Classical languages of India

Last updated

The Indian classical languages, or the Shastriya Bhasha or the Semmozhi, is an umbrella term for the languages of India having high antiquity, and valuable, original and distinct literary heritage. [1] The Republic of India officially recognises six languages as the Classical languages of India. In 2004, the Government of India declared that languages that met certain strict criteria could be accorded the status of a "Classical Language" of India. [2] It was instituted by the Ministry of Culture along with the Linguistic Experts' Committee. The committee was constituted by the Government of India to consider demands for the categorisation of languages as Classical languages.

Contents

Criteria

In the year 2004, the tentative criteria for the age of antiquity of "classical language" was assumed to be at least 1000 years of existence. [3]

In a 2006 press release, Minister of Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni told the Rajya Sabha the following criteria were laid down to determine the eligibility of languages to be considered for classification as a "Classical Language", [4] [1]

  1. High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500–2000 years.
  2. A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers
  3. The literary tradition be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
  4. The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may also be a discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or its offshoots.

Benefits

As per Government of India's Resolution No. 2-16/2004-US (Akademies) dated 1 November 2004, the benefits that will accrue to a language declared as a "Classical Language" are: [5]

  1. Two major international awards for scholars of eminence in Classical Indian Languages are awarded annually.
  2. A Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Languages is set up.
  3. The University Grants Commission will be requested to create, to start with at least in the Central Universities, a certain number of Professional Chairs for Classical Languages for scholars of eminence in Classical Indian Languages. [6]

Officially recognised classical languages

LanguageEarliest attestationDate recognised
தமிழ், Tamil 450 BCE [7] 12 October 2004 [8]
संस्कृतम्, Sanskrit orally transmitted records dating from 1000 to 1500 BCE . oldest attestation in writing in 500 BCE . [9] 25 November 2005 [8]
ಕನ್ನಡ, Kannada 370 CE [10] [11] 31 October 2008 [12]
తెలుగు, Telugu 575 CE [13] 31 October 2008 [12]
മലയാളം, Malayalam 100 BCE [14] 23 May 2013 [15]
ଓଡ଼ିଆ, Odia 10th-11th century CE [16] 20 February 2014 [17]

Demand from other languages

Demands have been made for other languages to be officially accorded Classical status, including Pali, [18] Bengali, [19] [20] Marathi, [21] [22] Maithili [23] and Manipuri. [24] [25] [26]

Pali

Pali language is a classical language which is liturgical to the Theravada Buddhism. Originated from the Northern India, it is closely related to the Old Indo-Aryan, Vedic Sanskrit but is not considered to be an offshoot or a direct descendent of Sanskrit. Historically, Pali came to widespread usage because Buddha taught that the vernacular should be used for writings of Buddhism. Pali writings existed as early as 1st century BCE, and oral transmission is considered to be in existence since 3rd century BCE. [27]

Meitei

Meitei, or Manipuri, is a classical language of Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, having a literary tradition of not less than 2000 years. [28] [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marathi language</span> Indo-Aryan language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by Marathi people in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the official language of Maharashtra, and an additional official language in the state of Goa used to reply provided the request is received in Marathi. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, with 83 million speakers as of 2011. Marathi ranks 13th in the list of languages with most native speakers in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi and Bengali. The language has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanskrit</span> Ancient Indo-European language of South Asia

Sanskrit is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indo-Aryan languages</span> Branch of the Indo-Iranian languages

The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives. Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Southeast Africa, Polynesia and Australia, along with several million speakers of Romani languages primarily concentrated in Southeastern Europe. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of India</span> Overview of the languages spoken in India

Languages spoken in the Republic of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both families together are sometimes known as Indic languages. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino–Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates. According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (840). Ethnologue lists a lower number of 456.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages with legal status in India</span> Languages designated official status by the Constitution of India

There is no national language in the Republic of India. However, article 343(1) of the Indian constitution specifically mentions that "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals," while article 343(2) allowed for the continuation of English as an official language for another 15 years and 343(3) gave the parliament the power to provide for the use of English language after this period. The clause 3 of the Official Languages Act, 1963 allows for the continued use of English language for official purposes of the Union government and for parliamentary business. Hence Indian English and Modern Standard Hindi are the Official Languages of the Government of India.

Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India has 22 officially recognised languages. Sahitya Akademi, India's highest literary body, also has 24 recognised literary languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Konkani language</span> Indo-Aryan language spoken in India

Konkani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Konkani people, primarily in the Konkan region, along the western coast of India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages mentioned in the Indian Constitution, and the official language of the Indian state of Goa. It is also spoken in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat as well as Damaon, Diu & Silvassa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magahi language</span> Indo-Aryan language spoken in India

Magahi, also known as Magadhi, is a Indo-Aryan language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India, and in the Terai of Nepal. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter's name derives.

Bishnupriya Manipuri, also known as Bishnupriya Meitei or simply as Bishnupriya, is an Indo-Aryan lect belonging to the Bengali–Assamese linguistic sub-branch. It is a creole of Bengali language and Meitei language and it still retains its pre-Bengali features. It is spoken in parts of the Indian states of Assam, Tripura and Manipur as well as in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh. It uses the Bengali-Assamese script as its writing system. Bishnupriya Manipuri, being a member of the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, was evolved from Magadhi Prakrit. So, its origin is associated with Magadha realm. The Government of Tripura categorised Bishnnupriya Manipuri under the "Tribal Language Cell" of the State Council of Educational Research and Training. Its speakers are also given the "Other Backward Classes" status by the Assam Government and notably, there is no legal status of the Bishnupriyas in Manipur. In the 2020s, the Bishnupriya speaking people started demanding that the Assam Government should give them the status of "indigenous people" of Assam and treat the same like other indigenous communities of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linguistic history of India</span>

Since the Iron Age in India, the native languages of the Indian subcontinent are divided into various language families, of which the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian are the most widely spoken. There are also many languages belonging to unrelated language families such as Munda and Tibeto-Burman, spoken by smaller groups.

Magadhi Prakrit (Māgadhī) is of one of the three Dramatic Prakrits, the written languages of Ancient India following the decline of Pali and Sanskrit. It was a vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan language, replacing earlier Vedic Sanskrit.

Narayan Govind Kalelkar was a linguist from Maharashtra, India.

The phoneme inventory of the Marathi language is similar to that of many other Indo-Aryan languages. An IPA chart of all contrastive sounds in Marathi is provided below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of South Asia</span>

South Asia is home to several hundred languages, spanning the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is home to the third most spoken language in the world, Hindi–Urdu; and the sixth most spoken language, Bengali. The languages in the region mostly comprise Indo-Iranic and Dravidian languages, and further members of other language families like Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Persian language in the Indian subcontinent</span>

Before British colonisation, the Persian language was the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent and a widely used official language in North India. The language was brought into South Asia by various Turkic and Afghan dynasties from the 11th century onwards, notable of which were the Ghaznavids, Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Dynasty. Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires. It largely replaced Sanskrit as the language of politics, literature, education, and social status in the subcontinent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Press Information Bureau</span> Indian government agency

The Press Information Bureau, commonly abbreviated as PIB, is a nodal agency of the Government of India under Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Based in National Media Centre, New Delhi, Press Information Bureau disseminates information to print, electronic and web media on government plans, policies, programme initiatives and achievements. It is available in 14 Indian official languages, which are Dogri, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati, Marathi, Meitei (Manipuri), Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Konkani and Urdu, in addition to Hindi and English, out of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tempering (spices)</span> South Asian cooking technique

Tempering is a cooking technique used in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in which whole spices are cooked briefly in oil or ghee to liberate essential oils from cells and thus enhance their flavours, before being poured, together with the oil, into a dish. Tempering is also practiced by dry-roasting whole spices in a pan before grinding the spices. Tempering is typically done at the beginning of cooking, before adding the other ingredients for a curry or similar dish, or it may be added to a dish at the end of cooking, just before serving.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meitei classical language movement</span> Social movement to make Meitei an officially recognised Classical language of India

The social movement of Meitei language to achieve the officially recognised status of the "Classical language of India" is advocated by various literary, political, social associations and organisations as well as notable individual personalities of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Northeast India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nepali language movement</span> Movement for recognition of the Nepali language in India

The Nepali Language Movement was a political movement in the Republic of India advocating the recognition of the Nepali language as a language with official status in India. On 20 August 1992, the Lok Sabha passed a motion to add the Nepali language to the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. According to an estimate in 2017, in India there about 40 million Nepali-language speaking Indians.

References

  1. 1 2 "Reviving classical languages – Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis". Dnaindia.com. 13 August 2015. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  2. ↑ "India sets up classical languages". BBC. 17 September 2004. Retrieved 1 May 2007.
  3. ↑ "India sets up classical languages". BBC . 2004-09-17.
  4. ↑ "CLASSICAL LANGUAGE STATUS TO KANNADA". Press Information Bureau, Government of India. 8 August 2006. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2008.
  5. ↑ "Classical Status to Odiya Language". Press Information Bureau, Government of India. 14 August 2013. Retrieved 18 January 2023.
  6. ↑ "Classical Status to Oriya Language". Pib.nic.in (Press release). 14 August 2013. Archived from the original on 12 January 2014.
  7. ↑ "Tamil language | Origin, History, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2023-11-03. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  8. 1 2 "Notification" (PDF). 25 November 2005. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  9. ↑ Jain, Dhanesh (2007). "Sociolinguistics of the Indo-Aryan languages". In George Cardona; Dhanesh Jain (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 47–66, 51. ISBN   978-1-135-79711-9.
  10. ↑ "Kannada language | History, Script & Dialects | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2023-10-10. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  11. ↑ "Kannada inscription at Talagunda may replace Halmidi as oldest".
  12. 1 2 "Declaration of Telugu and Kannada as classical languages". Press Information Bureau. Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 31 October 2008.
  13. ↑ "Telugu language | Origin, History, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2023-11-01. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  14. ↑ www.britannica.com.{{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help); Text "pulimankombill inscriptions" ignored (help) e
  15. ↑ "Classifying Malaylam as 'Classical Language'". PIB. 23 May 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  16. ↑ "Odia language | Region, History, & Basics | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2023-10-13. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  17. ↑ "Classifying Odia as classical Language". PIB. 20 February 2014. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  18. ↑ Singh, Binay (5 May 2013). "Removal of Pali as UPSC subject draws criticism". The Times of India. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  19. ↑ "Didi, Naveen face-off over classical language status". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  20. ↑ "Bangla O Bangla Bhasha Banchao Committee". www.facebook.com. Archived from the original on 2022-02-26. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  21. ↑ Clara Lewis (16 April 2018). "Clamour grows for Marathi to be given classical language status". The Times of India.
  22. ↑ "Marathi may become classical language". The Indian Express. 4 July 2013.
  23. ↑ Jagran Team (9 July 2021). "बिहार की एक भी भाषा अब तक नहीं बनी शास्त्रीय भाषा, मैथिली हो सकता शामिल". Jagran.
  24. ↑ "Manipur steps up to renew push for inclusion of Manipuri among India's classical languages (time duration of the movement)". Imphal Free Press . The movement for recognizing Manipuri as a classical language began in 2013, yet there has been a gap in the follow up actions.
  25. ↑ "MP for classical language status : 23rd sep20 ~ E-Pao! Headlines". e-pao.net.
  26. ↑ "Process for recognising Manipuri as classical language of India underway: MP Sanajaoba". Imphal Free Press .
  27. ↑ "Pāli language | Theravada Buddhism, Pali Canon, India | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2023-10-25. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  28. ↑ "'Manipur language which belongs to Tibeto-Burma has touched the criteria of a classical language'". 2018-02-21.
  29. ↑ "Manipuri is a classical language".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.