Indo-Aryan languages

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The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent, spoken largely by Indo-Aryan people. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family. Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers (approx 1.5 of 3 billion) and more than half of Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue.

The largest in terms of native speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 240 million), Bengali (about 230 million), Punjabi (about 110 million), Marathi (about 70 million), Gujarati (about 45 million), Bhojpuri (about 40 million), Oriya (about 30 million), Sindhi (about 20 million), Nepali (about 14 million), Chittagonian (about 14 million), Sinhala (about 16 million), and Assamese (about 13 million) with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.

Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (Urdu is included under Hindi. Romani, Domari, and Lomavren language are outside the scope of the map.)

History

Indian subcontinent

• Old Indic (ca. 1500–300 BCE)
  • early Old Indic: Vedic Sanskrit (1500 to 500 BCE)
  • late Old Indic: Epic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit (500 to 300 BCE)
• Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrits (ca. 300 BCE to 1500 CE)
• Early Modern Indic (Mughal period, 1500 to 1800)
  • early Dakkhini (Kalmitul-hakayat 1580)
  • emergence of Khariboli (Gora-badal ki katha, 1620s)
  • emergence of “Urdu” at Delhi fort (1670s)

Old Indo-Aryan

The earliest evidence of the group is from Vedic Sanskrit, the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages which is used in the ancient preserved texts of the Indian subcontinent, the foundational canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. The Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni is of similar age to the language of the Rigveda (and almost identical), but the only evidence of it is a few proper names and specialized loanwords.

In about the 4th century BCE, the Vedic Sanskrit language was codified and standardized by the grammarian Panini, called “Classical Sanskrit” by convention.

Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrits)

Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. The oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects. “Apabhramsa” is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production; the Sravakachar of Devasena (dated to the 930s) is now considered to be the first Hindi book.

The next major milestone occurred with the Muslim invasions of India in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Mughal empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani. This Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects.

The two largest languages that formed from Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani; others include Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, and Punjabi.

New Indo-Aryan

Dialect continuum

The Indic languages of Northern India (that includes Assam Valley as for the language Assamese) and Pakistan form a dialect continuum. What is called “Hindi” in India is frequently Standard Hindi, the Sanskrit-ized version of the colloquial Hindustani spoken in the Delhi area since the Mughals. However, the term Hindi is also used for most of the central Indic dialects from Bihar to Rajasthan. The Indo-Aryan prakrits also gave rise to languages like Gujarati, Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Nepali, Marathi, and Punjabi, which are not considered to be Hindi despite being part of the same dialect continuum.

Standard Hindi-Urdu

In the Hindi-speaking areas, the prestige dialect was long Braj Bhasha, but this was replaced in the 19th century by Khari Boli–based Hindustani. This state of affairs continued until the Partition of India in 1947, when Hindi continued as an official language of India and Pakistan but renamed Urdu in Pakistan. In contemporary times, there is a continuum of Hindi–Urdu, with heavily-Persianised Urdu at one end and Sanskritised Hindi at the other, although the basic grammar remains identical. Most people in India and Pakistan speak something in the middle, and this is what the term Hindustani is frequently used to mean today.

Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni

Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion. In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. Kikkuli’s horse training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, turn, round in the horse race). The numeral aika “one” is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has “aiva”) in general.

Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= miẓḍha,~ Sanskrit mīḍha) “payment (for catching a fugitive)” (M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen< Heidelberg 1986-2000; Vol. II 358).

Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render Artashumara (artaššumara) as Arta-smara “who thinks of Arta/Ṛta” (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (biridašṷa, biriiašṷa) as Prītāśva “whose horse is dear” (Mayrhofer II 182), Priyamazda (priiamazda) as Priyamedha “whose wisdom is dear” (Mayrhofer II 189, II378), Citrarata as citraratha “whose chariot is shining” (Mayrhofer I 553), Indaruda/Endaruta as Indrota “helped by Indra” (Mayrhofer I 134), Shativaza (šattiṷaza) as Sātivāja “winning the race price” (Mayrhofer II 540, 696), Šubandhu as Subandhu ‘having good relatives” (a name in Palestine, Mayrhofer II 209, 735), Tushratta (tṷišeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *tṷaiašaratha, Vedic Tvastr “whose chariot is vehement” (Mayrhofer, Etym. Wb., I 686, I 736).

Romani language

The Romani language is usually included in the Central Indo-Aryan languages. Romani is conservative in maintaining almost intact the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, and in maintaining consonantal endings for nominal case – both features that have been eroded in most other modern languages of Central India. It shares an innovative pattern of past-tense person concord with the languages of the Northwest, such as Kashmiri and Shina. This is believed to be further proof that Romani originated in the Central region, then migrated to the Northwest.

There are no known historical documents about the early phases of the Romani language.

Linguistic evaluation carried out in the nineteenth century by Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) showed that the Romani language is to be a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), not a Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA), establishing that the ancestors of the Romani could not have left India significantly earlier than AD 1000.

The principal argument favouring a migration during or after the transition period to NIA is the loss of the old system of nominal case, and its reduction to just a two-way case system, nominative vs. oblique. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation. Romani has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this old system even today.

It is argued that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. Most of the neuter nouns became masculine while a few feminine, like the neuter अग्नि (agni) in the Prakrit became the feminine आग (āg) in Hindi and jag in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have been cited as evidence that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, perhaps even as late as the tenth century.

Classification

There can be no definitive enumeration of Indic languages, as their dialects merge into one another. Named languages are therefore social constructs as much as objective ones. The major ones are illustrated here; for the details, see the dedicated articles.

The classification follows Masica (1991) and Kausen (2006).

Dardic

The relation of this family to other Indo-Aryan languages is unclear; these languages have very different grammatical structure from that of the Classical Indo-Aryan languages. The representative languages are:

Pashayi, Khowar, Kohistani, Shina language, Kashmiri

Northern Zone

Central Pahari

Garhwali, Kumauni

Eastern Pahari

Nepali (Gurkali), etc.

North-Western Zone

Dogri–Kangri (Western Pahari)

Dogri, Kangri, Mandeali, etc.

Punjabi (Eastern Punjabi)

Lahnda (Western Punjabi)

Sindhi

Western Zone

Rajasthani

Marwari, Rajasthani

Gujarati

Bhil

Khandeshi

Domari–Romani

Central Zone (Madhya or Hindi)

Western Hindi

Hindustani, etc.

Eastern Hindi

Fijian Hindi, Chhattisgarhi, etc.

Indic, Central Zone

Eastern Zone (Magadhan)

These languages evolved circa 1000–1200 CE from eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialects such as the Magadhi Prakrit, Pali (the language of Gautama Buddha and the major language of Buddhism), and Ardhamagadhi (“Half-Magadhi”) from a dialect or group of dialects that were close, but not identical to, Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.

Bihari

Bhojpuri (incl. Caribbean Hindustani), Maithili, etc.

Bengali–Assamese

Oriya

Tharu

Southern Zone languages

It is not clear if Dakhini (Deccani, Southern Urdu) is part of Hindustani along with Standard Urdu, or a separate Persian-influenced development from Marathi.

Marathi

Konkani

Insular Indic

Sinhalese, Maldivian

The insular languages share several characteristics that set them apart significantly from the continental languages.

Unclassified

The following poorly attested languages are listed as unclassified within the Indo-Aryan family by Ethnologue 17:

• Dhanwar (Rai) (Dardic?), Kanjari (Punjabi?), Od (Marathi?), Vaagri Booli, Darai (Dardic?), Kumhali, Chinali (~Sanskrit), Andh, Lahul Lohar, Mina (not distinct?), Bhalay-Gowlan(perhaps in Southern), Bote and Degaru (perhaps in Eastern), Sonha (perhaps in Central).

Phonology

Consonants

Stop positions

The normative system of New Indo-Aryan stops consists of five points of articulation: labial, dental, “retroflex”, palatal, and velar, which is the same as that of Sanskrit. The “retroflex” position may involve retroflexion, or curling the tongue to make the contact with the underside of the tip, or merely retraction. The point of contact may be alveolar or postalveolar, and the distinctive quality may arise more from the shaping than from the position of the tongue. Palatals stops have affricated release and are traditionally included as involving a distinctive tongue position (blade in contact with hard palate). Widely transcribed as [tʃ], Masica (1991:94) claims [cʃ] to be a more accurate rendering.

Moving away from the normative system, some languages and dialects have alveolar affricates [ts] instead of palatal, though some among them retain [tʃ] in certain positions: before front vowels (esp. /i/), before /j/, or when geminated. Alveolar as an additional point of articulation occurs in Marathi and Konkani where dialect mixture and others factors upset the aforementioned complementation to produce minimal environments, in some West Pahari dialects through internal developments (*t̪ɾ, t̪ > /tʃ/), and in Kashmiri. The addition of a retroflex affricate to this in some Dardic languages maxes out the number of stop positions at seven (barring borrowed /q/), while a reduction to the inventory involves *ts > /s/, which has happened in Assamese, Chittagonian, Sinhala (though there have been other sources of a secondary /ts/), and Southern Mewari.

Further reductions in the number of stop articulations are in Assamese and Romany, which have lost the characteristic dental/retroflex contrast, and in Chittagonian, which is in danger of losing its labial and velar articulations through spirantization in many positions (> [f, x]).

Nasals

Sanskrit was noted as having five nasal-stop articulations corresponding to its oral stops, and among modern languages and dialects Dogri, Kacchi, Kalasha, Rudhari, Shina, Saurasthtri, and Sindhi have been analyzed as having this full complement of phonemic nasals /m/ /n/ /ɳ/ /ɲ/ /ŋ/, with the last two generally as the result of the loss of the stop from a homorganic nasal + stop cluster ([ɲj] > [ɲ] and [ŋɡ] > [ŋ]), though there are other sources as well.

Charts

The following are consonant systems of major and representative New Indo-Aryan languages, as presented in Masica (1991:106–107), though here they are in IPA. Parentheses indicate those consonants found only in loanwords: square brackets indicate those with “very low functional load”. The arrangement is roughly geographical.

Language comparison chart

Published - November 2013

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