Stego's FAQ on India travel (Culture 1/1)

Subject: Urdu and Hindi Prt 1

From: moina@aol.com (MoinA)

Date: 22 May 95

URDU AND HINDI

by Moin-A

Even though she is a thousand years old, Urdu is relatively a young language. This multi-cultural South Asian language rich in literature, and history can be understood by about a Billion people around the world.

Urdu is a Turkish word (Ordu) that means camp (or army camp-"lashkar").

Urdu started out as an army "language" where people of different religions and nationalities mixed together and wanted to communicate with each other. Out of the cauldron, a new language and a new culture came into existence. Many South Asian languages, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujrati and Hindi are very similar to Urdu, and have a lot of commonalties with Urdu.

Urdu is a mixture of languages including Persian, Arabic and Turkish.

THE NON-SANSKRIT IVC THRIVED AROUND THE BANKS OF THE INDUS

Five thousand years ago the people of the Indus Valley Civilization lived in harmony on the banks of the Indus. Moenjadaro, Harappa and Taxila were all towns on the banks of the Indus. This was one of the original civilization on the planet. This civilization is marked as great a civilization as the Chinese and the Egyptian civilization. Even though remnants of ancient man have been found in the subcontinent, and even though the Bronze age people of the Indus Valley were linked by trade to places as far away as Sumaria, the true Indus Valley Civilization (Harappan civilization unified by the Harappan script) did not extend very far away East of the Indus. Neither did it extend beyond the Western Mountain ranges of Bolan, and Khyber. The Indus Valley Civilization existed on the banks of the Indus. The people of the IVC had a rich and well developed language that was written on their buildings.

People up the river traded with people down the river. People up in the mountains traded with people down in the plains. For thousands of years, Kashmiris cut down trees and threw them into the river. In Sarhad and in Punjab, the trees were caught and exchanged for food. There was commerce with the Barauhi people of the Cholistan desert in Balauchistan. This was trade at its best. The people of the Indus valley traded with Mesopotamia to the West, and around the year 2500 BC there was no great civilization to the east of the Indus to trade with. For about a thousand years later there were only monkeys and apes. "India" was very dense forest, uninhabitable for human beings. A thousand years later the Hindu Gita talks about Hanuman and the army of monkeys who thrived in the dense forests of "India". Far, far East, a human civilization did exist in the Malaya straits but that was too far for the Indus Valley folks. The era around 2500 B.C was the time when the IVC thrived. These were the golden times for the subcontinent, for these people enjoyed a standard of living not available to many in the subcontinent today.

THE THRIVING IVC LANGUAGE IS DESTROYED

Many theories exist about how and why the IVC got destroyed. Whether it was absorbed into the influx of and invading culture, or it got trampled under the barbaric hordes of horse riding, chariot racing Aryans came to the subcontinent, the end result was the same-the IVC language ceazed to exist. The cities of Moenjadaro, Taxila and Harappa show a distinct state of havoc, where people and animals have been found in a state of turmoil, as if in flight from an invading army. The broken bones seem to suggest invading armies that massacred the inhabitants.

The Aryans who spoke a completely different language were the invaders (or very forceful immigrants) who came and destroyed the language of the Indus Valley Civilization. The new ("Aryans") culture was not urban, it was rural. The Aryans began "creating" states in the rest of India. The story of Ramayana (in Sanskrit) is basically a story of wars between the Aryans and the Dravidians. The story of Mahabharta is a story of inter-Aryan (or inter family feuds between the Koras and the Pandas) wars.

The best theories of that era contemplate the fact that the Aryans continued to come to the subcontinent through many centuries. As they arrived they destroyed (or forcefully "restructured") the old urban society, supplanted their own rural based system. As has happened in similar cases in the Americas and Australia the Aryans also assimilated the local culture and molded it into their own. Even though the invading European culture totally destroyed the older "Red- American Indian" culture of yester-century, remnants of the "native American" culture has become part of todays Americana. Similarly the dyeing aboriginal culture of Australia has left its distinct mark on todays European Australia or todays English speaking American civilization. Some of the original Dravidian systems today survive as part of the Aryan culture. After many waves of Aryans had invaded the subcontinent, Hinduism arrived on the land now called "Pakistan" and "India". Of course "India" did not exist 4000 years ago....neither did Pakistan (or did it?).

THE DRAVIDIANS DID NOT SPEAK OR WRITE SANSKRIT IN ANY OF ITS FORMS

Archaeologists have discovered millions of artifacts from the ruins of Taxila, Harrapa, Moenjadaro and the hundreds of cities that span the valley of the Indus. Linguists have a very good idea of what language the Harappans wrote and spoke. The Dravidians DID NOT SPEAK Sanskrit. The Dravidian script is pictographic and was NOT Sanskrit. The word 'Indus' is of Greek origin. There was no word 'Hindi'. Hindu, Hinduism, and Sanskrit could not have existed in the BC era and did not This is what Jawahar Lal Nehru says about the languages in India in his book Glimpses of World History:

It is clear that the Dravidians had a rich civilization ..Their languages, which are not the daughters of the Aryan Sanskrit, are very old and have fine literature. These languages are Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, and Malayalam.

The Barahui tribes of Balauchistan speak languages similar to Dravidian languages similar to languages spoken by the Dravidians living in the south of India.

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN THE MOTHER OF SANSKRIT

Sir Williams Jones in 1976 theorized that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin "spring from the same source which no longer exists". He called this "language" Proto-Indo-European. The stories behind the words "ather" and "horse" being prominent in all of the above languages. Of course the Sanskrit language could not have had common Greek or Latin roots, if it were not an ARYAN language. If Sanskrit words have European origins this means that Hinduism came AFTER the Aryans arrived in the subcontinent. The IVC existed 5000 years ago. The Aryans came to the subcontinent around 1500 B.C.

The discipline of linguistics yields many knowledges. The word "Aryan" (Arya and its many derivatives) has been traced as being cognate to such diverse names as "Eire" (Ireland) and "Iran" (Arya Maher). The Aryans came to the subcontinent in many waves (around 1500 B.C), and caused havoc with the local inhabitants. The Aryans spoke a language that is very different than the language of the Indus Valley.

From a study of words in Indo-European languages, the "common home" of the ancient speakers of these languages is postulated to be in a relatively cold continental place (e.g. the words for certain cold-climate animals and so on are shared among these languages, but each of the languages formed a new word for the ocean, and for animals found in warmer climates).

Putting archeology aside, and researching the Puranas, or the Bhagavad-Gita, we realize that Hinduism actually was developed AFTER the Aryans arrived. The Gita is a sacred book and needs to be respected and revered. It has been dated at the time after the arrival of the Aryans.

I DRAVIDIAN AND ARYAN LANGUAGES The IVC was an urban society. The IVC used a language that was written right to left. IVC was Pre-Vedic. Even if it was Vedic, most Hindus do not consider Vedic as Hindu. No Vedic text uses the word Hindu or Hinduism.

Vedic texts use animal and human sacrifices. These sacrifices are not practiced by Hinduism. IVC was pre-Vedic. They had their own script which is VERY VERY Different from Sanskrit. The Vedic Civilization an clearly be divided into the following periods: Chandas, Mantra, Brahmana, and Sutra.

The language found in the Indus Valley is TOTALLY different than the languages spoken and written in the subcontinent today. According to K.

Ali The people of the IVC had invented writing for which they employed a pictographic script such as the Proto-Elamite, Sumerian and Minoan.

The Indus and the Brahmi scripts are totally different, the Indus language was a pictographic script, Sanskrit on the other hand is a written language, --- any commonality (and there is VERY little) can be explained by the simple fact that Indus language was adopted by the invading culture.

The bull is a very prominent symbol in the pre-Aryan culture. After the Ramayana wars (The Mahabharta wars were Aryan wars) which were Dravidian-Aryan wars the reference to Bulls was adopted by the invading culture is Vedic.

If Muslim influences are "alien" to the subcontinent then "Hindu" influences are also alien to our land. The Hindus did not arrive till the Aryans. More specifically, it was the Rajputs who were the true Hindus.

THE ARYAN MIGRATIONS DILUTE THE INDUS SCRIPT

The best support for the hypothesis of Indo-Europeans migrations and common origin of all Indo-European peoples comes from linguistics. The theory of common origin of Indo-European languages is considered to be one of the best examples of a linguistic theory.

The commonality of languages between the "Indian"-Aryans and the European-Aryans can have two explanations, either the Aryans came to the subcontinent or the Dravidians went to Caucasia. No Western invasion or migration of peoples has either been documented or postulated.

The Aryan invasions caused a violent restructuring of the society. This is what Subhash C. Kak, of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in an interesting article "The Indus tradition and the Indo-Aryans" says about the Indus language.

"The restructuring of society that occurred between the two urbanizations is partially mirrored in the restructuring of the Indus script....... . The Indus script uses many more signs than Brahmi and it is generally written from right to left, in a direction opposite to that of Brahmi."

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A Lion must always roar.

Be wiser than all the other lions, but never let them know.

Subject: Urdu and Hindi Prt 2

From: moina@aol.com (MoinA)

Date: 22 May 95

LATIN GREEK & SANSKRIT HAVE A COMMON MOTHER "PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN"

The IVC was an urban society. The Aryan society that was formed later as described in Hindu books is rural. Urban societies do not transform themselves into rural societies. It is the other way round.

David Frawley a new revisionist historian is at a loss to explain why Sanskrit and Latin seem to have a common background. If the IVC was simply an extension of the Aryans, then why was it different than the Aryan languages and why was the IVC script abandoned? How would this strange and newly concocted theory handle all the linguistic evidence.

The theory of a slow restructuring of the IVC urban based society into a rural society cannot be supported by either archeological or social findings. "Restructured societies" do not abandon cites and move to the other end of the continent (like the Dravidians have done...today they survive in remote Southern India and what is today Bangladesh).

"Restructured societies" do not abandon heliographic scripts and begin writing from the other right to left (instead of left to right).

Restructured societies do not leave their homes and their animals in their cities, and simply disappear into thin air. Restructured societies do not abandon their Gods. Restructured societies do not became enslaved as untouchables.

THE ORIGINS OF SANSKRIT THE REVIVAL OF GUPTA HINDUISM, END OF BUDDHISM IN THE IVC

With the fall of the Muyara and the Kushan dynasty, the Guptas came to power (beginning of the fourth century AD) with their independent kingdoms. Dr. R.C. Majumdar writes that "the empire of Samudragupta included the whole of Northern India. The Gupta period saw the distinct revival of Hinduism in the subcontinent. Buddhism declined, and never did rise in India".

THE HINDU KASHATRIYA AND BUDDHIST WARS

Jawarhalal Nehru in his book Glimpses of World History says (Page 103 and 104) "Chandragupta proclaimed his holy war "against all foreign rulers in India. The Kashatriyas and the Aryan aristocracy, deprived of their power and positions by the aliens (Kushans), were at the back of this war. After a dozen or so years of fighting, Chandragupta managed to gain control over Northern India including what is now called UP. He then crowned himself king of kings. Thus began the Gupta dynasty. It was a period of somewhat agressive Hinduism and nationalism. The foreign rulers-the Turkis and Parathions and other Non-Aryans were rooted our and forcibly removed. We thus find racial antagonism at work. The Indo-Aryan aristocrat was proud of his race and looked down upon these barbarians and malachas. Indo-Aryan States and rulers were conquered by the Guptas were dealt with leniently, But there was not leniency for non-Aryans.

Chandragupta's son Samadugupta was an even more agressive fighter than his father....the Kushans were pushed back across the Indus........Samadugupta's son, Chandragupta II was also a warrior king, and he conquered Kathiwad and Gujrat, which had been under the rule of a Saka or Turki dynasty for a long time. He took the name Vikramaditya....." Brahmi (approx 6 cent BC -2 cent. AD) |

-----------------------------------------------------------

| | Gupta (approx 4-6 cent. AD) Pallava | |

|------------------------------------------- |

| | -----------------

------------------------------------- | | | | | | | |

Nagari -------- Sharda Tibetan etc Pali Chera Vengi

| | | | | |

Devanagari Bangla Gurumukhi .. Thai etc Tamil etc Telugu

etc

(Hindi) etc. (Punjabi)

THE GUPTAS FORCE SANSKRIT ON THE PRAKRIT SPEAKING BUDDHISTS AND ALL NON HINDUS

The Buddhists spoke a language called Pali. Jawarhalal Nehru in his book Glimpses of World History says "The Gupta period was a period of Hindu imperialism in India. There was a great revival of old Aryan culture and Sanskrit learning. The Hellenistic, or Greek and Mongolian elements in Indian life and culture which had been brought by the Greeks, Kushans and others were not encouraged, and were in fact deliberately superseded by laying stress on the Indo-Aryan traditions. Sanskrit was the official court language. But EVEN IN THOSE DAYS SANSKRIT WAS NOT THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE. The spoken language was a form of Prakrit....Kalidasa belonged to this period ................ Samadragupta changed the capital of his empire from Pataliputra (Peshawar) to Ayodhia.

Perhaps he felt that Ayodhiya offered a more suitable outlook--with its story of Ramachandra immortalized in Valmikis epic.

THE BIRTH OF SANSKRIT

Kalidasa was one of the nine gems of the court and he wrote some of the greatest Sanskrit literature of all time. Shukantla, one of the first plays in the subcontinent (and the forerunner of all Indian melodramatic films) was written in this era. Stanley Wolpert in his book A New History of India says "Kalidasas genius was unique, but he was not the only author in this era who used Sanskrit to create enduring secular literature. Shudrakas contemporary "Little Clay Cart" (Mrichakitika) is the realistic story of a poor Brahman.....It is the only Sanskrit drama to include a legal trial scene." By Nehru's account it is clear that even in the early A.D era, Sanskrit was not the language of the common people of the subcontinent.

Chandragupta Vikramaditya made it the court language and forced the people to learn it. The Indian National Congress in the nineteen forties did the same for Sanskrit.

THE ORIGINS OF URDU GUJRATI, BENGALI ETC. IN THE SUBCONTINENT

Mahmud of Ghazni invaded India in 1000 A.D. His second invasion was against Jaypal in 1001. At this time Persian and Arabic was introduced to the subcontinent. Firdausi is considered one of the first poets of Urdu.

By the year 1100 the house of Ghaur had been established. The Muslim conquest of India had been formalized. Urdu had begun. The military camps had all sorts of people in them. When they wanted to communicate they spoke their own languages and dialects. These people communicated and gave birth to a new language. Urdu was a Turkish word which means "lashkar" or army from a camp.

The New Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Sindhi, Gujarati etc. assumed distinct identities between 1000 and 1200 A.D. Khari-Boli is actually KACCHHI-BOLI, the predecessor of Urdu. It is still spoken in areas around Barabankee and Unnau in U.P. In fact the authors grand-parents could understand it. The author knows only a few broken words of Kachhi.

The Slave Dynasty of India was firmly established in India between the years 1206-1290. These were the days of the creation of URDU. The Khiljis ALSO provided Urdu a cradle in the years 1290-1320. The Tughlaqs officially used Persian as the court language but they gave Urdu the importance it deserved. The Lodhis used Urdu as the court language.

Stanley Wolpert in his book A New History of India says the following about Sikandar Lodhi (1498-1517) " has been hailed as the wisest and most dedicated , hard working , and far-sighted sultan ever to sit upon Delhis the throne. He wrote poetry himself and invited scholars of every sort to his side, encouraging the compilation of books on medicine (Ma'dan-ul-shifa) as well as music (Lahjat-i-Sikandar-shahi)".......Urdu was given great patronage and the language clearly on the way to becoming the Lingua Franca of at least northern India. During the Lodhi era, Urdu was FIRMLY past the crib, and was in the population. With Babur's advent he immediately recognized Urdu as the language to be dealt with. Both Babur, Sher shah Suri and Humayun glorified the language.

Stanley Wolpert in his book A New History of India says the following about the year 1595:

"The importance of Persian cultural influence in the Mughal Empire and court can hardly be exaggerated: it was found in Akbars Sufisim but also in the reintroduction of Persian as the official language of Mughal administration and law (Persian had been used by the Tughlaqs but not the Lodis). The elegant decadence of Mughal dress, decor, manners, and morals all reflected Persian court life and custom. Mughal culture was however more than an import; by Akbars era, it had acquired something of a "national" patina, the cultural equivalent of the Mughal-Rajput alliance.

The new syncretism which has come to be called "Mughlai" is exemplified by Akbar's encouragement of Hindi literature and its development. While the Persian and Urdu languages and literature received the most royal patronage and noble as well martial attention, the emperor also appointed a poet laureate for Hindi. Raja Birbal (1528-83) was the first poet to hold the honored title, thanks to which many other young men of the sixteenth century were induced to study the northern vernacular that has now become India national tongue, helping to popularize it through their poetry and translations of Persian classics. Most popular of the Hindi works of this era was the translation of the epic Ramayana by Tulsi Das." At the time of the birth of Urdu, Sanskrit was NOT a spoken language, it was more like Latin and Hebrew, available to scholars. The fifteenth century saw the rise of the Mughal empire (1526-1857), and these three centuries were the golden period of Urdu.

Delhi and Lucknow became centers of Urdu poets and writers. Poetry became the fond habit of the rich and the poor. Great eulogies ("qaseeda") were written for the kings and the nawabs, and the poets were paid handsomely in gold. On the death of the loved ones great obituaries (marseas") were written. The sonnets in the form of "ghazzal" were written for lovers and other topics. Around the nineteenth century, poets like Iqbal used Urdu to rile the masses against the British colonialism.

URDU AND HINDI

Shams-Ul-Ulama, Maulana Mohammad Hussein Azad has done extensive research on the history of Urdu in the subcontinent. His autobiography is the autobiography of Urdu in the Punjab and in the subcontinent. The basic difference between Hindu and Muslim linguists is that Hindus believe that "Kharri boli" was the language spoken by the populace of Delhi. According to Indian linguists the Muslim army used "kharrri boli" (standard Hindi) as the base language started speaking "Urdu" and the two languages Urdu and Hindi developed side by side. Muslim linguists and historians on the other hand proclaim that URDU is a language that developed as a result of the interaction between Persians, Turks, Central Asians and other people in the army. The army began speaking a language and it spread to the populace with minor variations.

Hindi and Urdu, have similar linguistic structure but some parochial writers consider them different languages based on 'Religion'. Some authors belittle the differences between Urdu and Hindi and compare them to be as unimportant as the small differences between Dutch and German.

However Urdu proponents say that the two languages are conjugated differently. Even though the conjugation is not necessarily one of the main ways separating languages, conjugation DOES separate the languages from the roots. Another difference between Hindi and Urdu is, their writing system. The Muslim rulers, the government, the official court system and the Urdu speakers, mostly people belonging to Islamic faith (though there have been many many prolific Sikh and Hindu poets and writers) in the sub-continent, used the 'Arabic' script where as a section of the Hindu population kept the Sanskrit script alive and Hindi speakers have adopted the 'Devanagari' script.

PERSIAN AND INDIC GROUP OF LANGUAGES

According to many linguists, Pushto and Baluchi, including Persian , belong to Iranian group of languages and Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati etc. belong to Indic languages. However this is not clearly defined. Many Indian linguists claim that Urdu is not a 'form' of Persian. Many linguist claim that Urdu and Persian have different syntax, phonology, and morphology. However Pakistani linguists proclaim that both Persian and Urdu belong to the Indo-European group of languages and have a common base. Punjabi and Urdu speakers can clearly understand and comprehend Persian where as Gujrati and Hindi speakers cannot understand Persian and Arabic. Urdu beaus of its rich heritage can be conjugated in different ways. It can be conjugated in the Sanskrit manner, or the Persian or the Arabic manner. Example. Khabar can be conjugated as Khabrain ( Sanskrit) or Ikhbar ( Arabic). Many words like KURSI or MAIZ are conjugated with Persian plural forms.

The golden period of Urdu was during the Mughal era. On the arrival of the British, Urdu suffered terribly.

The official language was changed to English, and Urdu was un-crowned.

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A Lion must always roar.

Be wiser than all the other lions, but never let them know.

Subject: Urdu and Hindi Prt 3

From: moina@aol.com (MoinA)

Date: 22 May 95

PERSIAN AND INDIC GROUP OF LANGUAGES

The golden period of Urdu was during the Mughal era. On the arrival of the British, Urdu suffered terribly.

The official language was changed to English, and Urdu was un-crowned.

"HINDI IS URDU WITHOUT MUSLIM WORDS"

Somwhere along the way, perhaps due to the patrionage of the rulers, the Urdu language got branded as the language of Muslims. Right before the British left India, Urdu was treated like a step child. Hindu religious zealots did not want "foreign" influences in India, so they began the "ethnic cleansing" on Urdu. The "foreign" words of Urdu were taken out, and words from a dead language called Sanskrit were injected into Urdu.

This new ethnically cleansed language called Hindi is now the national language of a "secular" country called India. Hindi is Urdu WITHOUT the Persian and Arabic words.

Hindi according to many Hindus is an 'apabramsha' version of 'Pali', the language of Buddhists, which is itself an 'apabramsha' variety of Classical Sanskrit, which is derived from Vedic Sanskrit.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, and is the provincial language of all provinces of Pakistan, namely, Punjab, Sarhad, Balauchistan, Kashmir and Sindh. Urdu in India, is officially alive only in Kashmir. The rest of India speaks it, but Indian officialdom refuses its existence.

Urdu is also recognized as an official language by the Indian constitution but the politicians of Northern of India have tried to "impose" Hindi (without Persian or Arabic words in it ) upon the people.

Northern Indians still speak Urdu, but call it Hindi. Southern Indians have no affinity with Hindi and they almost "refuse" Hindis existence. The result is linguistic CONFUSION in India. The language spoken by the North Indian people and the language broadcasted in news bulletins across the Indian air waves have no relation to each other. Many many Indians understand Urdu but they do not understand the Sanskrit ridden news broadcasts (the official Hinduized version of Urdu).

THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND THE INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES

Arabic is a 'Semitic' language. The other major member of the Semitic group of languages is 'Hebrew'. We have the same word conjugation in Urdu like in Pushto, Baluchi, Persian etc. They all belong to Indo-Iranian group of languages. Urdu and Persian share many nouns. Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives can be borrowed into any language and all languages have these categories. Urdu, because of the Persian influence, has borrowed lexical items from the Persian language.

Urdu has thousands of Persian NOUNS. It does not have Persian verbs. Urdu has assimilated verbs from Arabic and Turkish. However Urdu has a SYNTAX similar to Persian.

URDU AND PERSIAN

If English words are borrowed into Urdu this does not change the syntax of Urdu. The subject, noun, verb and object still remains in the same order. If Urdu had borrowed just words from Persian, it surely surprises many linguists that the GRAMMAR in URDU and PERSIAN is similar. One can read the Pakistan National anthem and understand it in both Urdu and Persian languages. Urdu and Persian have the same syntax. That is why it is so easy for Pakistani poets like Iqbal to write in Persian. All they have to do is learn the vocabulary, and they are set. The conjugation in Urdu and Persian is THE SAME.

Is Urdu is a 'sister' language of Arabic or Persian? Yes, Urdu/Hindi etc.

share lot of similar features with Persian, because Persian and Sanskrit share lot similar features and they share the same properties with Greek, Latin, Germanic languages because they all belong to Indo-European languages.

However these facts are not arguable:

1) Urdu was a language of the army

2) It contained many languages

3) Sanskrit preceded Urdu

4) Hindi on the other hand is just Urdu without the "Muslim" "alien" Persian and Arabic words. Hindi was created as a counter to Islamic Urdu.

HINDUSTANI

There is the language called 'Hindustani'. Hinustani INCLUDES Urdu and Hindi. This is a common colloquial form of Hindi and Urdu. Both Hindi and Urdu have been in used as literary languages since the 12th. Century.

Hindustani does not segregate the Persian and Arabic words from the language and includes it. Perhaps this should have been the language of India rather then Hindi (which has replaced the "Muslim words" with Sanskrit words).

URDU IN PAKISTAN

Even though the Republic of India did not recognize Urdu as a the main national language of India, it did recognize Urdu as one of the many languages that exist in India. The only state of India that made Urdu the provincial language was the state of Kashmir. All the provinces of Pakistan voted for Urdu as the national language of Pakistan and Punjab, Kashmir, Sindh, and Balauchistan voted and continue to vote for Urdu as the provincial language of the provinces.

URDU AND ENGLISH

Urdu has a natural capacity to borrow words from other languages. Today it has been totally engulfed by foreign words. English has permeated the language and many claim that English has corrupted the royal language of the Mughals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sir Williams Jones, Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta (1783), one of the most brilliant minds of the eighteenth century.

James Mills, History and Culture; Charles Wilkins, and Thomas Cleobrooke the fathers of Indology H.H. Wilson: The greatest Sanskrit scholar of our time Max Muller (1823-1900) the great translator of Hitopadesa Monier Williams: Sanskrit-English dictionary

Theodore Goldstrucker: The Dictionary of Indian Biography, and Inspired Writings of Hinduism . I cannot but leave the list without mentioning the many works of Stuart Piggot.

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A Lion must always roar.

Be wiser than all the other lions, but never let them know.

Subject: Learnig Hindi.

From: bk078@torfree.net (Peter Selk)

Date: 5 May 96

The difficulty with learning Hindi starts with the alphabet. You cannot really learn Hindi without first mastering the Devanagri script, and that's time-consuming. I managed to acquire a couple of hundred words of "street Hindi" without learning the alphabet, but you'll find there's not much point to it. English is just so prevalent, unless you want to talk to villagers in Hindi speaking regions, there's no real need to learn Hindi.

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