Dardic | |
---|---|
Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan | |
Geographic distribution | Northern Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan, northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir) Northwestern India (Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh) Northeastern Afghanistan (Kapisa, Kunar, Laghman, Nangarhar, Nuristan) |
Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
Subdivisions | |
Glottolog | None dard1244 (Eastern Dardic) |
Dardic languages by Georg Morgenstierne (Note: Nuristani languages such as Kamkata-vari (Kati), Kalasha-ala (Waigali), etc. are now separated) |
The Dardic languages (also Dardu or Pisaca), [1] or Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan languages, [2] [3] [4] [5] are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of northeastern Afghanistan. [6] This region has sometimes been referred to as Dardistan. [7]
Rather than close linguistic or ethnic relationships, the original term Dardic was a geographical concept, denoting the northwesternmost group of Indo-Aryan languages. [8] There is no ethnic unity among the speakers of these languages nor can the languages be traced to a single ancestor. [9] [10] [11] [6] After further research, the term "Eastern Dardic" is now a legitimate grouping of languages that excludes some languages in the Dardistan region that are now considered to be part of different language families. [12]
The extinct Gandhari language, used by the Gandhara civilization, from circa 1500 BCE, was Dardic in nature. [13] Linguistic evidence has linked Gandhari with some living Dardic languages, particularly Torwali and other Kohistani languages. [14] [15] [16] There is limited evidence that the Kohistani languages are descended from Gandhari.
Leitner's Dardistan, in its broadest sense, became the basis for the classification of the languages in the north-west of the Indo-Aryan linguistic area (which includes present-day eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and Kashmir). [17] George Abraham Grierson, with scant data, borrowed the term and proposed an independent Dardic family within the Indo-Iranian languages. [18] However, Grierson's formulation of Dardic is now considered to be incorrect in its details, and has therefore been rendered obsolete by modern scholarship. [19]
Georg Morgenstierne, who conducted an extensive fieldwork in the region during the early 20th century, revised Grierson's classification and came to the view that only the "Kafiri" (Nuristani) languages formed an independent branch of the Indo-Iranian languages separate from Indo-Aryan and Iranian families, and determined that the Dardic languages were unmistakably Indo-Aryan in character. [8]
Dardic languages contain absolutely no features which cannot be derived from old [Indo-Aryan language]. They have simply retained a number of striking archasisms, which had already disappeared in most Prakrit dialects... There is not a single common feature distinguishing Dardic, as a whole, from the rest of the [Indo-Aryan] languages... Dardic is simply a convenient term to denote a bundle of aberrant [Indo-Aryan] hill-languages which, in their relative isolation, accented in many cases by the invasion of Pathan tribes, have been in varying degrees sheltered against the expand influence of [Indo-Aryan] Midland (Madhyadesha) innovations, being left free to develop on their own. [20]
Due to their geographic isolation, many Dardic languages have preserved archaisms and other features of Old Indo-Aryan. These features include three sibilants, several types of clusters of consonants, and archaic or antiquated vocabulary lost in other modern Indo-Aryan languages. Kalasha and Khowar are the most archaic of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, retaining a great part of Sanskrit case inflexion, and retaining many words in a nearly Sanskritic form. [21] [22] For example driga "long" in Kalasha is nearly identical to dīrghá in Sanskrit [23] and ašrú "tear" in Khowar is identical to the Sanskrit word. [24]
French Indologist Gérard Fussman points out that the term Dardic is geographic, not a linguistic expression. [25] Taken literally, it allows one to believe that all the languages spoken in Dardistan are Dardic. [25] It also allows one to believe that all the people speaking Dardic languages are Dards and the area they live in is Dardistan. [25] A term used by classical geographers to identify the area inhabited by an indefinite people, and used in Rajatarangini in reference to people outside Kashmir, has come to have ethnographic, geographic, and even political significance today. [11]
George Morgenstierne's scheme corresponds to recent scholarly consensus. [26] As such, the historic Dardic's position as a legitimate genetic subfamily has been repeatedly called into question; it is widely acknowledged that the grouping is more geographical in nature, as opposed to linguistic. [27] Indeed, Buddruss rejected the Dardic grouping entirely, and placed the languages within Central Indo-Aryan. [28] Other scholars, such as Strand [29] and Mock, [11] have similarly voiced doubts in this regard.
However, Kachru contrasts "Midland languages" spoken in the plains, such as Punjabi and Urdu, with "Mountain languages", such as Dardic. [30] Kogan has also suggested an 'East-Dardic' sub-family; comprising the 'Kashmiri', 'Kohistani' and 'Shina' groups. [31] [32]
The case of Kashmiri is peculiar. Its Dardic features are close to Shina, often said to belong to an eastern Dardic language subfamily. Kachru notes that "the Kashmiri language used by Kashmiri Hindu Pandits has been powerfully influenced by Indian culture and literature, and the greater part of its vocabulary is now of Indian origin, and is allied to that of Sanskritic Indo-Aryan languages of northern India". [30]
While it is true that many Dardic languages have been influenced by non-Dardic languages, Dardic may have also influenced neighbouring Indo-Aryan lects in turn, such as Punjabi, [33] the Pahari languages, including the Central Pahari languages of Uttarakhand, [33] [34] and purportedly even further afield. [35] [36] Some linguists have posited that Dardic lects may have originally been spoken throughout a much larger region, stretching from the mouth of the Indus (in Sindh) northwards in an arc, and then eastwards through modern day Himachal Pradesh to Kumaon. However, this has not been conclusively established. [37] [38] [39]
Dardic languages have been organized into the following subfamilies: [40] [31]
Virtually all Dardic languages have experienced a partial or complete loss of voiced aspirated consonants. [40] [42] Khowar uses the word buum for 'earth' (Sanskrit: bhumi), 1 Pashai uses the word duum for 'smoke' (Urdu: dhuān, Sanskrit: dhūma) and Kashmiri uses the word dọd for 'milk' (Sanskrit: dugdha, Urdu: dūdh). [40] [42] Tonality has developed in most (but not all) Dardic languages, such as Khowar and Pashai, as a compensation. [42] Punjabi and Western Pahari languages similarly lost aspiration but have virtually all developed tonality to partially compensate (e.g. Punjabi kár for 'house', compare with Urdu ghar). [40]
Both ancient and modern Dardic languages demonstrate a marked tendency towards metathesis where a "pre- or postconsonantal 'r' is shifted forward to a preceding syllable". [33] [43] This was seen in Ashokan rock edicts (erected 269 BCE to 231 BCE) in the Gandhara region, where Dardic dialects were and still are widespread. Examples include a tendency to spell the Classical Sanskrit words priyadarshi (one of the titles of Emperor Ashoka) as instead priyadrashi and dharma as dhrama. [43] Modern-day Kalasha uses the word driga 'long' (Sanskrit: dirgha). [43] Palula uses drubalu 'weak' (Sanskrit: durbala) and brhuj 'birch tree' (Sanskrit: bhurja). [43] Kashmiri uses drạ̄lid 2 'impoverished' (Sanskrit: daridra) and krama 'work' or 'action' (Sanskrit: karma). [43] Western Pahari languages (such as Dogri), Sindhi and Lahnda (Western Punjabi) also share this Dardic tendency to metathesis, though they are considered non-Dardic, for example cf. the Punjabi word drakhat 'tree' (from Persian darakht).[ clarification needed ] [26] [44]
Dardic languages also show other consonantal changes. Kashmiri, for instance, has a marked tendency to shift k to ch and j to z (e.g. zon 'person' is cognate to Sanskrit jan 'person or living being' and Persian jān 'life'). [26]
Unique among the Dardic languages, Kashmiri presents "verb second" as the normal grammatical form. This is similar to many Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch, as well as Uto-Aztecan O'odham and Northeast Caucasian Ingush. All other Dardic languages, and more generally within Indo-Iranian, follow the subject-object-verb (SOV) pattern. [45]
Language | First example sentence | Second example sentence |
---|---|---|
English (Germanic) | This is a horse. | We will go to Tokyo. |
Kashmiri (Dardic) | Yi chu akh gur. | Ạs' gatshav Tokiyo. |
Japanese (Japonic) | Kore wa uma de aru. | Watashitachi wa Tōkyō ni ikimasu. |
Kamkata-vari (Nuristani) | Ina ušpa âsa. | Imo Tokyo âćamo. |
Dari Persian (Iranian) | In yak asb ast. | Mâ ba Tokyo xâhem raft. |
Shina (Dardic) | Anu ek aspo han. | Be Tokyo et bujun. |
Pashto (Iranian) | Masculine: Dā yaw as day. / Feminine: Dā yawa aspa da. | Mūng/Mūẓ̌ ba Ṭokyo ta/tar lāṛšū. |
Indus Kohistani (Dardic) | Shu ek gho thu. | Be Tokyo ye bay-tho. |
Sindhi (Indo-Aryan) | Heeu hiku ghoro aahe. | Asaan Tokyo veendaaseen. |
Hindi-Urdu (Indo-Aryan) | Ye ek ghoṛa hain. 4 | Ham Tokyo jāenge. |
Punjabi (Indo-Aryan) | Iha ikk kòṛa ai. | Asin Tokyo jāvange. |
Mandeali (Indo-Aryan) | Ye ek ghōṛā hā. | Āsā Tokyo jāṇā. |
Nepali (Indo-Aryan) | Yo euta ghoda ho. | Hami Tokyo jānechhaũ. |
Garhwali (Indo-Aryan) | Yuu ek ghoda cha. | Ham Tokyo Jaula. |
Kumaoni (Indo-Aryan) | Yo ek ghwad chhu. | Ham Tokyo jaunl. |
Academic literature from outside South Asia
Academic literature from South Asia
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 east of the Indus river in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal. 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.
Gāndhārī was an Indo-Aryan Prakrit language found mainly in texts dated between the 3rd century BCE and 4th century CE in the region of Gandhāra, located in the northwestern Indian subcontinent. The language was heavily used by the former Buddhist cultures of Central Asia and has been found as far away as eastern China, in inscriptions at Luoyang and Anyang.
The Nuristani languages, also known as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in eastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chitral District, Pakistan. The region inhabited by the Nuristanis is located in the southern Hindu Kush mountains, and is drained by the Alingar River in the west, the Pech River in the center, and the Landai Sin and Kunar rivers in the east. More broadly, the Nuristan region is located at the northern intersection of the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau. The languages were previously often grouped with Indo-Aryan or Iranian until they were finally classified as forming a third branch in Indo-Iranian.
Dardistan refers to a region where Dardic languages are spoken. The terms "Dardic" and "Dardistan" are not indigenous to the region, and were coined by Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner. The legitimacy of the term has been called into question. The region also includes a number of non-Dardic peoples and languages.
The voiced retroflex lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The 'implicit' symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨𝼈 ⟩. The sound may also be transcribed as a short ⟨ɭ̆ ⟩, or with the retired IPA dot diacritic, ⟨ɺ̣⟩.
Khowar, or Chitrali, is a Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan language family primarily spoken in Chitral and surrounding areas in Pakistan.
Dameli (دَميلي), also Damia, Damɛ̃ḍī, Dāmia bāṣa or Gidoj, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Domel Town, in the Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Kalasha is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Kalash people, in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. There are an estimated 4,100 speakers of Kalasha. It is an endangered language and there is an ongoing language shift to Khowar.
Palula and also known as Ashreti (Aćharêtâʹ) or Dangarikwar, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 10,000 people in the valleys of Ashret and Biori, as well as in the village of Puri in the Shishi valley and at least by a portion of the population in the village Kalkatak, in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Gawar-Bati or Narsati is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Kunar, Nari of Eastern Afghanistan, and across the border in Pakistan, It is also known as Kohistani in Kunar. Gawar-Bati has estimated speakers of 75,000. 5,0000 of them are living in ,Kunar,Nari,Afghanistan and 25,000 of them are in Chitral, Pakistan.
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Torwali, also known as Bahrain Kohistani, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Torwali people, and concentrated in the Bahrain and Chail areas of the Swat Kohistan in northern Pakistan. The Torwali language is said to have originated from the pre-Muslim communities of Swat. It is the closest modern Indo-Aryan language still spoken today to Niya, a dialect of Gāndhārī, a Middle Indo-Aryan language spoken in the ancient region of Gandhara.
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The Kho or Chitrali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the Chitral District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan and the Gupis-Yasin and Ghizer districts of Gilgit-Baltistan. They speak an Indo-Aryan language called Khowar.
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Elena Bashir is an American linguist and senior lecturer in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations of the Humanities Division of the University of Chicago. She studies languages of Pakistan and the broader northwestern part of South Asia, and has published extensive linguistic work on the Dardic languages, Hindko, Saraiki, Balochi, Brahui, Wakhi and Hindustani, among other languages of the region. Bashir also teaches Urdu.
Henrik Liljegren is a linguist and Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University. He does fieldwork on languages of northern Pakistan, particularly the Hindukush–Karakoram region, and studies typology of and genetic relations between languages of the region. His most recent project is investigating Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
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Nūn ġunnā, is an additional letter of the Arabic script not used in the Arabic alphabet itself but used in Urdu, Saraiki, and Shahmukhi Punjabi to represent a nasal vowel,. In Shahmukhi, it is represented by the diacritic ٘◌.
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On the one hand, it is obvious that these languages form a continuum together with the main Indo-Aryan languages of the northwestern Subcontinent, with a gradually increased clustering of more prototypical Hindukush-Karakoram features toward the central – but in relation to the rest of Indo-Aryan more peripheral – parts of this region. On the other hand, these languages also show a high degree of diversity, with individual languages taking part in various subareal configurations or transit zones that are represented in the region, further complicating any attempts at defining them collectively in more exact, or exclusive, areal terms. We must therefore bear in mind that any collective reference to these languages, be it Hindukush Indo-Aryan or any other term, will have to be interpreted as a highly gradient notion, acknowledging the apparent lack of any complete list of innovations, let alone retentions, that would cover more than a subset of them.
The seventeen Dardic languages constitute a geographic group of the northwestern-most Indo-Aryan languages. They fall into several small phylogenetic groups of Indo-Aryan, but together they show no common phonological innovations that demonstrate that they share any phylogenetic unity as a "Dardic branch" of the Indo-Aryan languages.
Dardic languages contain absolutely no features which cannot be derived from old [Indo-Aryan language]. They have simply retained a number of striking archasisms, which had already disappeared in most Prakrit dialects... There is not a single common feature distinguishing Dardic, as a whole, from the rest of the [Indo-Aryan] languages... Dardic is simply a convenient term to denote a bundle of aberrant [Indo-Aryan] hill-languages which, in their relative isolation, accented in many cases by the invasion of Pathan tribes, have been in varying degrees sheltered against the expand influence of [Indo-Aryan] Midland (Madhyadesha) innovations, being left free to develop on their own.
The designation "Dardic" implies neither ethnic unity among the speakers of these languages nor that they can all be traced to a single stammbaum-model node.
Nowadays, the term "Dardic" is used as an areal term that refers to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, without claiming anything specific about their mutual relatedness.
Palula belongs to a group of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages spoken in the Hindukush region that are often referred to as "Dardic" languages... It has been and is still disputed to what extent this primarily geographically defined grouping has any real classificatory validity... On the one hand, Strand suggests that the term should be discarded altogether, holding that there is no justification whatsoever for any such grouping (in addition to the term itself having a problematic history of use), and prefers to make a finer classification of these languages into smaller genealogical groups directly under the IA heading, a classification we shall return to shortly... Zoller identifies the Dardic languages as the modern successors of the Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) language Gandhari (also Gandhari Prakrit), but along with Bashir, Zoller concludes that the family tree model alone will not explain all the historical developments.
Khowar and Kalasha are among the most archaic Indo-Aryan languages. Both are related to Gandhari and share some very characteristic archaisms (for instance old Indo-Aryan -t-, disappeared from other Indo-Ayran languages, -l/r- in Kalasha and Khowar).
'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [..] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
... greater Dardic influence in the western dialects of Garhwali ...
... Konkani is spoken. It shows a good deal of Dardic (Paisachi) influence ...
... must have covered nearly the whole of the Punjabi ... still show traces of the earlier Dardic languages that they superseded. Still further south, we find traces of Dardic in Sindhi ...
At one period, the Dardic languages spread over a very much wider extent, but before the oncoming 'outer Aryans' as well as owing to the subsequent expansion of the 'Inner Aryans', the Dards fell back to the inaccessible ...
It may be possible that the Dardic speaking Aryans were still in the process of settling in other parts of the western Himalaya in the Mauryan times ...
... the Dradic branch remained in northwest India – the Daradas, Kasmiras, and some of the Khasas (some having been left behind in the Himalayas of Nepal and Kumaon) ...
Based on historical sub-grouping approximations and geographical distribution, Bashir (2003) provides six sub-groups of the Dardic languages ...
In others, traces remain as tonal differences (Khowar buúm, 'earth', Pashai dum, 'smoke') ...
... 'Dardic metathesis,' wherein pre- or postconsonantal 'r' is shifted forward to a preceding syllable ... earliest examples come from the Aśokan inscriptions ... priyadarśi ... as priyadraśi ... dharma as dhrama ... common in modern Dardic languages ...
... drakhat 'tree' ...
The literature on the verb-second construction has concentrated largely on Germanic ... we can compare with the Germanic phenomena, however: Kashmiri ... in two 'Himachali' languages, Kotgarhi and Koci, he finds word-order patterns quite similar ... they are sometimes said to be part of a 'Dardic' subfamily ...
... the verbs, positioned in the middle of the sentences (rather than at the end) intensify the dramatic quality ...