Pahari languages
Encyclopedia
The Pahari languages, ਪਹਾੜੀ (Gurmukhi), (Shahmukhi), from pahar 'mountain') are a geographic group of Indic languages spoken in the lower ranges of the Himalayas
, from Nepal
in the east to the India
n states of Uttarakhand
, Himachal Pradesh
and Jammu and Kashmir
in the west.
Though traditionally considered Pahari, and often Hindi or Panjabi, they are more closely related to each other than to other Indic languages. In Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, and other surrounding areas, it is the same as Dogri. Both words, Pahari and Dogri, are used alternatively as well. Eastern and Central Pahari has been placed together as the Northern zone of Indic, with Western Pahari in the Northwestern zone along with Panjabi and related languages. The variation in Pahari languages is due to influence of specific religion, dominating language and culture. Nearly 17 to 20 percent of Jammu and Kashmir (both sides of Loc) speaks Parahi language which resembles more to Punjabi Or Hindi. It is considered as a dialect of Punjabi or other dominating languages of region but it is not true as Pahari is one of the biggest Language existed in the history of Sub Continent.
The origin of Pahari language and its main region where it was bred and spread to other portion of region can be traced back to the ancient time when Jammu and Kashmir was a Pure Hindu state. As Buddhism got birth and started to spread in region, its mean preaching center turned to be Jammu and Kashmir and there, the Buddhist Priest started to search a language other than Sanskrit which was dominating and mainly was considered of Hindu religion people. So Buddhist achieved success in forum of Parahi which in fact was as one language and of one state at that time. This was the golden of Parahi as one language (something that can be dated back to 400 BC). Buddhist adapted Pahari as a language of their preaching and various scripts were introduced to write the language. With the rise of Buddhism in whole Jammu and Kashmir and its corresponding areas, Pahari was developed and preached. When King Asoka
took control of Kashmir, he also said to have contributed in the development of language and introduced another script of it.
That was the climax of Parahi language. However, with the fall of Buddhism and again rise of Hinduism in Kashmir, this proved to be fall of Pahari language, as there was no one to promote and serve. Pahari language was left on the mercy of local people and its script for writing disappeared very soon. It was adopted from parents to children and so on. It was vulnerable to all other languages; that is why with the arrival of Muslims, Sikhs, etc. the region contributed to change in its words, and Parahi turned more resembling to such languages. In Pakistan–administered Kashmir, where majority of people are Pahari speaking, a team was formulated to trace the background of Pahari language and clarify whether it was dialect of Punjabi or any other language. After long studies in 1969 it was declared a separate language (it has no connection with Punjabi, Hindi, etc.).
In Nepal, Nepali is the native language mainly of the Indo-Aryan population of the "hills" north of the Mahabharat Range up to the limits of rice cultivation at about 2,500 meters. The mother tongues of most "hill tribes" of higher elevations are Tibeto-Burman
. Nepali is mainly differentiated from Central Pahari through its being affected, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Tibeto-Burman idioms. The speakers of Central and Western Pahari have not been brought into close association with Tibeto-Burmans, and their language is therefore purely Indo-Aryan. Even the Bihari people have adapted this style and also use a wide range of terms from this language. It is sometimes known as Hindi code language and is known to few around Bharat (aka : India) Khaskura, as its speakers themselves call it, passes under various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese (i.e. the language of Nepal). Khaskura is also called Gorkhali or Gurkhali, the language of the Gurkhas, and Parbatiya, the language of the mountains. Palpa, closely related to Khaskura, is deemed by some authorities to be a separate language.
Perhaps five hundred years ago, Khas pioneers migrated eastward. They detoured around Kham uplands where rice could hardly be grown to settle in the lowlands of the Gandaki basin. One particular Khas family settled in the small Gorkha principality and ruled it for generations. This family was destined to become the Shah family that unified Nepal as we know it today, thus Khaskura came to be called Gorkhali.
Prithvi Narayan Shah conquered the urbanized Kathmandu Valley, then called Nepal, just east of the Gandaki basin. Nepal became Prithvi Narayan's new capital while he and his heirs went on to conquer small principalities for hundreds of miles along the Himalayas. Nepal gradually came to refer to the Shahs' entire realm, not just the Kathmandu Valley. Khaskura/Gorkhali became the new country's lingua franca
, thus it came to be called Nepali as well.
Although the language of the Khasas has disappeared, the tribe is still numerically the most important Aryan one in this part of the Himalaya, and it hence gave its name to its newly adopted speech, which is at the present day locally known as "Khas-kura." In the manner described above the Aryan language of the whole Pahari area is now a form of Rajasthani, exhibiting at the same time traces of the old Khasa / Khas language which it superseded, and also in Nepal of the Tibeto-Burman forms of speech by which it is surrounded. (For information regarding Rajasthani
the reader is referred to the articles Indo-Aryan Languages; Prakrit
; and Gujarati
.) Khas-kura shows most traces of Tibeto-Burman influence. The gender of nouns is purely sexual, and, although there is an oblique case derived from Rajasthani, it is so often confounded with the nominative, that in the singular number either can be employed for the other. Both these are due to Tibeto-Burman influence, but the non-Aryan idiom is most prominent in the use of the verb. There is an indefinite tense referring to present, past or future time according to the context, formed by suffixing the verb substantive to the root of the main verb, exactly as in some of the neighbouring Tibeto-Burman languages. There is a complete impersonal honorific conjugation which reminds one strongly of Tibetan, and, in colloquial speech, as in that tongue, the subject of any tense of a transitive verb, not only of a tense derived from the past participle, is put into the agent case.
In Eastern and Central Pahari the verb substantive is formed from the root ach, as in both Rajasthani and Kashmiri. In Rajasthani its present tense, being derived from the Sanskrit present rcchami, I go, does not change for gender. But in Pahari and Kashmiri it must be derived from the rare Sanskrit particle *rcchitas, gone, for in these languages it is a participial tense and does change according to the gender of the subject. Thus, in the singular we have: – Here we have a relic of the old Khasa language, which, as has been said, seems to have been related to Kashmiri. Other relics of Khasa, again agreeing with north-western India, are the tendency to shorten long vowels, the practice of epenthesis, or the modification of a vowel by the one which follows in the next syllable, and the frequent occurrence of disaspiration. Thus, Khas siknu, Kumauni sikno, but Hindi sikhna, to learn; Kumauni yeso, plural yasa, of this kind.
Materials regarding Western Pahari are not so complete. The speakers are not brought into contact with Tibeto-Burman languages, and hence we find no trace of these. But the signs of the influence of north-western languages are, as might be expected, still more apparent than farther east. In some dialects epenthesis is in full swing, as in (Churahi) khata, eating, fern, khaiti. Very interesting is the mixed origin of the postpositions defining the various cases. Thus, while that of the genitive is generally the Rajasthani ro, that of the dative continually points to the west. Sometimes it is the Sindhi
khë. At other times it is jo, where is here a locative of the base of the Sindhi genitive postposition jo. In all Indo-Aryan languages, the dative postposition is by origin the locative of some genitive one. In vocabulary, Western Pahari often employs, for the more common ideas, words which can most readily be connected with the north-western and Piedca groups. (See Indo-Aryan Languages.)
and Afghanistan
, although these dialects are increasingly coming under the influence of the national language Urdu and also Punjabi.
With increased communication and education these dialects are coming under greater influence from the national languages, but these communities have never been totally isolated and the dialects in the east have had other influences, such as Tibetan
, which is not an Indo-European language
.
The Himalayan mountain runs from Pakistan in the west, across northern India and into Nepal. Pahari dialects are found in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh
and Uttarakhand
whilst in Pakistan there are dialects spoken in the eastern part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (such as the district of Abbottabad
), and also in the Northern Part of Pakistan
i Punjab
– as well as across Azad Kashmir
. Western Pahari (Himachali) dialects include: Pothohari
/Potwari, Mirpuri
, Kangri
, Kullu
, Mandeali
, etc. The Central Pahari dialects spoken in Uttarakhand
include Garhwali
, Kumaoni and others. Garhwali itself has many subdialects spoken in different parts of the state, like Jaunsari, Jadhi, etc. In Uttarakhand
the language is referred to colloquially as mawri twaree (mine and yours).
The words Garhwali and Kumaoni are also used to refer to people speaking these dialects.
It is noteworthy that in India most people consider the Western Pahari dialect spoken in Himachal Pradesh
to be same or just a variant of Punjabi, it is a similar case in Pakistan, the Pahari language there is sometimes calld Dhanni or Jhelumi and in some places it is called Mirpuri but it bears similarity to Punjabi – and any native speaker of Punjabi can understand it.
. All of these dialects are commonly referred to as the 'Pahari' languages, and most people from the Himalayan range as known as Paharis.
The southern face of the Himalaya has from time immemorial been occupied by two classes of people. In the first place there is an Indo-Chinese overflow from Tibet
in the north. Most of these tribes speak languages of the Tibeto-Burman family, while a few have abandoned their ancestral speech and now employ Indo-European dialects. The other class consists of the great tribe of Khas
/ Khasas or Khasiyas, Aryan in origin, the Kavcoc of the Greek geographers. Who these people originally were, and how they entered India, are questions which have been debated without arriving at a definite conclusion. They are frequently mentioned in Sanskrit literature, were a thorn in the side of the rulers of Kashmir, and have occupied the lower Himalayas for many centuries. Nothing positive is known about their language, which they have long abandoned. Judging from its relics which appear in modern Pahari, it is probable that it belonged to the same group as Kashmiri, Lahnda and Sindhi.
They spread slowly from west to east, and are traditionally said to have reached Nepal in the early part of the 12th century. In the central and western Pahari tracts local traditions assert that from very early times there was constant communication with Rajputana
and with the great kingdom of Kanauj in the Gangetic Doab. A succession of immigrants, the tide of which was materially increased at a later period entered the country, and founded several dynasties, some of which survive to the present day. These Rajputs intermarried with the Khasa inhabitants of their new home, and gave their rank to the descendants of these mixed unions. With the pride of birth these new-born Rajputs inherited the language of their fathers, and thus the tongue of the ruling class, and subsequently of the whole population of this portion of the Himalaya, became a form of Rajasthani, the language spoken in distant Rajputana.
The Rajput occupation of Nepal is of later date. In the early part of the 16th century a number of Rajputs of Udaipur
in Rajputana, fled north and settled in Garhwal, Kumaon, and western Nepal. In 1559 a party of these conquered the small state of Gurkha, which lay about 70 km north-west of Katmandu, the present capital of Nepal. In 1768 Prithwi Narayan Shah, the then Rajput ruler of Gurkha, made himself master of the whole of Nepal and founded the present Gurkhali dynasty of that country. His successors extended their rule westwards over Kumaon
and Garhwal
, and as far as the Simla Hill states. The inhabitants of Nepal included not only Aryan Khasas or Khas, but also, as has been said, a number of Tibeto-Burman tribes. The Rajputs of Gurkha could not impose their language upon these as they did upon the Khasas, but, owing to its being the tongue of the ruling race, it ultimately became generally understood and employed as the lingua franca
of this polyglot country.
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
, from Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
in the east to the India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n states of Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
, Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...
and Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the...
in the west.
Classification
The Pahari languages fall into three groups:- Eastern, consisting of the various dialects of NepaliNepali languageNepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
, also known as Gorkhali, Gurkhali, Khaskura, or Parbatiya. - Central, spoken in UttarakhandUttarakhandUttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
state, in KumaonKumaon DivisionFor Kumaoni/Kumauni People see Kumauni PeopleKumaon or Kumaun is one of the two regions and administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state of northern India, the other being Garhwal. It includes the districts of Almora, Bageshwar, Champawat, Nainital, Pithoragarh, and Udham Singh Nagar...
and GarhwalGarhwal DivisionGarhwal is the north-western region and administrative division of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand which is home to the Garhwali people. Lying in the Himalayas, It is bounded on the north by Tibet, on the east by Kumaon region, on the south by Uttar Pradesh state, and on the north-west by...
. - Western, spoken in Himachal PradeshHimachal PradeshHimachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...
and the JammuJammuJammu , also known as Duggar, is one of the three administrative divisions within Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state in India.Jammu city is the largest city in Jammu and the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir...
region of Jammu and KashmirJammu and KashmirJammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the...
.
Though traditionally considered Pahari, and often Hindi or Panjabi, they are more closely related to each other than to other Indic languages. In Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, and other surrounding areas, it is the same as Dogri. Both words, Pahari and Dogri, are used alternatively as well. Eastern and Central Pahari has been placed together as the Northern zone of Indic, with Western Pahari in the Northwestern zone along with Panjabi and related languages. The variation in Pahari languages is due to influence of specific religion, dominating language and culture. Nearly 17 to 20 percent of Jammu and Kashmir (both sides of Loc) speaks Parahi language which resembles more to Punjabi Or Hindi. It is considered as a dialect of Punjabi or other dominating languages of region but it is not true as Pahari is one of the biggest Language existed in the history of Sub Continent.
The origin of Pahari language and its main region where it was bred and spread to other portion of region can be traced back to the ancient time when Jammu and Kashmir was a Pure Hindu state. As Buddhism got birth and started to spread in region, its mean preaching center turned to be Jammu and Kashmir and there, the Buddhist Priest started to search a language other than Sanskrit which was dominating and mainly was considered of Hindu religion people. So Buddhist achieved success in forum of Parahi which in fact was as one language and of one state at that time. This was the golden of Parahi as one language (something that can be dated back to 400 BC). Buddhist adapted Pahari as a language of their preaching and various scripts were introduced to write the language. With the rise of Buddhism in whole Jammu and Kashmir and its corresponding areas, Pahari was developed and preached. When King Asoka
Ashoka
Ashok Maurya or Ashoka , popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BC to 232 BC. One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests...
took control of Kashmir, he also said to have contributed in the development of language and introduced another script of it.
That was the climax of Parahi language. However, with the fall of Buddhism and again rise of Hinduism in Kashmir, this proved to be fall of Pahari language, as there was no one to promote and serve. Pahari language was left on the mercy of local people and its script for writing disappeared very soon. It was adopted from parents to children and so on. It was vulnerable to all other languages; that is why with the arrival of Muslims, Sikhs, etc. the region contributed to change in its words, and Parahi turned more resembling to such languages. In Pakistan–administered Kashmir, where majority of people are Pahari speaking, a team was formulated to trace the background of Pahari language and clarify whether it was dialect of Punjabi or any other language. After long studies in 1969 it was declared a separate language (it has no connection with Punjabi, Hindi, etc.).
In Nepal, Nepali is the native language mainly of the Indo-Aryan population of the "hills" north of the Mahabharat Range up to the limits of rice cultivation at about 2,500 meters. The mother tongues of most "hill tribes" of higher elevations are Tibeto-Burman
Tibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....
. Nepali is mainly differentiated from Central Pahari through its being affected, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Tibeto-Burman idioms. The speakers of Central and Western Pahari have not been brought into close association with Tibeto-Burmans, and their language is therefore purely Indo-Aryan. Even the Bihari people have adapted this style and also use a wide range of terms from this language. It is sometimes known as Hindi code language and is known to few around Bharat (aka : India) Khaskura, as its speakers themselves call it, passes under various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese (i.e. the language of Nepal). Khaskura is also called Gorkhali or Gurkhali, the language of the Gurkhas, and Parbatiya, the language of the mountains. Palpa, closely related to Khaskura, is deemed by some authorities to be a separate language.
| Language | Group | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Garhwali | Central Pahari | spoken in Garhwal Garhwal Division Garhwal is the north-western region and administrative division of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand which is home to the Garhwali people. Lying in the Himalayas, It is bounded on the north by Tibet, on the east by Kumaon region, on the south by Uttar Pradesh state, and on the north-west by... region |
| Kumaoni or Kumauni | Central Pahari | spoken in Kumaon Kumaon Division For Kumaoni/Kumauni People see Kumauni PeopleKumaon or Kumaun is one of the two regions and administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state of northern India, the other being Garhwal. It includes the districts of Almora, Bageshwar, Champawat, Nainital, Pithoragarh, and Udham Singh Nagar... region and Mahakali zone of Nepal |
| Eastern Pahari | Nepali Nepali language Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar... |
|
| Dogri-Kangri languages | Western Pahari | Dogri Dogri language Dogri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about five million people in Pakistan and India, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, but also in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and elsewhere. Dogri speakers are called Dogras, and the Dogri-speaking... has official status |
History
The term Khaskura, "Khas talk," originated in western Nepal where it referred to the tongue of "Khas" Indo-Aryan rice growers mainly living along streams that enabled irrigation. In the highlands where rice couldn't dominate agricultural production, and particularly the knot of highlands separating the Karnali-Bheri basin from the Gandaki basin, a complex of Tibeto-Burman dialects called Khamkura—Kham talk—prevailed and persists today among the Kham Magar ethnic group. So the term Khaskura seems to have originated in a Khaskura/Khamkura duality.Perhaps five hundred years ago, Khas pioneers migrated eastward. They detoured around Kham uplands where rice could hardly be grown to settle in the lowlands of the Gandaki basin. One particular Khas family settled in the small Gorkha principality and ruled it for generations. This family was destined to become the Shah family that unified Nepal as we know it today, thus Khaskura came to be called Gorkhali.
Prithvi Narayan Shah conquered the urbanized Kathmandu Valley, then called Nepal, just east of the Gandaki basin. Nepal became Prithvi Narayan's new capital while he and his heirs went on to conquer small principalities for hundreds of miles along the Himalayas. Nepal gradually came to refer to the Shahs' entire realm, not just the Kathmandu Valley. Khaskura/Gorkhali became the new country's lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
, thus it came to be called Nepali as well.
Although the language of the Khasas has disappeared, the tribe is still numerically the most important Aryan one in this part of the Himalaya, and it hence gave its name to its newly adopted speech, which is at the present day locally known as "Khas-kura." In the manner described above the Aryan language of the whole Pahari area is now a form of Rajasthani, exhibiting at the same time traces of the old Khasa / Khas language which it superseded, and also in Nepal of the Tibeto-Burman forms of speech by which it is surrounded. (For information regarding Rajasthani
Rajasthani language
Rajasthani Rajasthani Rajasthani (Devanagari: , Perso-Arabic: is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 50 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide...
the reader is referred to the articles Indo-Aryan Languages; Prakrit
Prakrit
Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
; and Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
.) Khas-kura shows most traces of Tibeto-Burman influence. The gender of nouns is purely sexual, and, although there is an oblique case derived from Rajasthani, it is so often confounded with the nominative, that in the singular number either can be employed for the other. Both these are due to Tibeto-Burman influence, but the non-Aryan idiom is most prominent in the use of the verb. There is an indefinite tense referring to present, past or future time according to the context, formed by suffixing the verb substantive to the root of the main verb, exactly as in some of the neighbouring Tibeto-Burman languages. There is a complete impersonal honorific conjugation which reminds one strongly of Tibetan, and, in colloquial speech, as in that tongue, the subject of any tense of a transitive verb, not only of a tense derived from the past participle, is put into the agent case.
| Khas-kura | Kumauni | Kashmiri | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masc | Fem | Masc | Fem | Masc | Fem | |
| I am | chu | chu | chic | chu | thus | ches |
| You are | chas | ches | chai | chi | chukh | chekh |
| He is | cha | che | ch | chi | chuh | cheh |
In Eastern and Central Pahari the verb substantive is formed from the root ach, as in both Rajasthani and Kashmiri. In Rajasthani its present tense, being derived from the Sanskrit present rcchami, I go, does not change for gender. But in Pahari and Kashmiri it must be derived from the rare Sanskrit particle *rcchitas, gone, for in these languages it is a participial tense and does change according to the gender of the subject. Thus, in the singular we have: – Here we have a relic of the old Khasa language, which, as has been said, seems to have been related to Kashmiri. Other relics of Khasa, again agreeing with north-western India, are the tendency to shorten long vowels, the practice of epenthesis, or the modification of a vowel by the one which follows in the next syllable, and the frequent occurrence of disaspiration. Thus, Khas siknu, Kumauni sikno, but Hindi sikhna, to learn; Kumauni yeso, plural yasa, of this kind.
Materials regarding Western Pahari are not so complete. The speakers are not brought into contact with Tibeto-Burman languages, and hence we find no trace of these. But the signs of the influence of north-western languages are, as might be expected, still more apparent than farther east. In some dialects epenthesis is in full swing, as in (Churahi) khata, eating, fern, khaiti. Very interesting is the mixed origin of the postpositions defining the various cases. Thus, while that of the genitive is generally the Rajasthani ro, that of the dative continually points to the west. Sometimes it is the Sindhi
Sindhi language
Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan that is spoken by the Sindhi people. In India, it is among 22 constitutionally recognized languages, where Sindhis are a sizeable minority. It is spoken by 53,410,910 people in Pakistan, according to the national government's Statistics Division...
khë. At other times it is jo, where is here a locative of the base of the Sindhi genitive postposition jo. In all Indo-Aryan languages, the dative postposition is by origin the locative of some genitive one. In vocabulary, Western Pahari often employs, for the more common ideas, words which can most readily be connected with the north-western and Piedca groups. (See Indo-Aryan Languages.)
Mountainous dialects
There are speakers of various Pahari dialects living in the mountainous north of Pakistan, between KashmirKashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, although these dialects are increasingly coming under the influence of the national language Urdu and also Punjabi.
- Khas-Kura, as its speakers themselves call it, passes under various names. The English generally call it Nepali or Naipali, which is a misnomer, for it is not the principal form of speech used in that country. Moreover, the Nepalese employ a corruption of this very word to indicate what is really the main language of the country, viz. the TibetoBurman Newari. Khas-kura is also called Gorkhali, or the language of the Gurkhas, and Pahari or Parbatiya or Parbate, the language of the mountains. The number of speakers in British India 143,721 were recorded in the census of 1901, most of whom were soldiers in, or others connected with, the British Gurkha regiments. At present Khas kura or Nepali is the lingua franca of Nepal spoken by millions.
- Central Pahari, includes three dialects – Garhwali, spoken mainly in Garhwal and the country round the hill station of Mussoorie; Jaunsari, spoken in the Jaunsar tract of Dehra Dun; and Kumaoni, spoken in Kumaun, including the country round the hill station of Naini Tal. In 1901 the number of speakers was 1,270,931.
- Western Pahari, includes a great number of dialects. In the SimlaShimlaShimla , formerly known as Simla, is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared the summer capital of the British Raj in India. A popular tourist destination, Shimla is often referred to as the "Queen of Hills," a term coined by the British...
Hill states alone no less than twenty-two, of which the most important are Sirmauri and Keonthali (the dialect of Simla itself), were recorded at the last census. To these may be added Chambiali and Churahi of the state of Chamba, Mandeali of the state of Mandli, Himachali of Chamba and Kangra, Kuluhi of Kulu and others. In 1901 the total number of speakers was 1,710,029.
With increased communication and education these dialects are coming under greater influence from the national languages, but these communities have never been totally isolated and the dialects in the east have had other influences, such as Tibetan
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
, which is not an Indo-European language
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
The Himalayan mountain runs from Pakistan in the west, across northern India and into Nepal. Pahari dialects are found in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...
and Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
whilst in Pakistan there are dialects spoken in the eastern part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (such as the district of Abbottabad
Abbottabad
Abbottabad is a city located in the Hazara region of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in Pakistan. The city is situated in the Orash Valley, northeast of the capital Islamabad and east of Peshawar at an altitude of and is the capital of the Abbottabad District...
), and also in the Northern Part of Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i Punjab
Punjab (Pakistan)
Punjab is the most populous province of Pakistan, with approximately 45% of the country's total population. Forming most of the Punjab region, the province is bordered by Kashmir to the north-east, the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan to the east, the Pakistani province of Sindh to the...
– as well as across Azad Kashmir
Azad Kashmir
Azad Jammu and Kashmir or Azad Kashmir for short, is the southernmost political entity within the Pakistani-administered part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir...
. Western Pahari (Himachali) dialects include: Pothohari
Pothohari language
Potwari , also known as Potohari ), is a rich north Indian sub-continent dialect spoken in the Pothohar Plateau around Rawalpindi, Kahuta, Gujar Khan, Jehlum, up to Gujrat in the south and Chakwal in the West, Hazara in the north, Azad Kashmir in the east and also by Sikhs from the Pothohar...
/Potwari, Mirpuri
Mirpuri
Mirpuri may refer to:* Potwari language, an Indo-Aryan Lahnda language related to Hindko* Mahan Singh Mirpuri , General in the kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh* Mirpur, Azad Kashmir, city in Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir...
, Kangri
Kangri
Kangri can mean:*Kangri language, a dialect spoken in northern India, predominantly in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, by the people of Kangra Valley...
, Kullu
Kullu
Kullu, once known as Kul-anti-peetha - "the end of the habitable world", is the capital town of the Kullu District, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India. It is located on the banks of the Beas River in the Kullu Valley about ten kilometres north of the airport at Bhuntar.Kullu is a broad open...
, Mandeali
Mandeali
Mandeali is a Western Pahari language spoken in northern India, predominantly in the Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh by the people of the Mandi valley. Other spellings for the name are Mandiyali and Mandiali; it is also called Mandalgarhi ~ Mandigyahri....
, etc. The Central Pahari dialects spoken in Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
include Garhwali
Garhwali
The Garhwali language is a Central Pahari language belonging to the Northern Zone of Indo-Aryan languages. It is primarily spoken by the Garhwali people who are from the north-western Garhwal Division of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas.The Central Pahari...
, Kumaoni and others. Garhwali itself has many subdialects spoken in different parts of the state, like Jaunsari, Jadhi, etc. In Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
the language is referred to colloquially as mawri twaree (mine and yours).
The words Garhwali and Kumaoni are also used to refer to people speaking these dialects.
It is noteworthy that in India most people consider the Western Pahari dialect spoken in Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...
to be same or just a variant of Punjabi, it is a similar case in Pakistan, the Pahari language there is sometimes calld Dhanni or Jhelumi and in some places it is called Mirpuri but it bears similarity to Punjabi – and any native speaker of Punjabi can understand it.
About
The Himalayas run along Nepal, India and Pakistan. The word 'Pahar' means a 'mountain' in most local languages such as Nepalese, Hindi (Parbat being a synonym) as well as Urdu (Koh being a synonym). Like all other languages of the region, the Pahari languages are also from the Indo-European, and in particular Indo-Iranian branch of languages. As mountains have the tendency of isolating communities from change, dialects in the mountains tend to have their own characteristics with some similarity to others mountain dialects while remaining isolated from one another – there does seem to be a dialect continuumDialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
. All of these dialects are commonly referred to as the 'Pahari' languages, and most people from the Himalayan range as known as Paharis.
The southern face of the Himalaya has from time immemorial been occupied by two classes of people. In the first place there is an Indo-Chinese overflow from Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
in the north. Most of these tribes speak languages of the Tibeto-Burman family, while a few have abandoned their ancestral speech and now employ Indo-European dialects. The other class consists of the great tribe of Khas
Khas
Originally the Khas / Khasas or Khasiyas are the mountain dwellers living in the southern shadow of the Himalayan range from Kashmir to Bhutan, but mostly in Nepal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, North Bengal, Sikkim and Bhutan,...
/ Khasas or Khasiyas, Aryan in origin, the Kavcoc of the Greek geographers. Who these people originally were, and how they entered India, are questions which have been debated without arriving at a definite conclusion. They are frequently mentioned in Sanskrit literature, were a thorn in the side of the rulers of Kashmir, and have occupied the lower Himalayas for many centuries. Nothing positive is known about their language, which they have long abandoned. Judging from its relics which appear in modern Pahari, it is probable that it belonged to the same group as Kashmiri, Lahnda and Sindhi.
They spread slowly from west to east, and are traditionally said to have reached Nepal in the early part of the 12th century. In the central and western Pahari tracts local traditions assert that from very early times there was constant communication with Rajputana
Rajputana
Rājputāna was the pre-1949 name of the present-day Indian state of Rājasthān, the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. George Thomas was the first in 1800 A.D., to term this region as Rajputana...
and with the great kingdom of Kanauj in the Gangetic Doab. A succession of immigrants, the tide of which was materially increased at a later period entered the country, and founded several dynasties, some of which survive to the present day. These Rajputs intermarried with the Khasa inhabitants of their new home, and gave their rank to the descendants of these mixed unions. With the pride of birth these new-born Rajputs inherited the language of their fathers, and thus the tongue of the ruling class, and subsequently of the whole population of this portion of the Himalaya, became a form of Rajasthani, the language spoken in distant Rajputana.
The Rajput occupation of Nepal is of later date. In the early part of the 16th century a number of Rajputs of Udaipur
Udaipur
Udaipur , also known as the City of Lakes, is a city, a Municipal Council and the administrative headquarters of the Udaipur district in the state of Rajasthan in western India. It is located southwest of the state capital, Jaipur, west of Kota, and northeast from Ahmedabad...
in Rajputana, fled north and settled in Garhwal, Kumaon, and western Nepal. In 1559 a party of these conquered the small state of Gurkha, which lay about 70 km north-west of Katmandu, the present capital of Nepal. In 1768 Prithwi Narayan Shah, the then Rajput ruler of Gurkha, made himself master of the whole of Nepal and founded the present Gurkhali dynasty of that country. His successors extended their rule westwards over Kumaon
Kumaon Division
For Kumaoni/Kumauni People see Kumauni PeopleKumaon or Kumaun is one of the two regions and administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state of northern India, the other being Garhwal. It includes the districts of Almora, Bageshwar, Champawat, Nainital, Pithoragarh, and Udham Singh Nagar...
and Garhwal
Garhwal Kingdom
Garhwal Kingdom was a princely state in north-western Uttarakhand, India, ruled by the Panwar dynasty. It was founded in 888 AD and existed until it was annexed by the Gorkhas in 1803...
, and as far as the Simla Hill states. The inhabitants of Nepal included not only Aryan Khasas or Khas, but also, as has been said, a number of Tibeto-Burman tribes. The Rajputs of Gurkha could not impose their language upon these as they did upon the Khasas, but, owing to its being the tongue of the ruling race, it ultimately became generally understood and employed as the lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of this polyglot country.