History of HINDI

By Anshika Yadav

Blog URL: http://www.anshiblog26.blogspot.com

Our country India is land of equality and diversity with vivid languages, festivals ,seasons and what not! HINDI our National Language is the regional language of six states- Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, spoken by 437 million people in the world.
And no doubt we all are blessed being the part of this beautiful language along with its culture.

Around 500 A.D. there were regional Prakrits which were the source of modern Indo-Aryan languages and the authors.

By the end of 1300 A.D., the following Modern Indo-Aryan languages had become established~

• Bengali-Assamese language till 1500 A.D.

• Oriya, being close to Bengali had its own development.

• Maithili, the speech of North Bihar which became fully established by 1300.

• Magahi, the speech of South Bihar.

• Bhojpuri is an important language of Eastern India.

• Kosali dialects, these became differentiated into its present-day descendants, Awadhi, Bagheli, Chattisgarhi.

• Brajabhasa speech is connected with Bundeli and Kanauji; this is parts of modern-day Western U.P., parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

• Old Western Rajasthani, which after 1500 got bifurcated into Western Rajasthani or Marwari and Gujarati on the other.

• Sindh speech

• Lastly we have the incipient Punjabi language, mainly on a Western Punjabi basis.

However, Assamese – Bengali may be taken as two separate languages, considering that the political history of Assam and Bengal were quite independent of each other from very early times.

The vocabulary of Hindi is chiefly derived from Sanskrit.
Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi in its present shape began to take shape around the 10th-century A.D.

Western Hindi

The Khari Boli was accepted as the Official Language of India and is one of the youngest of the Indian languages. Bahasa is the most important form of Western Hindi prior to 1850.

During 1000 to 1300 A.D. Western Hindi was evolving out of Apabhramsa.

Hindi literature during the 15th century was dominated by Kabir. The former was an ardent devotee of Lord Ram, a great Sanskrit scholar who wrote in Hindi too.

A number of Kabir’s dohas found in the Kabir canon is in pure Bhojpuri his native language. But most of his writings are now available in a mixed language.

Kosali or Awadhi or Eastern Hindi

Awadhi has been one of the earliest Indo Aryan languages to be cultivated for literature.

Manuscripts of these poems in Awadhi are mostly Persian in character due to the Muslim influence existing at that point of time.

1526 to 1707
The greatest Hindi writer during this period was Gosvami Tulsidas, born in U.P. sometime in 1523. He wrote his masterpiece Rama-Charita-manas sometime in 1574 in his native Awadhi dialect.

Tulasi-Dasa wrote many other devotional works of which Vinaya-Patrika (letters of Prayer) is most well known.

Literature in Brajbhasha flourished under Akbar and was enriched by poets/musicians of his court like Tansen who wrote highly poetic and sometimes profound.

The epoch of modern Hindi literature started at the beginning of the 19th century but its progress was very small until the middle of the 19th century.

Then came Haris-Chandra of Banaras (1846-1884) who had the sobriquet of Bharatendu (Moon of India).

Another short story writer of modern Hindi is Munshi Prem Chand (1880 t 1936).

The Hindi writers of the late 19th century referred to in the earlier chapter had a tendency to display their knowledge of Urdu Persian as well as of Sanskrit.

It is imperative to mention that people, particularly foreigners, divide us on the fact that we have so many languages/dialects.
Dialects of Hindi today were are actually languages in their own right. Due to social/political changes that accompanied the British rule and Delhi becoming the centre of power Khari Boli one of the many forms of Hindi became mainstream Hindi while others became dialects.