Devanagari, also called Nagari, is a left-to-right abugida (alphasyllabary), based on the ancient Brāhmī script, used in the Indian subcontinent. It was developed in ancient India from the 1st to the 4th century CE and was in regular use by the 7th century CE. The Devanagari script, composed of 47 primary characters including 14 vowels and 33 consonants, is one of the most adopted writing systems in the world, being used for over 120 languages. The ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters.
Urdu —or, more precisely, Modern Standard Urdu—is a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. Urdu is the official national language, and lingua franca, of Pakistan. In India, it is one of 22 constitutionally recognised official languages, having official status in the five states of Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, as well as the national capital territory of Delhi.
Hindustani, also known as Hindi-Urdu and historically known as Hindavi, Dehlavi and Rekhta, is the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving its base primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, a Western Hindi language. The colloquial language became an expression of Indian national unity during the Indian Independence movement but after the Partition of British India in 1947, it was split into two different standardised registers, Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. Hindustani continues to be spoken as the common language of the people of the northern Indian subcontinent, which is reflected in the Hindustani vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.
The Indo-Aryan languages, or Indic languages, are a major language family native to northern Indian subcontinent, and presently found all across South Asia. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family. In the early 21st century, Indo-Aryan languages were spoken by more than 800 million people, primarily in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Moreover, there are large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan speaking communities in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America and Australia. There are about 219 known Indo-Aryan languages in the world.
Languages spoken in 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. 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. India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839).
The Hindi Belt or Hindi Heartland or Hindi Patti, is a linguistic region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern and western India where Hindi is widely spoken. Hindi belt is sometimes also used to refer to nine Indian states whose official language is Hindi and have a Hindi-speaking majority, namely Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and National Capital Territory of Delhi. It is also referred as Hindi-Urdu belt by some Muslim writers.
C. M. Naim is an American scholar of Urdu language and literature. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Rajasthani refers to a group of Indo-Aryan languages and dialects spoken primarily in the state of Rajasthan and adjacent areas of Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in India. There are also Rajasthani-speakers in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab. The Rajasthani language is distinct from neighbouring related Hindi languages as it is a western Indo-Aryan language.
Mewari is one of the major dialects of Rajasthani language of Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by about five million speakers in Rajsamand, Bhilwara, Udaipur, and Chittorgarh districts of Rajasthan state of India. It has SOV word order.
Rahul Sankrityayan, is called the Father of Indian Travelogue Travel literature. He is the one who played a pivotal role to give travelogue a 'literature form', was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, spending forty-five years of his life on travels away from his home.
Doctor Christopher Shackle, FBA is a retired Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia in the University of London, Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia, and also Professor, Department of Study of Religions at that university. He is furthermore the head of the Urdu department at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London, Project Leader at the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Centre for Asian and African Literatures, and a member of the Centre of South Asian Studies.
Colin P. Masica is professor emeritus in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Although ostensibly a specialist in Indo-Aryan languages, his real interest has been in the typological convergence of languages belonging to different linguistic stocks in the South Asian area and beyond, more broadly in this phenomenon in general, and in possible explanations for it and implications of it in connection with both linguistic and cultural history.
Rajasthani literature written in various genres starting from 1000 AD. But, it is generally agreed that modern Rajasthani literature began with the works of Surajmal Misrana. His most important works are the Vansa Bhaskara and the Vir Satsai. The Vans Bhaskar contains accounts of the Rajput princes who ruled in what was then Rajputana, during the lifetime of the poet (1872–1952). The Vir Satsai is a collection of hundreds of couplets.
Sitaram Lalas was a linguist and lexicographer of India.
→Anoop Chandola is an American linguist-anthropologist, originally from Pauri, where he was raised in a priestly Brahmin family.
Devarshi Kala Nath Shastry, is a Sanskrit scholar honoured by the President of India (1998). He is an Indologist and a prolific writer of Sanskrit, Hindi and English, and a well-known linguist, who has contributed to the campaign of evolving technical terminology in Indian languages and ensuring a respectable status to Hindi, the official language of his state and the Indian union.
Chandradhar Sharma Guleri (1883–1922) was a writer and scholar of Hindi, Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali from Jaipur, India. He was born in Jaipur and his father belongs to guler village in Himachal Pradesh hence "Guleri" at the end of the name. Described as a versatile genius, he is known as the author of Usne Kaha Tha, first published in 1915, which is debated to be the first short story in Hindi. He is also remembered for his efforts to preserve the Jantar Mantar Observatory in Jaipur.
Peter E. Hook is professor emeritus in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan.
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries have one of the most important and largest collections of research material pertaining to the study of South Asia in the United States of America. Starting with the nineteenth century, when Sanskrit was first taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the Libraries have collected material for the study of South Asia.
Professor Anvita Abbi is an Indian linguist and scholar of minority languages, known for her studies on tribal languages and other minority languages of South Asia. The Government of India honoured her, in 2013, by awarding her the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for her contributions to the field of linguistics.
