Evolution of Hindi as a literary language

In this week’s column, I would, briefly, trace the evolution of Hindi as a literary language as a prelude to a series of columns on Hindi literary culture which is one of the major literary cultures of Asia.

In tracing the evolution of Hindi, one is stuck with the very use of the term ‘Hindi’ given its linguistic ambiguity; the term ‘Hindi’ meaning in Persian ‘Indian’ was used by a Muslim group in North India primarily to refer to a local Indian vernacular language although ‘Hindi’ could refer to any Indian language. According to historical records, the Arab traveller and writer al-Biruni used the term ‘Hindi’ in the early 11th century to refer to Sanskrit. However, by the 13th century the term ‘Hindi’ was used along with its slightly altered forms ‘ Hindavi’ or ‘Hindui’ to refer to a linguistically mixed speech of Delhi. This linguistically mixed speech of Delhi was , subsequently, spread across North India and eventually incorporated as a component of Persian vocabulary.

Stuart McGregor who has researched extensively on Hindi literary culture states, “This speech could be written down either in Persian script, which became normal practice in Indo-Muslim communities or in Devanagari script, which happened mostly where Hindu influences prevailed. Those writing this language in Devanagari script normally had affiliations with traditional Sanskrit culture, and as evidence from the late seventeenth century indicates, their Hindi was liable to contain smaller infusion of Persian vocabulary as well as a proportion of loan-wards of cultural connotation borrowed from Sanskrit. This Hindi/Hindui became a major component of the mixed language of the North Indian sant poets such as Kabir of Benares. In so doing it acquired a significant literary function alongside its general communicative role across North India, and beyond. It developed, eventually, by different routes, into modern Urdu and modern Hindi, which linguistically regarded, are essential complementary styles –Persianised and Sanskritised, respectively- of the same language. ”

Evaluation

Among other influences on the formation and evaluation of Hindi as pointed out by Stuart McGregor, are Brajbhasha and Avadhi. He observes, “Two other forms of North Indian language, closely related to Hindi/Hindui, were in use as literary languages from at least fourteenth century. Brajbhasha, the speech of Agra district to the South of Delhi, became the standard language of Krsna poetry and the court poetry; from around 1600 until the rise of literary Urdu in the late eighteenth century, it was recognised along with Persian as a leading literary language of the whole north region. Avadhi localised in and around Lucknow-Allahabad region, was recognised from an early stage as the vehicle of Sufi narrative poetry; in a different role it acquired a cultural and literary importance that continues to this day as the language of Tulsidas’s late-sixteenth century scripture of Rama worship, Ramacaritamanas (Holy lake of Rama’s acts.”

What is significant is that Hindi acquired its present status as a literary language and found its expression primarily through three languages; Brajbhasha, Avadhi, and Hindi/Hindui. These three literary traditions flourished predominantly among Hindi communities. As McGregor points out ‘Aspects of earlier religious and social culture that had remained vital since ancient times were also transmitted through these traditions’.

“Cultural continuities- as also the close linguistic kinship existing between Hindi/Hindui and Brajbhasha- ensured that when modern Hindi began to emerge on the grammatical base of Hindi/Hindui , the literary and lexical traditions of Brajbhasha, Avadhi, and Hindi/Hindui would be intimately familiar to its authors and their public. From the onset, they would be infused into new style of language. The literary traditions of Brajbhasha and Avadhi would continue to inform the development of modern Hindi into the twentieth century. They, had, indeed, been an enabling factor in the rise of modern Hindi in the late nineteenth century, underpinning the concept of it as a future language of literary scope.

It is historically and linguistically inappropriate to speak of early Brajbhasha and Avadhi as dialects of modern Hindi, which they long proceeded as literary languages; however, in the context of an early twenty-first century considerations of question of literary culture in north India, they may properly be regarded as falling within a composite ‘literary tradition of Hindi. ” McGregor observes the role that Brajbhasha and Avadhi played in the formation of Hindi.

Consciousness

One of the important concerns of the Hindi literary tradition is the consciousness of cultural continuities and the desire for their preservation. The desire for the cultural continuities and preservation is amply manifested in earliest works of Hindi literature. For instance, Maulana Daud’s Candayan (1379) emerged as ‘cultural rapprochement’ states McGregor.

He observes, “The rationale of Candayan lines in the cultural rapprochement and the gradual rise of new attitudes after 1200 as a consequence of Muslin incursion and settlement, yet this work uses a stanza pattern based on late Middle Indian (Apabhramsha) models established centuries before. Cultural rapprochement particularly between Sufi and nath saiva communities, provided conditions in which Maulana Daud completed his romance, Candayan, composed in Avadhi in 1379. Daud’s introduction to Candayan is strongly bicultural, although he composed it to the standard requirements of a Persian narrative masnavi (literary romance). In Sanskrit vocabulary he describes his teacher Zainu’ddin as ‘setting him on the path of dharama that removes sin ‘papa’’, opening his eyes to spiritual teaching, and providing him with a’ boat of dharma to cross the Ganges’. Daud also throws light on the genesis of his poem, saying that he learnt to write in ‘Tukish’ script under Zainu’ddin’s tutelage and, having done so, recorded what he composed in the same script and ‘sang it in Hindi’. ”

The importance of Daud’s work lies in the fact that his Canadayan emerged as the earliest Hindi literary text. McGregor states, among other things, that Canadayan established ‘ most distinctive stanza of Hindi narrative poetry’. “ Daud’s indebtedness to preceding literary tradition is clear in his use of a stanza pattern combining Apabhramsa doha couplet the four-foot caupai, which has Apabhramsa analogues. We see the most distinctive stanza structure of Hindi narrative poetry established here, at the very outset of the extant Hindi literary tradition.”