Middle Indo-Aryan languages

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Middle Indo-Aryan
Middle Indic
Geographic
distribution		Northern India
Linguistic classification Indo-European
Glottolog midd1350

The Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Middle Indic languages, sometimes conflated with the Prakrits, which are a stage of Middle Indic) are a historical group of languages of the Indo-Aryan family. They are the descendants of Old Indo-Aryan (OIA; attested through Vedic Sanskrit) and the predecessors of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Bengali and Punjabi.

Contents

The Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) stage is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BCE and 1000 CE, and is often divided into three major subdivisions.

History

The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups: Old Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan languages and Early Modern and Modern Indo-Aryan languages. The classification reflects stages in linguistic development, rather than being strictly chronological. [3] [4]

The Middle Indo-Aryan languages are younger than the Old Indo-Aryan languages [5] but were contemporaneous with the use of Classical Sanskrit, an Old Indo-Aryan language used for literary purposes. [6]

According to Thomas Oberlies, a number of morphophonological and lexical features of Middle Indo-Aryan languages show that they are not direct continuations of Vedic Sanskrit. Instead they descend from other dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Vedic Sanskrit. [3]

Early phase (3rd century BCE)

Middle phase (200 BCE to 700 CE)

Late phase: Apabhraṃśa (700–1500)

General characteristics

The following phonological changes distinguish typical MIA languages from their OIA ancestors: [7]

  1. The replacement of vocalic liquids ṛ and ḷ by a, i or u
  2. The OIA diphthongs ai and au became the monophthongs e and o which were long in open syllables and short in closed syllables.
  3. Long vowels become short in overweight and later pre/post-tonic heavy syllables.
  4. The three sibilants of OIA are reduced to one, either ś (Magadhi) or s (elsewhere).
  5. OIA clusters either became geminates through assimilation (deletion if the output would violate phonotactics) or were split by vowel epenthesis.
  6. Initially, intervocalic aspirated stops spirantised. Later, all other intervocalic stops were deleted, weakened, or voiced.
  7. Dentals (and sometimes retroflexes) are palatalised if directly preceding /j/.
  8. Most final consonants delete except in sandhi junctions. Final m became ṃ instead, which was preserved.

Note that not all of these changes happened in all MIA languages. Archaisms persisted in northwestern Ashokan prakrits like the retention of all 3 OIA sibilants, for example, retentions that would remain in the later Dardic languages.

The following morphological changes distinguish typical MIA languages from their OIA ancestors:

  1. The dual number in nominal declensions was lost.
  2. Consonantal stems were thematicised.
  3. The i-/u- and ī-/ū- declensions were merged into one ī-/ū- declension.
  4. The dative was eliminated and the genitive took on its former functions.
  5. Many different case-endings could be used for one verbal paradigm.
  6. The middle voice eventually disappeared.
  7. mahyaṃ and tubyaṃ became used for genitives and me and te for instrumentals.
  8. New verbal forms based on the present stem coexisted with fossilized forms from OIA.
  9. Active endings replaced passive endings for the passive voice.

A Middle Indo-Aryan innovation are the serial verb constructions that have evolved into complex predicates in modern north Indian languages such as Hindi and Bengali. For example, भाग जा (bhāg jā) 'go run' means run away, पका ले (pakā le) 'take cook' means to cook for oneself, and पका दे (pakā de) 'give cook' means to cook for someone. The second verb restricts the meaning of the main verb or adds a shade of meaning to it. [1] Subsequently, the second verb was grammaticalised further into what is known as a light verb, mainly used to convey lexical aspect distinctions for the main verb.

The innovation is based on Sanskrit atmanepadi (fruit of the action accrues to the doer) and parasmaipadi verbs (fruit of the action accrues to some other than the doer). For example, पका दे (pakā de) 'give cook' has the result of the action (cooked food) going to someone else, and पका ले (pakā le) 'take cook' to the one who is doing the cooking.

Attested languages

Pāli

Pali is the best attested of the Middle Indo-Aryan languages because of the extensive writings of early Buddhists. These include canonical texts, canonical developments such as Abhidhamma, and a thriving commentarial tradition associated with figures such as Buddhaghosa. Early Pāli texts, such as the Sutta-nipāta contain many "Magadhisms" (such as heke for eke; or masculine nominative singular in -e). Pāli continued to be a living second language until well into the second millennium. The Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T. W. Rhys Davids to preserve, edit, and publish texts in Pāli, as well as English translations.

Ardhamāgadhī

Known from a few inscriptions, most importantly the pillars and edicts of Ashoka found in what is now Bihar. [8]

Gāndhārī

Many texts in Kharoṣṭhi script have been discovered in the area centred on the Khyber Pass in what was known in ancient times as Gandhara and the language of the texts came to be called Gāndhārī. These are largely Buddhist texts which parallel the Pāli Canon, but include Mahāyāna texts as well. The language is distinct from other MI dialects.

Related Research Articles

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Prakrit is a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, excluding earlier inscriptions and Pali.

<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.

Pali is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language on the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka as well as the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism.

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

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">Magadha</span> Empire in ancient India

Magadha, also called the Kingdom of Magadha or the Magadha Empire, was a kingdom and empire, and one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas, 'Great Kingdoms' of the Second Urbanization, based in southern Bihar in the eastern Ganges Plain, in Ancient India. Magadha was ruled by the Brihadratha dynasty, the Haryanka dynasty, the Shaishunaga dynasty, the Nanda dynasty, the Mauryan dynasty, the Shunga dynasty and the Kanva dynasty. It lost much of it territories after being defeated by the Satavahanas of Deccan in 28 BC and was reduced to a small principality around Pataliputra. Under the Mauryas, Magadha became a pan-Indian empire, covering large swaths of the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan.

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language. It is sometimes called "Buddhist Sanskrit" or "Mixed Sanskrit".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gandhari language</span> Ancient Indo-Aryan language of Gāndhāra

Gāndhārī is a Prakrit language found mainly in texts dated between the 3rd century BCE and 4th century CE in the region of Gandhāra, located in present day Pakistan’s Potohar region. 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.

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

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamarupi Prakrit</span> Middle Indo-Aryan language used in ancient Kamarupa, Indian subcontinent

Kamarupi Prakrit is the postulated Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) Prakrit language used in ancient Kamarupa. This language is the historical ancestor of the Kamatapuri lects and the modern Assamese language; and can be dated prior to 1250 CE, when the proto-Kamta language, the parent of the Kamatapuri lects, began to develop. Though not substantially proven, the existence of the language that predated the Kamatapuri lects and modern Assamese is widely believed to be descended from it.

Dramatic Prakrits were those standard forms of Prakrit dialects that were used in dramas and other literature in medieval India. They may have once been spoken languages or were based on spoken languages, but continued to be used as literary languages long after they ceased to be spoken. Dramatic Prakrits are important for the study of the development of Indo-Aryan languages, because their usage in plays and literature is always accompanied by a translation in Sanskrit.

Gāthā is a Sanskrit term for 'song' or 'verse', especially referring to any poetic metre which is used in legends, and is not part of the Vedas but peculiar to either Epic Sanskrit or to Prakrit. The word is originally derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit root gai, which means 'to speak, sing, recite or extol', cognate to the Avestan term gatha.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apabhraṃśa</span> Class of Indian languages

Apabhraṃśa is a term used by vaiyākaraṇāḥ since Patañjali to refer to languages spoken in North India before the rise of the modern languages. In Indology, it is used as an umbrella term for the dialects forming the transition between the late Middle and the early Modern Indo-Aryan languages, spanning the period between the 6th and 13th centuries CE. However, these dialects are conventionally included in the Middle Indo-Aryan period. Apabhraṃśa in Sanskrit literally means "corrupt" or "non-grammatical language", that which deviates from the norm of Sanskrit grammar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bishnupriya Manipuri lect</span> Indo-Aryan language spoken in India and Bangladesh

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> History of the languages of India

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern Indo-Aryan languages</span> Language family of South Asia

The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, also known as Māgadhan languages, are spoken throughout the eastern region of the subcontinent, which includes Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bengal region, Tripura, Assam, and Odisha; alongside other regions surrounding the northeastern Himalayan corridor. Bengali is official language of Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak valley of Assam while Assamese and Odia are the official languages of Assam and Odisha, respectively. The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Abahattha, which descends from Magadhan Apabhraṃśa and ultimately from Magadhi Prakrit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Indo-Aryan language</span> Protolanguage of the Indo-Aryan language family

Proto-Indo-Aryan is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Being descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian, it has the characteristics of a Satem language.

Ardhamagadhi Prakrit was a Middle Indo-Aryan language and a Dramatic Prakrit thought to have been spoken in modern-day Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and used in some early Buddhist and Jain Dharma. It was likely a Eastern Indo-Aryan language, related to modern languages like Magadhi and Bhojpuri

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashokan Prakrit</span> Ancient Indo-Aryan dialect continuum

Ashokan Prakrit is the Middle Indo-Aryan dialect continuum used in the Edicts of Ashoka, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire who reigned 268 BCE to 232 BCE. The Edicts are inscriptions on monumental pillars and rocks throughout the Indian subcontinent that cover Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism and espouse Buddhist principles.

The Inner–Outer hypothesis of the subclassification of the Indo-Aryan language family argues for a division of the family into two groups, an Inner core and an Outer periphery, evidenced by shared traits of the languages falling into one of the two groups. Proponents of the theory generally believe the distinction to be the result of gradual migrations of Indo-Aryan speakers into India, with the inner languages representing a second wave of migration speaking a different dialect of Old Indo-Aryan, overtaking the first-wave speakers in the center and relegating them to the outer region.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Shapiro, Michael C. (2001), "Hindi", in: Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present, eds. Jane Garry and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates.
  2. ↑ Bubenik, Vit (2007). "Chapter Six: Prākrits and Apabhraṃśa". In Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 209. ISBN   978-1-135-79711-9.
  3. 1 2 Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (2007-07-26). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN   978-1-135-79711-9.
  4. ↑ "...the MIA languages are not younger than ('classical') Sanskrit. And a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct descendants of Rigvedic Sanskrit, the main basis of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from Rigvedic and in some regards even more archaic." ( Oberlies 2007 :163)
  5. ↑ "The most archaic Old Indo-Aryan is found in Hindu sacred texts called the Vedas, which date to approximately 1500 BCE". Encyclopædia Britannica - Indo-Aryan languages. General characteristics.
  6. ↑ "If in "Sanskrit" we include the Vedic language and all dialects of the Old Indian period, then it is true to say that all the Prakrits are derived from Sanskrit. If on the other hand " Sanskrit " is used more strictly of the Panini-Patanjali language or "Classical Sanskrit," then it is untrue to say that any Prakrit is derived from Sanskrit, except that S'auraseni, the Midland Prakrit, is derived from the Old Indian dialect". Introduction to Prakrit, by Alfred C Woolner. Baptist Mission Press 1917
  7. ↑ Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (2007-07-26). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 163-220.
  8. ↑ South Asian folklore: an encyclopedia : Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, By Peter J. Claus, Sarah Diamond, Margaret Ann Mills, Routledge, 2003, p. 203


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