sometimes by aor “aorist”, sometimes translated, and in the dialectal varieties showing a tense mark for its equivalent, by sp “simple past”. Interlinear gloss is provided everywhere except for long examples dealing with the discursive meaning of a given form (imperfect p. 100, particles p. 285): the form studied is transcribed in bold characters in both text and translation so as to allow the reader to locate it in its context, which is more relevant for the topic treated than morpho- syntactic structure.

Cross-references

To refer to a section or subsection in the same chapter, the sign cf. followed by the number of the section or subsection has been used. To refer to a section or subsection in another chapter the same device has been used, with the chapter reference before the numbers of the section or subsection, such as P for phonology, M for morphology (MI, MII, MIII, refering to the first, second and third chapter respectively) and S for syntax (SI, SII, SIII).

Thanks

Among the many persons who helped me in various ways to achieve the work in its present form, Alice Davison, who carefully read the proofs, and Uttam Bharthare who helped me make my English less French deserve special thanks.

Introduction 11

List of abreviations

A : Arabic acc : accusative aor : aorist AP : Arabo-Persian caus : causative correl : correlative CP : conjunctive participle D: direct Dr : Dravidian dat : dative dur : durative erg : ergative f : feminine freq : frequentative fut: future gen : genitive H: honorific HH: highly honorific IA: Indo-Aryan IE: Indo-European imper : imperative impft : imperfect incept: inceptive instr : instrumental interr : interrogative intr : intransitive irr : counterfactual loc : locative m : masculine nom : nominative O: oblique oblig : obligation P : Persian P (in gloss) : passive p : plural

12 Introduction pft: perfect ppft: pluperfect pot : potential pres : present pro : pronoun prog : progressive prtcl : particle Q : question quot : quotative rel : relative S: Sanskrit s : singular subj : subjunctive term : terminative tr : transitive

Introduction 13

Map of Hindi speaking areas or p14?