Indian Languages

I  INTRODUCTION 

Indian Languages, the indigenous languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent, the vast majority of which belong either to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family (see Indo-European Languages) or to the non-Indo-European Dravidian family. A much smaller representation of languages belongs to the Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan language families. The number of languages varies depending on how they are counted. The government of India recognizes 112 mother tongues that have 10,000 more speakers. From 179 to 188 languages have been tabulated, and as many as 544 dialects identified.


II  OFFICIAL LANGUAGES 

No one common language is spoken on the Indian subcontinent. Hindi and English are the coofficial national languages of India, and both tongues are used as lingua francas in the various linguistic regions. In addition, the Indian constitution recognizes 18 state languages, which are used in schools and in official transactions. These are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada (Kanarese), Kashmīri, Konkani, Malayalam, Meithei (Manipuri), Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. In Pakistan, the official language is Urdu; the official language of Bangladesh is Bengali.

III  INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES 

About the beginning of the 2nd millennium bc the Indo-Iranians migrated eastward, away from the other Indo-European peoples, and settled in Iran. By about 1000 bc, the two language branches, Indo-Aryan (also called Indic) and Iranian, had probably separated, with Iranian being spoken around Iran and Afghanistan and Indo-Aryan developing in northwestern India (see Indo-Iranian Languages). The Indo-Aryan speakers must have encountered Dravidian speakers in northern India; the original Dravidians were either overrun or forced to move southward on the peninsula, where they are found today.

The history of the Indo-Aryan language branch is often divided into three main stages: (1) Old Indo-Aryan, comprising Vedic and classical Sanskrit (see Sanskrit Language); (2) Middle Indo-Aryan (from about the 3rd century bc), which embraces the vernacular dialects of Sanskrit called Prakrits, including Pali; and (3) New, or Modern, Indo-Aryan (from about the 10th century ad), which comprises the modern languages of the northern and central portions of the Indian subcontinent.

Vedic Sanskrit, the language used in the Vedas, the sacred Hindu scriptures, is the earliest form of Sanskrit, dating from about 1500 bc to about 200 bc. A later variety of the language, classical Sanskrit (from about 500 bc), was a language of literary and technical works. Even today, it is still widely studied in India and functions as a sacred and learned language.

The Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrits existed in many regional varieties, which eventually developed literatures of their own. Pali, the language of the Buddhist canonical writings, is the oldest literary Prakrit. It remains in liturgical use in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), and Thailand.

The Prakrits continued in everyday use until about the 12th century ad, but even by about the 10th century, the Modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars had begun to develop. Today, about 750 million people in India alone speak one of the Indo-Aryan languages, as do more than 100 million in Bangladesh. The number of languages is difficult to specify. Roughly 35 are of some significance, particularly Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Bihāri, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Tamil, and Telugu, each of which has at least 10 million speakers.

Despite their separate names, Hindi and Urdu are actually slightly different dialects of the same language. The main differences lie in their vocabulary sources, scripts, and religious traditions. Hindi vocabulary derives mainly from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains many words of Persian and Arabic origin; Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, and Urdu in a Persian Arabic script. Hindi is spoken mainly by Hindus; Urdu is used predominantly by Muslims—in India as well as throughout Pakistan.

Two major varieties of Hindi are spoken; together they have more than 400 million speakers in India alone. Western Hindi, which originated in the area around Delhi, includes literary Hindi and Urdu. Eastern Hindi is spoken mainly in central Uttar Pradesh and in Chhattisgarh; its most important literary works are in the Awadhi dialect. (Hindustani is an older term, used less and less frequently since partition in 1947. It referred to the mixed Western Hindi-Urdu language that developed in the camps and marketplaces around Delhi, was spread throughout India from the 16th to 18th century, and functioned as a lingua franca among the different language groups.) Bengali is spoken in West Bengal and by almost the entire population of Bangladesh. Like Hindi, it is descended from Sanskrit. It is the language of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature (1913), and has the most extensive literature of any modern Indian language.

Punjabi (Panjabi), spoken in the Punjab, a region covering parts of northeastern India and western Pakistan, was the language of the gurus, the founders of the Sikh religion. The sacred teachings of Sikhism are recorded in Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script, which was devised by a Sikh guru. In India, Punjabi is close to the Hindi language; to the west, in Pakistan, Punjabi dialects differ markedly.

Bihāri is actually the name of a group of three related languages—Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Magahi—spoken mainly in northeastern India in Bihār. Despite its large number of speakers, Bihāri is not a constitutionally recognized language of India. Even in Bihār, Hindi is the language used for educational and official matters.

Other significant Indo-Aryan languages include Sinhalese, the official language of Sri Lanka; and Romani, the language of the Roma (Gypsies), which originated in India and was spread throughout the world. The Sanskrit origin of Romani is apparent in its sounds and grammar.

The origin of most scripts for the Indo-Aryan languages can ultimately be traced to Brahmi, which is of North Semitic derivation. Devanagari, a development of Brahmi, is used for Nepali, Marathi, and Kashmīri (by Hindus), as well as for Hindi, Sanskrit, and the Prakrits. Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya all have individual writing systems derived from Devanagari. A Persian Arabic script is used for Urdu, Sindhi (also written in Devanagari), and Punjabi.

IV  DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES

About 23 Dravidian languages are spoken by an estimated 200 million people, mainly in southern India. The 4 major Dravidian tongues are recognized as official state languages—Tamil in Tamil Nādu, Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, Kannada (Kanarese) in Karnātaka, and Malayalam in Kerala. They have long literary histories and are written in their own scripts. Telugu is spoken by the largest number of people; Tamil has the richest literature, which was once thought to be extremely ancient but is now believed to date from about the 1st to the 5th century ad, and it is spoken over the widest area, including northwestern Sri Lanka. Other Dravidian languages have fewer speakers and are, for the most part, not written. The Dravidian languages have acquired many loanwords from the Indo-Aryan languages, especially from Sanskrit. Conversely, the Indo-Aryan languages have borrowed Dravidian sounds and grammatical structures.

V  OTHER LANGUAGE GROUPS 

The 12 or so Munda languages are spoken by people in scattered pockets of northeastern and central India. Of these, Santali is the most important, having the largest number of speakers and being the only Munda tongue that is written. Like the Dravidian languages, the Munda languages are known to have existed in India prior to the invasion of the Indo-Europeans.

Linguists consider the Munda languages to be related to the Mon-Khmer languages (see Austro-Asiatic Languages) of Southeast Asia in a larger grouping called the Austro-Asiatic family. One Mon-Khmer language, Khasi, is spoken within India, in Assam Province. A few Sino-Tibetan languages are also spoken along India’s borders, from Tibet to Myanmar.


Contributed By:
Solveig G. Fisher
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