A Brief & Simple History of Modern Hindi Language

Language is a system. Language is random. It is the medium of human expression. It is a medium of mutual contact. Feelings and thoughts are expressed through language. It is a social means of exchange of ideas. Well, gestures are more important than words in conversation. There are many languages ​​in the world. Hindi is one of them.

The history of Hindi language is the history of all the dialects. The history of Hindi language can be seen with the history of Hindi literature. Because, literature is the basis of any language. With the passage of time in the texture of language, many things keep on building and deteriorating. If anything remains, the literature of that language.

Early Hindi (about 1000-1500 AD)

The history of Hindi language and literature is about 1000 years old. The language world of Hindi is comprised of many dialects, languages ​​and regional influences. Hindi language is a collection of many dialects. Whose number of dialects is about 18.

Hindi is the language of the Indo-Aryan language branch of the Indo-European family. Hindi originated from Sanskrit. But, all the languages ​​of the world have contributed in its development. In the order of linguistic development, Sanskrit > Pali > Prakrit > Apabhramsa > Hindi can be seen in one line. In this way, the beginning of Hindi language can be considered from the last stage of Apabhramsa. This final stage of Apabhramsa is also called 'Avahatta' by the scholars of linguistics. Chandradhar Sharma 'Guleri' refers to this avahatta as 'Old Hindi'. Vidyapati, a poet of ancient times, has called it 'Deshi Bhasha'. He has praised this language and has written that - 'Desil Bayna Sab Jan Mittha'. Which means, the 'Deshi Bhasha' is sweet to everyone.

Well, to understand the origin and name of this language, we need to know the political history of this time. Historians believe that, around the 10th century, the Afghans, Persians and Turks began to use the language spoken around Delhi, Khariboli, with the words of their own language, for work and communication with the general public. On the other hand, they also started using the words of the language spoken around Delhi in their military cantonments. But, there was a large amount of Arabic and Persian words in it. Later on, Urdu language was born in the camps. In this way the Arabic-Persian mixed one language was born and the other developed -

1- In military camps (Arabic-Persian was predominant)

2- In the common public use (Hindi Khariboli used to be in abundance.)

Later on the first language was called Urdu and the second Hindi. The funny thing is that till now these two languages ​​remained one and they were called Hindustani. How did the name of this Hindustani came and became Hindi we will discuss later? We will get the answer to this later on.

Linguistics scholars believe that 's' is pronounced like 'h' in Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages. Thus when they reached the banks of the river ‘Sindu’ (Indus), they started calling it Hindu. This place across the river Sind (Indus) is called Hind, the people living here are called ‘Hind ke vasi’ and its language is called Hindustani. Turkic Persian poets like Amir Khusro have described the language in his poetry as 'Hindavi'. Which looks very close to today's modern Hindi. But this form of Hindi appears after a long time after Amir Khusrau. The Hindi of the ancient times is quite broken.

Medieval Hindi (1500-1800 AD)

The history of medieval Hindi language seems to be nothing more than all the dialects. Kabir's language is a good example of this. Hindi scholar Ramchandra Shukla calls the language of Kabir as 'Panchmel Khichdi'. It has a mixture of all the dialects of Hindi. Since Kabir was a preacher, he used to travel here and there to convey his words to the people. That is why words from all the dialects have come in their language. The entire medieval period is the history of these dialects. There was a lot of similarity between these dialects at the level of grammatical and words, due to which Hindi later became a main language.

Modern Hindi (from 1800 AD)

By the 18th century, one of the many dialects of Hindi, Khariboli (Kaurvi), which was spoken in the Meerut-Delhi region of present-day Uttar Pradesh, was becoming increasingly popular. Not only this, gradually Khariboli became synonymous with Hindi. Meanwhile, in 1800, the British established 'Fort William College' in Calcutta. For the first time the Hindustani Department opened in this college. All the books were translated into Hindustani. This college played a very important role in the organization of Hindi. Hindi prose strengthened. The teacher here Lallu Lal has a big contribution for this work. By the way, the systematic beginning of Hindi in literary writing is believed to be from the writings of Bharatendu Harishchandra. The great writers like Premchand made the land much bigger than their literary writings and cleared the way for the generations to come.

If seen from a political point of view other than literature, Mahatma Gandhi strongly supported 'Hindustani'. Hindi came to the fore in the freedom struggle. During the freedom struggle, the trend of journalism in Hindi increased a lot. Under the influence of which many people including Gandhi started seeing it as the national language. At the same time, protest against  Hindi started in South India. This protest increased so much that many states in South India were formed on the basis of language.

With the independence of the country in 1947, the question of national language became bigger. In the end, keeping in view the public sentiment, Hindi along with many other languages ​​was made the official language or working language of India in 1949. By this time, there was a lot of controversy over the script of Hindi, as the Persian (Nasta'liqi) script was being used for work from the Mughals to the British. That is why, there was talk of making the script of Hindi also Persian (Nasta'liqi). Some people opposed this and both the scripts were seen to be associated with religions. In this way the two languages ​​which were one and the same got divided. On the other hand, there was a partition of India, there was a division of two languages. Thus Hindi adopted the Devanagari script and Urdu the Persian (Nasta'liqi) script. And undeclared Hindi became the language of the Hindus and Urdu the language of the Muslims. India came in part of Hindi and Pakistan came in part of Urdu. Both Hindi and Urdu languages ​​were weakened by partition and a third language, English, got the benefit of this. Thus, from the linguistic point of view, a country took the path of moving away from Perso-Arabic but the English weakened it.

Beyond all this, today the use of Hindi has increased tremendously. Thus Hindi has become the most widely used language among all the Aryan languages. Excellent literature is being written in this. All the famous films in Bollywood have been made in Hindustani or Hindi. Also, Hindustani is the lingua franca of South Asia, the language of common understanding. Hindi is one of the 22 languages ​​included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Today, the number of Hindi speakers is 528,347,193 (Census-2011). Despite all this, the collective name of both Hindi and Urdu is still Hindustani.

- Manish Patel