CHAPTER – 4

LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF INDIA:

LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS

THE population of India as a single

geographical and cultural unit, now
divided into the two separate States of
India and Pakistan, forms one-fifth of the
entire population of the world, and
presents, at first sight, bewildering
variety of cultures, which have come to
India throughout the fifty to sixty
centuries of her long history. The
meticulous and all. inclusive
classification of the languages and
dialects current in India and Burma
(which, until 1937, was politically a part
of India), as given in the Linguistic
Survey of India,' shows a total number of
179 languages and 544 dialects. These
figures are staggering indeed for any
single country or State claiming to be a
nation, but they are to be taken with
some caution and reservation. For
instance, of the above numbers, 116 are
small tribal speeches which mostly
belong to Burma. Then, again, the
consideration of dialects is irrelevant
when we mention the languages to
which they belong, for it is the great
literary languages that really matter.
There are, of course, some minor
languages and dialects, which are either
independent speeches confined to a
particular primitive group, which in
almost all cases affiliate themselves to
some big language, or speeches spread
over vast tracts of the country, which
may have some restricted literary life,
remaining under the shadow of some
connected speech, which claims the
public and official homage of all. The
position of these spoken languages of a
wide prevalence, sometimes over an
entire province, is like that of Provençal
or Celtic Breton in France, which have
no locus stand before
French.

MAIN LITERARY LANGUAGES OF

INDIA: THEIR CLASSIFICATION

Considering these matters, it will be seen

that India has only the following fifteen
great literary languages: (1) Hindi and (2)
Urdu, which are but two styles of the
same Hindustani speech, employing two
totally different scripts and borrowing
words from two different sources, (3)
Bengali, (4) Assamese, (5) Oriya, (6)
Marathi, (7) Gujarati, (8) Sindhi, (9)
Punjabi, (10) Kashmiri, (11) Nepali, (12)
Telugu, (13) Kannada, (14) 'Tamil, and
(15) Malayalam. The various aboriginal
speeches current in the jungles and hills
of the Himalayas, and of eastern, central,
and southern India, like Newari, Khasi,
Garo, Gond, Santali, Maler, Kota, Toda,
etc., as well as those wide-spread and
partially cultivated languages, in some
cases spoken by millions, like Maithili,
Chattisgarhi, Braja-bhakha, Marwari,
etc., all find in one or the other of the
above fifteen their accepted literary
form. Fifteen languages for a population
of about 437 millions (1951) is not a
proposition that should frighten anyone.
These languages, however, fall under the
following two distinct main families, and
a knowledge of one in a particular family
makes the study or acquirement of
another in the same family easier: (1) the
Indo-Aryan or Indo-European or, briefly,
Aryan, and (2) Dravidian. Between them,
they account for the languages of over 90
per cent of the population of India. There
are also two other families which
embrace some of the rather restricted
primitive or aboriginal speeches: (1) Kol
or Austric or Nisada and (2) Sino-Tibetan
or Mongoloid or Kirata. Whereas the
Aryan languages are spoken by 73 per
cent of the total population of India and
Dravidian by 20 per cent, the languages
of the Nisada group account for about 1•3
per cent and the Kirata group for only
0•85 per cent.
The present-day languages of India,
belonging to these four families, have
descended from one or the other of these
four distinct and original source
speeches, which may be described as the
root language or the primitive or mother
speech for that speech family. Thus, we
have Aryan languages like Bengali and
Marathi which at the present day are
hardly mutually intelligible, except for
some common inherited words and
forms and for their largely borrowed
vocabulary from Sanskrit; but both of
these ultimately go back to a single
speech, the Old Indo-Aryan Vedic
language, from which both have
developed in the course of twenty
centuries. The Dravidian speeches,
similarly, go back to a common
Dravidian which may be called
'Primitive Dravidian', and which was
probably an undivided speech about
2000 B.C. The Austric or Nisada dialects
are similarly manifestations of a common
archetype; and the Kirata speeches of the
present day can be reduced, if not to a
single proto-Sino-Tibetan, at least to a
group of closely connected dialects
belonging to the same Sino-Tibetan
family.

Before proceeding to reconstruct the

linguistic history of India, it will be
necessary to take stock of the existing
languages as they are on the face of the
country, not only the great literary
languages enumerated above, but also the
genetically connected speeches and the
various aboriginal or primitive speeches.
It would be best to make a general survey
of the various speeches of India, family
by family, and give also indications of
more close or intimate groupings within
the family.

I. THE ARYAN LANGUAGES

(A) North-Western Group: (1) Hindi or

Landa or Western Punjabi, 8}: (2) Sindhi
(with Kachhi), 4.
(B) Central Group: (3) Hindi proper or
Western Hindi (including 'Vernacular
Hindustani', Khari-boli, with its two
literary forms High-Hindi and Urdu, and
Bangaru; and Braja-bhakha (Braja-bhasä),
Kanauji, and Bundeli), *41; (4) Punjabi or
Eastern Punjabi, 134: (5)
RajasthaniGujarati, consisting of (a)
Gujarati, 11; (b) Rajasthani dialects, 14;
and (c) Bhili dialects, 2.
(C) East-Central (Mediate) Group: (6)
Kosali or Eastern Hindi (Awadhi,
Bagheli, and Chattisgarhi), #22%.
(D) Eastern Group: (7) Oriya, 11; (8)
Bengali, 53%: (9) Assamese, 2; (10) the
Bihari speeches, *37, viz. (a) Maithili, *10;
(b) Magahi, *6%; and (c) Bhojpuriya,
*20%. (The Halbi speech current in
Bastar District in Madhya Pradesh is
usually connected with Marathi, but it
would appear to be a separate member of
the Eastern Group.) (E) Northern or
Pahari Group: (Il) Eastern Pahari or
Nepali, 6; (12) Central Pahari, including
Garhwali and Kumauni, *1; and (13)
Western Pahari dialects, 2.
(F) Southern Group: (14) Marathi, 21
(with Konkani, *14).
DARDIC SPEECHES

The above Indo-Aryan languages and

dialects all go back to the speech of the
period of the Rg-Veda as their ultimate
source. Side by side with these, there is
another group of Aryan speeches which
is slightly different from the Vedic.
These are the Dardic speeches like
Kashmiri, Shina, Bashgali, Pashai, Wai-
ala, etc. The ancient Aryan speech, the
source of both the Vedic and the Avestic
languages, modified itself into three
distinct groups: (1) Indo-Aryan, which
came into India and devel. oped there;
(2) Iranian, the form it took up in Iran;
and (3) Dardic (or Pisaca), current in the
extreme north-west frontier of India,
among tribes which until recently
resisted Islam of their Afghan and
Iranian neighbours, and hence were
known as kafirs. Within the frontiers of
India, there are a number of Iranian
speeches current-_for example, Pashto in
the North. West Frontier Province as
well as in Eastern Afghanistan and
Baluchistan; Balochi in Baluchistan and
Sind; and Kohistani in the north-western
frontier within a limited area. A great
many scholars hold the view that the
Dardic speeches should be regarded as a
group or sub-branch of Indo. Aryan itself
and not as an independent branch under
Aryan (i.e. IndoIranian). But the present
writer thinks, with the late Sir George
Grierson, who first put the Dardic
languages on the map, that the Dardic
languages should be recognized
separately, since they show
characteristics which partake of the
nature of both Indo-Aryan and Indo-
Iranian, though, geographically, they
belong more to India than Iran, and from
ancient times have come under the
influence of Sanskrit. Thus among the
Chitralis their supreme deity is Im-ra,
which is the Sanskrit word 'Yama-raja':
and one is occasionally startled by a good
many words retaining almost unchanged
their original Vedic or Sanskrit forms
among the tribesmen of the north-west.
Numerically, the most important Dardic
dialects are Shina (68,000) and Kashmiri
(1,500,000). Kashmir very early came to
be affiliated to the cultural world of
Sanskritic India, and distinguished itself
for its Sanskrit learning. Both Sanskrit
and Kashmiri languages were formerly
written in the Sarada character, a form of
Indian writing which now survives in
Gurumukhi of the Punjab and which
resembles Devanāgari very closely. In the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
Kashmiris were largely converted to
Islam, and subsequently they accepted
the Persian script. There is a little
literature in Kashmiri.
EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN INDO
ARYAN LANGUAGES

The Old Indo-Aryan speech, represented

by the language of the Rg-Veda, in its
various closely related dialects, was
brought into India by the invading
'Aryans' sometime during the second half
of the second millennium B.C. It spread
eastward from the Punjab into the Ganga
valley; and by 600 .C., it established itself
over the greater part of North India,
from eastern Afghanistan to Bengal. In
the process of its expansion, it was
largely adopted by the conquered or the
culturally influenced preAryan peoples
speaking dialects of the Dravidian,
Nisada, and Kirâta groups. Through both
normal development and the influence of
the languages of the pre-Aryan peoples
on it, the Aryan speech underwent a
rapid modification; and by 600 B..,
particularly in the eastern Ganga valley,
which was farthest away from the Aryan
nidus in northern Punjab, it entered into
the second phase of its history, the
'Middle Indo-Aryan' phase, which
continued right down to about A.D:
1000, when the present 'New IndoAryan
phase came into being.
In the Middle Indo-Aryan phase,
represented by Pali, the old Prakrits of
the earliest inscriptions, and the various
later Prakrit dialects found in the laina
and other literature, in the Sanskrit
drama, as well as in the Apabhramsa or
the literary speech which became very
prominent after A.D. 800, we note a
gradual decay of sounds and forms of Old
Indo-Aryan. The elaborate inflexional
system of the Old Indo-Aryan speech
came to be progressively simplified in
Middle Indo-Aryan, and further
modifications took place in New Indo-
Aryan. In the Old Indo-Aryan period,
there were tribal dialects which, with
the expansion of the Aryan tribes in the
east and south, became established
regional forms of a single undivided
Aryan speech. By 700 B.C., three such
regional forms are specifically mentioned
in the Brähmana literature: (1) Udicya or
Northern, which denoted the form
spoken in North-West Punjab; (2)
Madhyadesiya or 'the Mid-land' speech,
as current in the tracts corresponding to
eastern Punjab and western U.P.; and (3)
Prâcya or Eastern, under which came the
dialects of the present-day Oudh, eastern
U.P., and Bihar. There was probably a
fourth dialect group, the Daksinatya or
Southern, which was spreading by way
of southern Rajputana and Malwa
towards Deccan. These regional dialect
groups of 700 .c. became transformed
into various Prakrit speeches of the
middle of the first millennium A.D.,
speeches which took their names from
the areas where they were current. For
example, Sauraseni owes its name to
Sürasena (western U.P. and eastern
Punjab); Magadhi, to Magadha (Bihar)-
this Magadhi spread into Bengal, Assam,
and Orissa; and Ardha-Magadhi, to the
territory between these two. We know
of other regional Prakrits and
Apabhramsas like Avanti (Malwa), Täkki
(North Punjab), Kekaya (West Punjab),
Vracada. (Sind), Gaudi (North Bengal),
Audri (Orissa), etc. From these regional
dialects of the Prakrit period have come
into being, through the various local
Apabhramsas, the presentday Indo-
Aryan languages and dialects. It will be
convenient to consider these in order of
affiliation, beginning from the north-
west.

The regional Prakrits of the northwest

fall into three groups: those of western
Punjab, those of Sind, and those of
central and eastern Punjab. The western
Punjab dialects now form a group known
as Hindki and Lahnda. They did not
develop any literary form, although a
few books were written in various forms
of Western Punjabi, particularly notable
being the Janamsakhi of the Sikhs, and
there is a small literature of songs and
ballads in them. The speakers of Western
Punjabi are now quite content to use for
literature the much better cultivated
Eastern Punjabi, or the Urdu form of the
great Hindi speech current in the Ganga
valley. Eastern Punjabi is largely
cultivated by the Sikhs who use the
Gurumukhi script for it, but both Hindi
and Urdu are so strong in the Punjab that
the local dialects have only a secondary
existence. Punjabis, with a love for their
provincial speech, use the Perso-Arabic
script, if they are Muslims, and
Devanagari, if they are Hindus. There is
quite a good volume of literature in print
in the Punjabi language in all the three
scripts. Sindhi has an independent
existence with some literature. Till the
end of the nineteenth century, Sindhi
was written indifferently in an Indian
alphabet related to the Sarada of
Kashmir, or in a modified form of Persian
alphabet, and sometimes in Gurumukhi,
but later, mainly at the instance of
Persianknowing Hindu officials of the
early British regime in Sind, quite an
elaborate alphabet of Perso-Arabic origin
was adopted for Sindhi. Sindhis who
have migrated to India after the
Independence are progressively adopting
Devanagari script for Sindhi.
East of Punjab, the great Hindi or
Western Hindi speech extends right up
to central Uttar Pradesh. It has the
following six dialects: In the east, there
are Kanauji, Braja-bhakha, and Bundeli;
and in the west, Khari-boli of Delhi,
Bangaru or Jatu to the west and north of
Delhi, and Vernacular Hindustani in
Rohilkhand and Meerut subdivisions of
Uttar Pradesh and in the contiguous
tracts of eastern Punjab. The Khari-boli,
the standard speech of Delhi, is the basis
of the great literary language and lingua
franca of North India, which has taken
up various names and forms, as Hindi,
Hindustani (or Hindusthani), Urdu, and
Dani. When written in the Devanagari
character and showing a preference for
indignous and Sanskrit words, the
language is known as Hindi; and Hindus
in North India, from the Punjab to the
border of Bengal, and in Central India
have accepted this Hindi as their
language of literature and of public life.
Urdu is the Muslim form of this Hindi
language which employs the Persian
script, and has cultivated an Arabic and
Persian vocabulary, excluding, as far as
practicable, all Sanskrit and indigenous
words. Hindustani is the basic speech
underlying both Hindi and Urdu, and in
this sense, it is now the official language
of India (though called Hindi), side by
side with, and gradually replacing,
English. But in practice, Hindustani
means only a form of Urdu with just a
smaller admixture of Persian and Arabic
words and only an occasional
employment of a Sanskrit vocable.
The Hindi speech, in its native Hindi
form or Muslim Urdu form, now
dominates the Indian scene. From the
Punjab to the frontiers of Bengal and
right down to the Deccan, people
speaking a dozen of the various Arvan
languages and dialects have now
accepted this Hindi (or its Urdu form) as
their literary language and call
themselves 'Hindi speakers'. Thus
millions of people, speaking at home the
various dialects of Punjabi (both Eastern
and Western), of Rajasthani (in
Rajasthan and Malwa), of Kosali, or
certain hill dialects (like Garhwali and
Kumauni), and the Bihari dialects, do not
usually study or cultivate their language,
except to a very limited extent, but seek
to express themselves through Hindi or
Urdu. In this way, although Western
Hindi proper is current among only 41
millions as their mother-tongue or
home-language, the two literary forms of
Khari-boli, or popular Hindusthari, claim
the homage of over 140 millions of
people. Besides, being the language of the
central part of the country, and. having
been connected for two centuries with
the centralized Mogul administration
with its seat at Delhi, Hindi has spread
over the greater part of Aryan India
without any propaganda, and some 260
millions of Indo-Aryan speakers in India
find their most natural lingua franca in
it. Looked at from these aspects, Hindi
can claim to be the third great language
of the modern world, coming after North
Chinese and English. Since speakers of a
dozen languages have thus accepted
Hindi with its new status, the earlier
literatures in these different North
Indian dialects have now all been
grouped within Hindi literature. Early
Hindi literature is thus made to include
not only the literary productions in the
genuine Hindi or Western Hindi dialects,
like Braja-bhakha, Bundeli, and Khari-
boli, as well as Dani (the Western Hindi
and Punjabi dialects which were
established in the Deccan by the Muslim
conquerors from Delhi and Punjab areas
from the fourteenth century onwards),
but also the literatures of Early Punjabi,
of Awadhi (which belongs to the Kosala
group of speeches), of Bhojpuri and
Maithili (which are the languages of the
Bihari group), of Marwari and other
Rajasthani dialects (as, for example, in
the poems of Mirabaï of Chitore), etc.
Contiguous to the Punjabi and Hindi
areas is the tract of Rajasthan, Malwa,
and Gujarat. Here, a number of dialects
are spoken, such as Marwari in its
various forms, Dhundhari or Jaypuri,
Mewari, and Malavi. 'There is a little
literature in Jaypuri. Closely connected
with the Marwari form of Rajasthani is
Gujarati. Up to A.D. 1600, Marwari and
Gujarati formed virtually one language;
but the people of Gujarat cultivated their
own speech and made it an important
literary language of modern India. 'The
Marwaris developed a new literary
speech known as Dingal, but, gradually,
along with the speakers of other forms of
Rajasthani and Malavi, they came under
the spell of Braja-bhakha and Hindi, and
have accepted Hindi as their literary
language. At present, some enthusiasm is
seen in favour of reviving Marwari as a
new literary form of Rajasthani, as a
language for Rajasthan. The dialects of
Bhili and Khandeshi are connected with
Rajasthani, and these are not cultivated.
Khandeshi is much mixed up with
Marathi. In Cutch, the local dialect is a
form of Sindhi, but the upper classes
cultivate Gujarati. One form of
Rajasthani is found in the Punjab and
Kashmir among tribes known as the
Gujars, descended from the ancient
Guriaras, who are semi-nomadic
herdsmen and shepherds. Another form
of Rajasthani-Gujarati, known as
Saurastri, is the language of a
considerable community of weavers and
tradesmen settled in the Telugu and
Tamil lands of the South; these Saurastri
speakers are now trying to revive and
establish their dialect for literary
purposes.

East of the Western Hindi area, we have

the tract of Eastern Hindi dialects for
which a better name is Kosali. These
include Awadhi or Baiswari, the
language of Awadh (or Kosala, to give its
ancient name), Bagheli or Baghelkhandi,
and Chattisgarhi of eastern Madhya
Pradesh (the ancient Daksina Kosala or
Maha-Kosala). Kosali, in its Awadhi
form, has given to India one of her
greatest medieval poets and religious
men, namely, Tulasidasa, regarded as one
of the supreme poets in Hindi, taking
Hindi in its wider, all-inclusive sense.
Further to the east, we have the Eastern
or Magadhan dialects, all of which are
believed to have sprung ultimately from
the Mägadhi Prakrit. These Magadhan
dialects fall into three groups: (a)
Western (Bhoipuri and Sadani or Chota-
Nagpuri) : (b) Central (Maithili of North
Bihar and Magahi of South Bihar, i.e.
Patna, Gaya, and Hazaribagh Districts) ;
and (c) Eastern (Assamese, Bengali, and
Oriya). While the speakers of the
Western and Central groups have now
accepted Hindi as their literary language,
and are studying and cultivating it, the
three Eastern Magadhan speeches have
each developed the status of an
independent language. Of these, Bengali
has an importance which requires more
than a passing mention. It is current
among more than 53 million people, and
is a highly developed and subtle
language, with a rich literature. It is able
to express ancient and modern thought
with ease and elegance. The nineteenth
and twentieth centuries produced an
array of brilliant writers in Bengali, who
made it the foremost language in India,
and Rabindranath 'Tagore,
unquestionably one of the greatest
literary figures of the world, employed
Bengali in his writings and only latterly
English. Assamese is spoken by some 2
millions only, and is very closely related
to Bengali- in fact, Old Assamese and
Old Bengali formed practically one
language. But because Assam remained a
Hindu State almost all through, and was
the meeting ground of the Mongoloid
peoples and the Aryans, Assamese has
had an independent history, with its
remarkable Burañiis or historical
literature and its literature of Vaisnava
inspiration initiated by the great Sankara
Deva and others in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Oriya also resembles
Bengali very much, but its written
character, which has deviated largely
from the common alphabet used in early
times throughout the whole of eastern
India (eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Nepal, Assam, Bengal, and Orissa) from
the fifteenth century onwards, makes it
look different from its immediate sisters.
Its literature is expressive of the history
and culture of Orissa as a Hindu
kingdom, which maintained its
independence against the Mohammedan
rulers of Bengal and the Deccan up to the
second half of the sixteenth century.
There now remain two other groaps of
the New Indo-Aryan languages to be
considered. We have in the North the
Himalayan or Pahari group, in three sub-
groups: (a) Western Himalayan,
consisting of a large number of small
dialects like Chameali, Kului, Sirmauri,
Jaunsari, Kiunthali, Mandeali, etc.,
speakers of which are all taking to Hindi
as their literary language; (b) Central
Himalayan, consisting of the two
speeches, Garhwali and Kumauni, now
equally giving their allegiance to Hindi;
and (c) Eastern Himalayan, consisting of
Gorkhali or Parbatiya or Nepali, the
official language of Nepal. It was
established by the Gurkhas in Nepal, and
it flourishes as an independent language,
though allied to Hindi. In the South, we
have a group represented by Marathi (its
standard form being the language of
Poona), with a well-developed literature,
Konkani of Goa and the Bombay coast,
which is virtually a form of Marathi (the
Goanese dialect of it employing the
Roman character and the Portuguese
way of spelling), and Halba (an
uncultivated dialect, much mixed with
Chattisgarhi and Oriya, current in the
Bastar region in Madhya Pradesh). There
are two other branches of the New Indo-
Aryan speeches current outside India.
One is Sinhalese, spoken by some two-
thirds of the people of Ceylon, with its
offshoot, Maldivan, the language of the
Maldive Islands. Sinhalese appears to
have been taken to the island by the
Indian emigrants from Kathiawar and
South Sind, as far back as the sixth
century B.C., according to one early
tradition. Then there is the group of
Gipsy dialects found in Persia, Armenia,
Palestine, and all over Europe. These
have a literature of folk-songs, but
otherwise they have not been much
cultivated. They are descended from a
Prakrit speech from northwestern India,
which spread out during the closing
centuries of the first millennium b.c.
Their agreement with Hindi and other
New Indo-Aryan languages is
remarkable.

II. THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES

It is rather surprising that the Dravidian

languages, which are current among
about 70 million people, have not
developed a common medium or linking
language among themselves, like Hindi
among the speakers of Aryan. In ancient
and medieval times, Sanskrit, and
sometimes the Prakrits, formed this
inter-lingual link. At the present day,
Hindi is widely understood in the South,
but the spread of English in the urban
areas of Dravidian India is quite
remarkable.

Of the Dravidian languages, Telugu, with

26 millions, is spoken by the largest
number. It is a mellifluous language, and
it has been described as 'the Italian of the
East. Its literary history commences from
the tenth century A.D. Kannada is a
language with a long history, although it
is spoken by a little over 10 millions. Its
oldest specimens are in the form of a few
sentences spoken by some Indian
characters in a Greek drama, manuscript
fragments of which, dating from the
second century A.D., have been found in
Egypt. There is a series of inscriptions in
Kannada dating from the sixth century
A.D., and its literature commences from
the ninth. The language discloses two
stages in its history--the Old or Early
Kannada (Pale-gannada or Hale-
gannada) and Middle and Modern
Kannada (Hosagannada).

Tamil, current among some 23 to 24

millions in India, Ceylon, and abroad, is,
in a way, the representative Dravidian
speech, in that it has preserved the spirit
of the Dravidian in a purer form than the
other speeches of the same family.
Genuine Dravidian roots and words have
been very largely preserved in Tamil; it
was not influenced by Sanskrit to the
same extent as Telugu, Kannada, and
Malayalam were. Yet, it has a large
Aryan element, though Sanskrit words
are not generally preserved in their
correct form, owing to the peculiar
phonetic system of Tamil. Not a few
words considered pure Dravidian are
really transformed Sanskrit words. Tamil
has the oldest and the most independent
type of literature among the Dravidian
languages, and the beginnings of this
literature go back to the centuries round
about the birth of Christ, although Tamil
orthography and the fixing or
standardization of the Old Tamil (Cen-
Tamiz) took place only some centuries
later. In originality and extent, and in
reflecting the pre-Aryan Dravidian
culture of the South, Old Tamil literature
is remarkable. The early Tamil religious
literature, as in the devotional songs and
poems of the sittar (siddhas) or
Näyanmars, i.e. Saiva saints, and of the
Azhvärs (Alvärs) or Vaisnava devotees,
forms one of the greatest and most
precious records in the domain of Indian
spiritual experience. Malayalam, spoken
by some 9 millions, is really an offshoot
of Old Tamil, and it started as an
independent language only from the
fifteenth century. More than its elder
sister Tamil and the other Dravidian
languages, Malayalam favours pure
Sanskrit words. It has a very vigorous
literary life.

The other Dravidian languages of India

are uncultivated speeches which never
developed an advanced literary life, as
the peoples speaking them were
backward. Among these, we have Tulu
(152,000) allied to Kannada, Kodagu
(45,000) of Coorg, and Toda (600) near
Ootacamund in the South, besides a few
others; the great Gondi dialect of North
Deccan current among nearly two
million people, but split up through the
spread of Hindi dialects, Marathi, and
Telugu within Gondi territory: Kui or
Kandh (586,000) in Orissa; Kurukh or
Oraon (1,038,000) in Chota Nagpur;
Maler or Malpahari (71,000) in the
Rajmahal Hills; and Brahui (207,000) in
Baluchistan, which has come to be
influenced by Balochi, Persian, and
Sindhi. The ultimate passing away of
these uncultivated Dravidian languages
appears to be inevitable.

III. THE AUSTRIC LANGUAGES

The Austric, languages are now spoken
by some 5 million people in central and
eastern India classed as Adivasis or
aboriginals. The original Austric
language, believed to have taken form in
India, falls into two great groups: (1)
Austro-Asiatic and (2) Austro-Nesian. At
the present day, they are current from
central India through Burma, Indo
China, Malaya, and the islands of the
Indian Archipelago, right through to the
Eastern Pacific, Hawaii Islands, and New
Zealand. The Austric languages in India,
like most other Austric speeches
prevailing on the continent of Asia in the
southeast, are of the Austro-Asiatic
branch. They belong largely to the Kol or
Munda group, of which the most
important are Santali, Mundari, Ho,
Birhor, Bhumij, Kurku, Sabara, and
Gadaba. Besides, we have Nicobarese,
spoken by about 10,000 people in the
Nicobar Islands; and Khasi in Assam,
spoken by some 234,000, which is related
immediately to the Mon-Khmer group,
current in Burma, Indo China, and
Malaya.

The Santals represent the largest group of

Austro-Asiatic speakers in India,
numbering between 25 and 3 millions,
and are the largest single aboriginal
group in the Indian body politic. They
are scattered over Chota Nagpur and
Bihar, Orissa, western and northern
Bengal, and Assam, with a few solid
blocks only in the Santal Parganas. They
have a remarkable literature of folk-tales
and songs, but as their solidarity has been
split up, they are forced to learn local
languages like Bengali, Oriya, the Bihari
dialects, and Assamese, and ultimately
their merging into Aryan-speaking
neighbours is inevitable, unless a strong
national or cultural movement, aided by
the governments, is fostered. The same
may be said of the Mundas (650,000),
speaking Mundari with their centre at
Ranchi, the Hos in Singhbhum (450,000),
and of the other lesser tribes mentioned
above. At one time, these Austric-
speaking or Nisada tribes extended over
the whole of North India, probably from
Kashmir right up to Burma, and they
spread further to the south and east; they
were also to be found in South India. But
now we find just a fow islands of Austric
speech in central and eastern India and
in the southern slopes of the Himalayas,
in and to the west of Nepal, where a few
Mongoloid dialects that have supplanted
the Austric dialects show some
characteristics of the latter.

IV. THE MONGOLOID LANGUAGES

We come finally to the Mongoloids of

India, the Kirátas, a people resembling in
their features the well-known 'Mongol'
peoples of Central, North, and Western
Asia--those speaking the Sino-Tibetan,
Ural-Altaic, and Hyperborean languages,
like the Chinese, the Siamese, the
Burmese, and the Tibetans, on the one
hand, and the Turks, the Mongols, the
Manchus, and peoples like the Koreans,
the Japanese, the Kamchadals, etc., on
the other. It seems likely that, from at
least the beginning of the first
millennium B.c., Kirata tribes,
infiltrating themselves from the east
through Assam, occupied the southern
slopes of the Himalayas as far west as the
Punjab, and gradually spread to the
plains of North Bihar and North Bengal,
and also to East Bengal and Assam. The
Newars in Nepal quite early adopted an
Indian alphabet, although they retained
their own Tibeto-Burman language.
They preserved the Sanskrit literature of
Mahäyäna Buddhism, and built up a
great art on foundations received from
Bengal and Bihar. The Bodos, another
important tribe of the Indo-Mongoloids,
at one time occupied the whole of North
and East Bengal and the Brahmaputra
valley. Now their language has been split
up and is in fragments, while as a people
they have largely merged into the
Bengali and Assamese speakers.

At the present day, the Kirata speeches

in India can be classified into the
following groups: (1) the Bodo group,
represented by the Tipras of Tripura
State, the Garos, the Dimasa or
Kachharis, and various small groups like
the Chutias, the Rabhas, the Meches, and
the Koches in Assam and North Bengal.
The Christian missionaries have sought
to preserve Garo, but the other forms of
Bodo speech are fast disappearing. (2)
The Naga group, which is closely related
to the Bodo, is confined to less than one
lakh of people, and has nearly a score of
dialects which are frequently mutually
unintelligible, so that Assamese, in some
places, forms a lingua franca among the
Nagas. (3) The Kuki-Chin languages,
spoken in the area south of the Naga
Hills, the most important of which is
Manipuri or Meithei, the official
language of the State of Manipur, which
is now current among about 4 lakhs of
people. It is written in Bengali
characters, and there is a growing
literature in it. It may be noted here that
Khasi, the next important nonAryan
language in East India; although spoken
by a Kirata people, is really a speech of
the Austric family. (4) Mikir, spoken in
the region to the south of the
Brahmaputra between the Khasi and
Naga Hills, is closely allied to Naga and
Kuki-Chin. (5) The North Assam group,
spoken by small tribes in the Himalayan
slopes north of the Brahmaputra, like
Abor, Miri, Aka, and Dafla, as well as
Mishmi. (6) The various dialects of
Sikkim, Darieeling, and Nepal, among
which the only cultivated speeches are
Newari of Nepal and Lepcha of Sikkim
and Darjeeling areas. These are gradually
yielding before the Nepali. (7) Besides
the above, Bhutanese and Sikkimese in
the east and the language of Lahoul and
Ladakh in the west are really forms of
Tibetan, which have been brought to
India by Tibetan immigrants in recent
centuries.

Over and above the languages belonging

to the above four families, we have to
mention the Burushaski or Khazuna
language, spoken by some 26,000 people
in Hunza and Nagyr, north of Kashmir. It
stands by itself, and no connection with
any other speech family, current within
India or outside, has been established
with this language, though its connection
with the Caucasic Georgian or Gresinin
has been suggested. Burushaki is
somehow holding its own, but as the
people speaking it have accepted Islam, it
is now coming more and more under the
influence of Persian and other Iranian
languages which are dominant in that
area.

OTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGES

CURRENT IN INDIA

In any consideration of the languages of

India, we should not omit Persian,
Arabic, and English. Although these
languages are not native to the country,
yet they have been studied by hundreds
and thousands of Indians for centuries as
languages of culture and religion,
administration and education. Arabic and
Persian are what have been regarded as
'Islamic languages, and English, for the
last century and a half at least, in
addition to its being the language of
administration, has been the medium for
the progressive modernization of the
Indian mind. With the restriction of the
power of Islam in India, Persian and
Arabic are losing their former pre-
eminence, and, the emergence of India as
an independent country will, perhaps,
make the use of English much more
restricted. Persian exerted a tremendous
influence upon its cousin speeches in
North India during the last 600 years,
and Arabic had some indirect influence,
mainly in the matter of vocabulary,
through Persian. English has been,
similarly, influencing all the languages of
India, not only as to vocabulary in
administration and science, but also in
idiom and syntax.

THE SPECIAL POSITION OF

SANSKRIT

We may conclude this brief survey of the

languages in India with a reference to the
special position that Sanskrit occupies in
the history and culture of India. Ever
since the formation of the Hindu or
Indian people. centuries before Christ,
the Sanskrit language became
inextricably linked up with this people as
the repository and expression of their life
and thought. Taking a sober view of
Hindu antiquity, Sanskrit has served the
Indian people for more than three
thousand years. From the Vedas onwards
right down to the present age, the
Sanskrit tradition in the Indian scene has
remained uninterrupted; and in spite of
the evil days on which Sanskrit, like all
purely intellectual and cultural studies,
has fallen, the Sanskrit tradition still
continues to be effective within its own
sphere.

In considering Sanskrit, we have to note

two great facts so far as the present-day
India is concerned. Firstly, Sanskrit has
been, and still continues to be, the one
great unifying factor for the people of
India. India is a multiracial and a
polyglot country, and in spite of a basic
Indianism which embraces all, there is a
bewildering diversity (though in non-
essentials) in the spiritual approach of
the Indian peoples. But the basic
character of India, her great all India
background, her Indianism, her Bharata-
dharma, or Bharata-yana, is linked up
with Sanskrit.

There are over a dozen important

languages now current among the people
of India, some of which are spoken by
millions and millions of people. On the
basis of languages as one of the
fundamentals of nationalism, particularly
of the modern type, it would have been
quite easy and just in the nature of things
for the people of India to have split up
into a number of distinct nations, each
with its own language. But transcending
the diversity of language is the cultural
unity which is shared in by all the
various linguistic communities of India
through Sanskrit. With the development
of Prakrits on the one hand and the use
of the Dravidian languages for literature
on the other, and particularly with the
strong feeling for their regional
languages which is now becoming so
very evident in the Indian scene in
recent years, especially after
Independence, certain fissiparous
tendencies, jeopardizing the unity of
India as a single cultural and political
unit, are coming to the surface as a most
disturbing thing in Indian life and
politics. Sanskrit and Sanskrit alone can
effectively meet this danger as it has
created a single Indian culture and
civilization. The primary importance of
Sanskrit in not only maintaining, but also
strengthening Indian cultural and
political unity is comparable to the rôle
which the Chinese system of writing
plays in keeping intact the cultural and
political unity of China, for China is, as
much as India, a land of many languages
which are generally incorrectly
described as dialects.

Apart from this very vital matter,

Sanskrit is a great treasure house for all
Indian literary languages to draw their
words of higher culture from. Modern
Indian literary languages, whether Aryan
or Dravidian, are no longer 'building
languages, i.e. they do not create new
words with their own native elements.
With Sanskrit in the background and
being nurtured in the bosom of Sanskrit,
they have all become 'borrowing
languages'. Any word in a Sanskrit book
or in the Sanskrit dictionary is a
prospective Bengali or Telugu, Marathi
or Malayalam word. The much-needed
development of scientific and
technological vocabulary will mean a
greater and still greater place for Sanskrit
in modern Indian intellectual and
cultural life. Further, Sanskrit, though it
is not a spoken language of any region or
group of people, as other regional
languages are, is widely understood and
is still used in speeches on special
occasions and in conferences, as well as
in religiophilosophical discussions in
orthodox circles. There are a
considerable number of people who can
read and write Sanskrit with ease, and
many of them speak it fluently. There are
also a few Sanskrit journals, and works
continue to be produced in Sanskrit.
Thus, Sanskrit is a still dynamic, current
language. These and many other weighty
reasons will make the place of Sanskrit so
very vital in India, a place which far
transcends in extent and depth that of
Greek and Latin for Europe.

The rôle of Sanskrit in the lands of

Greater India is also well known. About
A.D. 500, if a man could speak Sanskrit,
thanks to Brähmanism and Buddhism
being spread over half of Asia, he could
easily make his way from Western Asia,
through India, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and
IndoChina right down through the
islands of Indonesia, on the one hand,
and from Tibet and China to Korea and
Japan, on the other. The Sanskrit leaven
has been very potent not only in all these
lands, i.e. Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Laos,
Champa, Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and Bali,
but also in other important cultural areas
of Asia, viz. China with Korea and Japan.
In the eastern Arab world and also in
Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia,
during the early centuries of the
development of Islamic culture, Sanskrit
had an important role to play. The
discovery of Sanskrit by Europe, since
the great announcement of Sir William
Jones in 1786, in the Asiatic Society of
Calcutta, of its affinity to European
languages, has brought in a revolution in
our approach to the study of the origin
and history of the human race by
rehabilitating the primitive Indo-
European world and all its remifications.
This is a matter, however, which takes us
beyond the immediate scope of a
consideration of the languages of India.
However, it is clear that Sanskrit has still
a great and dynamic part to play both in
the national as well as international
fields, and if recognized as the national
language for India and developed on
modern lines may yet serve as a language
of culture and science, at least to India,
Farther India, and other SouthEast Asian
countries which were at one time under
the sway of Sanskrit.

WRITING IN INDIA: INDIAN

ALBHABETS

The art of writing goes back to a very

ancient time in India, but although there
are many specimens of writing,
beginning from prehistoric times, we are
not in a position to utilize them, as these
have still remained a sealed book to us.
Leaving aside the various marks on
pottery and on implements which have
been found in the prehistoric remains in
the Deccan and South India, and also
certain problematic inscriptions in
eastern part of central India, which may
or may not be real writing, we may say
that a system of writing was current
already among the people who built up
the prehistoric Indus valley civilization
of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Among
the most characteristic remains of this
ancient civilization of India are quite a
large number of inscribed seals, on
which a few letters of an unknown script
occur. The various signs that occur on
seals available so far have been listed,
and certain conclusions have been
arrived at about the likely character or
nature of this writing. But,
unfortunately, the absence of a bilingual
text has prevented any effective
decipherment of the seals so far.

From Mohenjo-daro and Harappã (c.

2500-1500 B.c.) to the Maura period
(about 300 B.c.) is a big jump; yet we
have no vestiges of writing in between.
In the pre-Asokan and Asokan
inscriptions, we find a fully developed
system of writing, in which the Aryan
dialects, then current in North India, are
found to be written. This script, named
Brahri, is a full and perfectly legible
alphabet, and it is the oldest alphabet
that we can associate with the Aryan
languages of India. Of course, the
language used in old inscriptions (of
Maurya times) in this script is mainly
forms of Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrit,
and only in a few comparatively later
specimens (e.g. the Ghosundi stone
inscription of about the second half of
the first century .C., the Ayodhya stone
inscription of Dhanadeva of about the
first century A.D., and the Junagad rock
inscription of Rudradaman of the second
century A.D.), do we find Sanskrit used.
But, as a matter of fact, this Brähmi
alphabet, which was current in about
A.D. 300 throughout the greater part of
India, was employed to write not only
the Prakrit vernaculars of the period, but
also Sanskrit, including the Vedic, as we
can quite reasonably presume. This
Brähmi script is the national alphabet of
India, the unbroken development of
which we find from about 300 BC down
to our day.
There is another alphabet found in use in
India in the Maura period and for some
subsequent centuries; this is the
Kharosthi script." This script was
confined to the north-west of India, and
it differed from the Brahmi in some
important respects. Brahmi was written
from left to right (it is supposed
originally it was written in the
boustrophedon style), while Kharosthi
writing went from right to left. Then,
again, Kharosthi did not indicate the
long vowels. However, both of them did
not write the vowels in full when they
came after the consonants. The shapes of
the letters in the two scripts were in the
same style- they were very simple; but
while the Brahmi letters stood straight,
the Kharosthi ones were slightly slanted.
The Kharosthi script never took root in
the Indian soil, although it had a
flourishing time in writing Indian
dialects throughout the Punjab and
North-West Frontier Province, and was
taken to Khotan by the Indian colonists
who settled there in the third century B..
By third century, Kharosthi may be said
to have become extinct in India although
it continued for another two centuries in
Khotan.

The Brahmi script, however, has lived

on, and the various modern scripts of
India, including those of a number of
lands of Greater India, are only
derivatives of it. Thus the Devanagari,
the Bengali-Assamese-Maithili. Newari-
Oriya, the Sarada-Gurumukhi, the
Kaithi-Gujarati, the TeluguKannada, and
the Tamil-Malayalam-Grantha Sinhalese,
as also the Tibetan, the Mon-Burmese,
the Cambodian-Siamese, the Javanese-
Balinese, and a number of allied scripts
in Indonesia--all these are
transformations of the Brähmi script.

Thanks to the labours of the last three

generations of epigraphists, the history of
the development of Brähmi within and
outside India is quite clear. But the origin
of Brähmi as a script is as yet wnsolved.
The knowedge of Brahmi as a script was
lost to India, because successive
generations of people were familiar with
the later or more modern phases of it, as
current in their times, and nobody
studied the ancient documents. It was to
the credit of an English scholar, James
Prinsep, that we are now enabled to read
fluently the Brähmi script. Prinsep, in
1837, first read the Brähmi script, and in
this he received help from bilingual coins
of the Greek rulers of north-western
India, in which their names and titles
were given in both Greek letters and in
Prakrit in Brähmi letters. He achieved a
great epigraphic triumph when he gave
the first reading of the edicts of Asoka
written in Brähmi. A similar method, in
the case of some Maurya inscriptions,
which gave virtually the same text in
slightly differing dialects in Brähmi and
Kharosthi, has enabled us to read the
latter.

ORIGIN OF THE BRAHMI SCRIPT

When European scholars first tackled

Brähmi, they gradually formed the
opinion that it was a derivative
ultimately of the ancient Phoenician
alphabet of about 1200 .C., which came
either in a northern form directly into
India, or in a southern forn as it had
developed in South Arabia. It was
suggested by them that there was no
system of writing known to ancient
Indians, whether Aryan or pre-Aryan,
and that Indian merchants who went for
trade to Mesopotamia and South Arabia
got the idea of writing from the Semitic
peoples of these lands and applied it to
the writing of Prakrit dialects and
Sanskrit; and this could have only taken
place by 500 B.C., giving us finally the
finished Brähmi alphabet of the Maurya
times. A certain similarity between the
shapes of the Brahmi letters and those of
the oldest Phoenician alphabet, both
standing for the same or similar sounds,
gave considerable support to this theory.
But the discovery of the Mohenjo-daro
writing has called for a revision of the
view that India was indebted to the
Semitic world for her script. It has been
found that quite a number of symbols
occurring in the Mohenjodaro writing
have resemblance to the letters of the
Brähmi alphabet. Moreover, the Brähmi
principle of tagging on the vowel signs to
the consonant letters seems also to have
been in use in the Mohenjo-daro script.
We can distinguish several stages in the
evolution of this old and prehistoric
SindPunjab writing a pictorial and
hieroglyphic, a syllabic, and then a much
more simplified linear form which was
probably alphabetical.
It is exceedingly likely that the Brahmi
alphabet is just a modification of the
Sind-Punjab script in its later phase. This
Sind-Punjab script was in a flourishing
stage before the Aryans came, that is,
before c. 1500 B.. The Aryans, probably,
had no system of writing of their own,
although they had occasion to come in
touch with this great invention of
civilization in Asia Minor and
Mesopotamia. After they settled down on
the soil of India, a modified form of the
late Sind-Punjab script was in all
likelihood adopted to write the Aryan
language, which was at that time a kind
of late Vedic Sanskrit. This adoption
would appear to have taken place by c.
1000 B.c., which alone made possible the
compilation of the mass of Vedic
literature, so long current orally, into
four written compilations, the four
Vedas, which Krsna Dvaipayana Vyasa is
traditionally said to have accomplished.
Vyãsa was an older contemporary of the
heroes of the Mahabharata; and the
Mahabharata war, according to Pargiter
and H. C. Raychaudhuri, who followed
quite different methods in working out
the date, took place in the middle of the
tenth century .C., so that we would not
be wrong in assuming that a proto-
Brähmi was established by c. 900 .c., and
this became the finished Brähmi of c. 300
B.c. Even in Maurya Brahmi, we find the
script still hesitating in certain matters
and not fully established as a system of
writing-_it did not know how to indicate
properly double and conjunct
consonants. The perfection of the Brähmi
alphabet as a worthy medium for
Sanskrit, with its scientific and accurate
orthography, would appear to have taken
place as late as the early centuries of the
Christian era.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRÄHMI

SCRIPT

The subsequent history of the Brähmi,

throughout the centuries, is a specialized
subject of study, and we can give here
only the broad lines of its development.
About 200 B.C., there was a pan Indian
unity in script through the use of
Brahmi, barring, of course, the North-
West which ordinarily, though not
entirely, used Kharosthi. South India
used a form of Brahmi in which the
inherent 'a of the consonants was
indicated by a special mark. Brahmi was
gradually changed to the Kusana scripts
of the first and second centuries A.D.;
and under the Gupta emperors, it
developed two styles, one monuinental,
used in cutting inscriptions, and the
other cursive or written, used in writing
on palm-leaf, birch-bark, or leather.
Differentiation between the North and
the South slowly crept in; and whenever
there was want of a centralized
administration, local varieties of the
Brähmi script began to assert themselves,
giving rise to regional forms of the same
alphabet. In the early centuries of the
Christian era, cursive or manuscript
Brahmi was taken to Central Asia, and
was employed to write new languages
like Old Khotanese and Tokharian (or
Kuchean). It also passed on to Indo China
and Indonesia, where it was at first
employed to write Sanskrit, and then its
use was extended to local languages like
Javanese, Malay, Balinese, Achenese
Battak, and some of the Filipino speeches
in Indonesia; Cham Khmer and Siamese
in Indo China; and Mon, Pyu, and
Burmese in Burma.

During the time of Harsavardhana, there

was, on the whole, a unity of script, at
least for the whole of North India, the
script then used (Siddhamâtrka)
representing the final phase of an
undivided Brahmi in North India. It is
this script which the Chinese, Koreans,
and Japanese still use for writing
Sanskrit, as also in occasional
inscriptions, names, and bija-mantras.
After the death of Harsa, the script
gradually took three pronounced
regional forms in North India: (1) Sarada
or North-Western, (2) Sri Harsa or
South- Western and West Midland, and
(3) Kutila or Eastern. The Sarada form
was used in Kashmir, and early medieval
Kashmir manuscripts in Sanskrit are in
this script. This Särada script was
virtually abandoned by the Kashmir
people, when large masses of them were
converted to Islam in the fifteenth
century, and the little knowledge of
Sarada, which was never put in type, is
confined to the Kashmir Brähmanas,
who, too, at the present day, commonly
use Devanagari for Sanskrit. A number of
local scripts allied to Sárada were in use
in the Western Himalayan Hindu States,
like Landa (among the banios of the
Punjab and Sind), Takki or Takri,
Chameali, etc. The Gurumukhi
character, in which the Sikhs write
Punjabi, is based on. Sarada, but it is
profoundly modified by Devanagari. The
Sri Harsa type developed in Gujarat,
Rajasthan, and western UP. This has
given us the Devanāgari of modern
times, which was made the pan-Indian
script for Sanskrit in the last century, and
has come into great prominence as the
representative modern script of India. An
abbreviated form of Devanâgari, known
as Kaithi, is in use in Bihar and UP., and
a similar form of simplified Devanagari
has become the current Gujarati script.
Marathi was formerly written in the
Modi script, originally a Deccan
modification of the Brähmi, but during
the last 150 years Devanagari virtually
replaced it, Devanagari being known as
Bala-bodha in the Marathi-speaking
tracts.

The Kutila form of late Brähmi was

current in eastern U.P., Bihar, Nepal,
Assam, Bengal, and Orissa. The
Devanagari script has virtually replaced
it in eastern UP., Bihar, and Nepal,
although the Maithili form of Kutila and
the Newari form are still lingering.
Bengali, Assamese, and Maithili formed
practically one script, and a development
of it is Oriya. In the Deccan and South
India, we note two other main groups:
One is the Telugu- Kannada group,
Telugu and Kannada forming practically
two styles of the same form of the
Deccan Brähmi. The other group is the
Tamil-Malayalam-Grantha. The Tamil
language became very much simplified in
its phonetics by about A.D. 500, and
those who were responsible for the
grammatical and the linguistic study of
Tamil at that time simplified the current
alphabet for Tamil. Thus we have the
peculiar character of the Tamil writing
which ignores the second, third, and
fourth letters of each varga and has no
sibilant proper. But the full Brähmi
alphabet continued to be used for writing
Sanskrit by the Tamil people, and this
forms the Grantha script. Malayalam
belongs to the same Tamil-Grantha
group. The current Sinhalese alphabet is
derived from the Grantha as taken to the
island by the Tamilians.

Two other modifications of the Indian

alphabet may be mentioned for the sake
of the completion of our survey. One is
the Lepcha or Rong, already put in type
by the Christian missionaries, and it is
used to write the Lepcha language in
Darjeeling and Sikkim. It is believed to
be a modified form of the Tibetan, which
itself originated from India in the
seventh century A.D. from the alphabet
current in Kashmir. The other is the old
Manipuri alphabet. This has now fallen
into disuse, being replaced by the Bengali
script, as the letters of the old Manipuri
script are complicated. Its exact
affiliation is not clear. The Ahoms, a
Sino-Tibetan tribe allied to the Shans and
Siamese, brought their own alphabet
from Burma (a modification of South
Indian Brahmi) when they came to
Assam in 1228. They retained the
alphabet for some centuries, but now
their language and the alphabet are both
dead, as the Ahoms have merged among
the Aryanspeaking Assamese people.

Besides the above scripts derived from

Brahmi, the Perso-Arabic script is
employed in India to write Urdu as well
as Kashmir and Sindhi, and the Roman
script has been applied for writing a
variety of tribal dialects.

APPENDIX

1951 CENSUS FIGURES FOR INDIA

The population of undivided India in

1931 was 338 millions, and in 1951 it was
about 438 millions (362 for India and 76
for Pakistan). The numbers of speakers of
different Indian languages in 1951 were
as follows:

I. SPEAKERS OF PRINCIPAL INDIAN

LANGUAGES ENUMERATED IN THE
INDIAN CONSTITUTION

(a) Indo-Aryan: Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani,

and Punjabi, 149,944,311;3 Marathi
27,049,522; Bengali 25,121,674; Gujarati
16,310,771; Oriya 13,153,909; Assamese
4,988,226 ; Sanskrit 555.

(b) Dravidian: Telugu 32,999,916; Tamil

26,546,764; Kannada 14,171,764;
Malayalam 13,380,109.

II. LANGUAGES OR DIALECTS WITH

SPEAKERS NUMBERING A LAKH OR
OVER
(a) Indo-Aryan: Marwari 4,514,737:
Mewari 2,014,874; Dhundhari or Jaipuri
1,588,069 ; Bagri 926,029; Chattisgarhi
902,908 : Malvi 866,895 : Harauti
815,859; Sindhi 745,434; Rajasthani
645,001; Konkani 699,020 Kumauni
571,401: Garhwali 484,261: Ajmeri
463,161 : Nepali 421,688 ;
Halbi 264,912 ; Nimari 180,696 ; Braj-
bhakha 177,847 ; Saurashtri 124,486 ;
Mewati 111,083; Khatria 110,592 ;
Nimadi 110,577.

(b) Dravidian: Tulu 787,624.

(c) Avestric: Bhumij 101,508.

(d) Mongoloid: Tripura 129,379.

III. TRIBAL LANGUAGES OR
DIALECTS WITH SPEAKERS
NUMBERING A LAKH OR OVER

(a) Indo-Aryan: Bhili 1,160,299; Lambadi

628,166; Vagdi 516,991; Baniari or
Labhani 332,317 ; Bhilali 264,289.

(b) Dravidian: Gondi 1,232,886 : Oraon

644,042 : Kondh 280,561; Kui 206,509;
Paraja (Parji) 146,938 : Maria 140,583;
Koya 137,358.

(c) Austric: Santali 2,811,578; Ho

599,876; Mundari, Munda, etc. 585,211;
Savara 256,259 ; Khasi 230,982 ; Korku
170,607.
(d) Mongoloid: Meithei (Manipuri)
485,787 : Garo 239,816; Boro Bodo
166,447 : Lushei 163,600; Mikir 130,746.

IV. OTHER INDIAN LANGUAGES OR

DIALECTS WITH SPEAKERS
NUMBERING LESS THAN A LAKH

Total number of languages or dialects

720 Number of speakers 2,860,974

V. PRINCIPAL NON-INDIAN
LANGUAGE SPEAKERS

English 171,742; Persian 11,814; Chinese

(mostly Cantonese) 9,214; Arabic 7,914;
Portuguese 6,652; Burmese 3,955;
Tibetan 2,494; French 1,929; German
1,665; Hebrew 1,209: Malayan 703;
Italian 685; Sinhalese 561.
Note: The figures for Kashmir, Nepal,
and Pakistan are not included in the
figures given above. In 1955 the
population of Nepal, mainly speaking
Nepali and Newari, was 8,600,000. The
population of Jammu and Kashmir was
estimated at 4,410,000 in 1951, of whom
about 1•5 million speak Kashmiri, about
1 million speak Dogri in Jammu, and of
the rest some speak Ladakhi, Balti, and
forms of Tibetan, besides various
speeches of the Dardic family, like Shina
and 'Kafir' dialects. The population
figures (in round numbers) for various
divisions of Pakistan in 1951 were as
follows: Baluchistan (mainly Balochi and
Brahui) 1,171,000 ; East Bengal (Bengali)
42,000,000; Karachi (mainly Punjabi and
Sindhi, with Urdu as official language)
1,126,000; N.W.F.P. and frontier regions
and States (Pashto and the various
dialects of Lahnda or Hindki) 5,900,000 ;
Punjab (Punjabi, with Urdu as official
language) 18,828,000; Bahawalpur
(Punjabi) 1,823,000; Sind and Khairpur
(Sindhi) 4,928,000.