| 10. ORIYA |
|
It speakers
are 23,021,528 in number. It is spoken in the Indian state
of Orissa. It is also known as
  r
and utkal.
The speakers of this language are found in other states
contiguous with Orissa. Dialectally, Oriya is, according
to LSI, strikingly homogeneous. Only one dialect needs
to be distinguished - Bhatr
which represents a trasitional stage tending towards Marathi.
In the north-east, mixed dialects are found which have
many features in common with Bengali. Oriya literature
is not extensive, also though its beginnings go back as
far as fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. |
|
| 11. WESTERN PAHARI |
|
Western
Pahari comprises the following nine groups of dialects
(running from north-west to South-East): Bhadraw h,
Camel,
ku u,
Ma el,
 oca,
Ki  hali,
Bagh,
Sirmaur¢, Jaunsar¢, The territory covered by these stretches
from the South eastern part of the state of Jammu and
Kashmir to Dehradun taking in primarily the state of Himachal
Pradesh. It is spoken by 659, 556 people (1971 Census) |
|
| 12. EASTERN PAHARI OR NEPALI |
|
| This is
locally called Khas-Kura, Gorkha
and Parbaya
but usually known as Nepali. It is the mother tongue of
6 million speakers of Nepal and of about 1004, 026 in
habitants of India (immigrants of Nepal). In the last
few decades, a literary standard has taken shape on the
basis of Khatmandu dialect. In the last hundred years,
a small literature has been produced in Nepali. |
|
| 13. CENTRAL PAHARI |
|
It is spoken
in the extreme north west of Uttar Pradesh from Dehradun
to the Western border of Nepal. The group comprises two
very closely related languagues: Ga wa
in the West and Kumaun¢ in the East. The Kinship of these
languages with Rajasthani is evident. |
|
| 421.4.2.4: SINHALESE |
|
| This is
the language of the greater part of the population of
Srilanka (more than 9 million people). Separated from
the rest of the Indo-Aryan languages since the middle
of the first millennium B.C., the language has developed
along independent, if broadly similar lines. As a result,
Sinhalese exhibits so many pecularities, that its place
among the NIA languages remains unclear, and it has been
variously connected by various researchers with the eastern,
the southern and the western groups. |
|
| The modern
languages began to take its present shape around the beginning
of the second millennium of our era. A rich corpus of
ancient literature has been preserved. The classical literary
form of Sinhalese differes strikingly from the colloquial.
The Mahl dialect of Sinhalese is spolen in the Maldive
Islands. |
|
| QUESTIONS |
|
- How do you describe the variations in the old Indo-Aryan
language?
- What are the characteristic features of Old Indo
Aryan?
- What are the developments of language in Middle
Indo Aryan?
- Describe the development of Modern Indo Aryan languages.
- What are the characteristic features of Modern Indo
Aryan?
- How can modern Indo-Aryan languages be sub grouped?
- How are modern Indo-Aryan languages distributed
geographically ?
|
|
| 421.4.3: DARDIC LANGUAGES |
|
| Under the
term 'Dardic', Grierson grouped a number of Indo Iranian
languages spoken in the extreme North of India and Pakistan
and spreading into neighbouring Afghanistan, which show
both IA and Iranian characteristics. According to Grierson,
these languages separated from the Iranian group after
the main division of the Indo Iranian branch of IE into
Indo Aryan on the one hand and Iranian on the other. According
to him these languages were brought into Kafiristan and
Dardistan from the North India. From this point of view,
the Dardic languages would represent a trasitional stage
between the Iraninan and Indo Aryan languages. Grierson
distinguished three groups. |
|
- Kfir,
comprising Kat
(Bashgal),
Vaigal,
prasun (vasi Veri, Vero), Ashkun and the subgroup
Kalasha-pashai (KalÀha
, Gawar-Bati, pashai, Tirahi)
- Khowar
- Dard proper (or Eastern Dardic) including Kashmiri
 ina and
Kohistani
|
|
| Though this
classification is accepted, later research in the field
has led to certain changes in it. It is now agreed that
Kalasha Pashai and Khowar should be taken together as
the central Dardic group. Whether a special Dardic sub-division
or family should be recognized at all is open to some
doubt. Morgen Stierne himself, while regarding the Kafir
languages as a transitional stage between Indo Aryan and
Iranian, took the other Dardic languages to be purely
Indo Aryan. In his opinion, all the Indo Aryan elements
in them can be derived from old Indo Aryan and there is
no need to look for a more archaic stage in order to account
for them. Morgen Stierne's thesis is that these language
were brought into Kafirstan and Chitral by Aryan immigrants
from the South and that there is insufficient evidence
for the claim that they came directly from the North-West
by way of the HinduKush. J. Bloch shared this view point
and R.L. Turner in his comparative dictionary treats all
these languages including Kafir languages as Indo Aryan.
Certainly, the Dardic languages proper have much more
in common with Indo Aryan than with Iranian. However,
the total absence of written evidence for the past history
of any of these languages apart from Kashmiri, and the
large number of dialects makes it difficult to reach any
conclusions on their genealogy. Kashmiri shows most similarities
with neighbouring NIA languages, particularly the Pahari
dialects, and Lahnda. However, the Dardic languages including
Kashmiri are structurally sufficiently idiosyncratic to
warrant their separate classification from the NIA languages.
The Kafir and most of the Central Dardic languages are
situated in the North-Western regions of Afghanistan.
Kashmiri and âi¸a in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Kohistani,
distributed along the rivers Swat, Panjkar and Indus in
Pakistan, Khowar and Dameli on the river Chitral in Pakistan.
Data on the number of speakers are not regularly given
in the census except in the case of Kashmir. The figures
available are: Kashmiri - 3, 176,975 (1981), i-
15,585 (1981), Kohistani 81 (1971). The Kafir languages
on Pakistan territory about - 3,000 (1951). |
|
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