4. _Modern Period._--While such, in outline, is the history of the literary schools of the Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow, a fourth, that of the Fort William College at Calcutta, was being formed, and was destined to give no less an impulse to the cultivation of Urdu prose than had a hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Wali. At the commencement of the 19th century Dr John Gilchrist was the head of this institution, and his efforts were directed towards getting together a body of literature suitable as text-books for the study of the Urdu language by the European officers of the administration. To his exertions we owe the elaboration of the vernacular as an official speech, and the possibility of substituting it for the previously current Persian as the language of the courts and the government. He gathered together at Calcutta the most eminent vernacular scholars of the time, and their works, due to his initiative, are still notable as specimens of elegant and serviceable prose composition, not only in Urdu, but also in Hindi. The chief authors of this school are Haidari (Sayyid Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh), Husaini (Mir Bahadur 'Ali), Mir Amman Lutf, Hafizuddin Ahmad, Sher 'Ali Afsos, Nihal Chand of Lahore, Kazim 'Ali Jawan, Lallu Lal Kavi, Mazhar 'Ali Wila and Ikram 'Ali. Entry: 4
The works of these authors, though compiled and published under the superintendence of Dr Gilchrist, Captain Abraham Lockett, Professor J. W. Taylor, Dr W. Hunter and other European officers of the college of Fort William, and originally intended for the instruction of the Company's officers in the vernacular, are essentially Indian in taste and style, and, until superseded by the more recent developments of literature noticed below, enjoyed a very wide reputation and popularity. They may, indeed, be said to have set the standard of prose composition in Urdu and Hindi, and for the first half of the 19th century their influence in this respect continued almost unchallenged. Side by side with them, among the Musalman population of northern India, another almost contemporaneous impulse did much for the expansion of the Urdu language, and, like the work of the Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindi, gave an impetus to composition which might otherwise have been lacking. This was the reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad[16] and his followers. In all Eastern countries religion is the first and chief subject of literary production; and the controversies which the new preaching aroused in India at once afforded abundant material for authorship in Urdu, and interested deeply the people to whom the works were addressed. Entry: 4
For Urdu poets, Professor Azad's _Ab-i Hayat_ (in Urdu) is the most trustworthy record. For the new school of Urdu literature reference may be made to a series of lectures (in English) by Shaikh 'Abdul-Qadir of Lahore, printed in 1898. The catalogues by Professor Blumhardt of Hindostani and Hindi books in the libraries of the British Museum and the India Office will give a good idea of the volume of the recent productions of the press in those languages. (C. J. L.) Entry: BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sri Lallu Lal was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarat, had long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdu prose was done by Lallu Lal almost alone for Hindi. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created "High Hindi" as a literary language. His _Prem Sagar_ and _Rajniti_, the former a version in pure Hindi of the 10th chapter of the _Bhagavata Purana_, detailing the history of Krishna, and founded on a previous Braj-bhasha version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an adaptation in Braj-bhasha prose of the _Hitopadesa_ and part of the _Pancha-tantra_, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindi prose. The _Prem Sagar_ was begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys immense popularity in northern India, has been frequently reproduced in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. The _Rajniti_ was composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallu Lal was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindi and Urdu entitled _Lataif-i Hindi_, an anthology of Hindi verse called the _Sabha-bilas_, a _Sat-sai_ in the style of Bihari-Lal called _Sapta-satika_ and several other works. He and Jawan worked together at the _Singhasan Battisi_ (1801), a redaction in mixed Urdu and Hindi (Devanagari character) of a famous collection of legends relating the prowess of King Vikramaditya; and he also aided the latter author in the production of the _Sakuntala Natak_. Mazhar 'Ali Wila was his collaborator in the _Baital Pachisi_, a collection of stories similar in many respects to the _Singhasan Battisi_, and also in mixed Urdu-Hindi; and he aided Wila in the preparation in Urdu of the _Story of Madhonal_, a romance originally composed in Braj-bhasha by Moti Ram. Entry: 4
_Language_.--Owing to the diversity of race, the diversity of language is equally great. Thirty languages and a hundred and six dialects are found in the Central Provinces alone, and twenty-eight languages and sixty-eight dialects in Berar. The chief of these languages are Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Rajasthani, Marathi, Oriya, Telugu and Dravidian dialects. Of these last the chief dialects are Gondi, Oraon or Kurukh, Kandhi and Kanarese, of which Gondi is by far the most important. There are also the Munda languages, of which the chief are Korku, Kharia and Munda or Kol. The chief languages of Berar are Marathi, Urdu, Gondi, Banjari, Hindi, Marwari, Telugu, Korku and Gujarati. Entry: CENTRAL
(b) For the separate languages, see C. J. Lyall, _A Sketch of the Hindustani Language_ (Edinburgh, 1880); S. H. Kellogg, _A Grammar of the Hindi Language_ (for both Western and Eastern Hindi), (2nd ed., London, 1893); J. T. Platts, _A Grammar of the Hindustani or Urdu >Language_ (London, 1874); and _A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English_ (London, 1884); E. P. Newton, _Panjabi Grammar: with Exercises and Vocabulary_ (Ludhiana, 1898); and Bhai Maya Singh, _The Panjabi Dictionary_ (Lahore, 1895). _The Linguistic Survey of India_, vol. vi., describes Eastern Hindi, and vol. ix., Hindostani and Panjabi, in each instance in great detail. (G. A. Gr.) Entry: AUTHORITIES
The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhuruddin Hatim, who was born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shah (1719), the _diwan_ of Wali reached Delhi, and excited the emulation of scholars there. Hatim was the first to imitate it in the Urdu of the north, and was followed by his friends Naji, Mazmun and Abru. Two _diwans_ by him survive. He became the founder of a school, and one of his pupils was Rafi us-Sauda, the most distinguished poet of northern India. Khan Arzu (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdu poetry in the north. This author is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, in which language he not only composed much poetry, but one of the best of Persian lexicons, the _Siraju-l-lughat_; but his compositions in Urdu are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mir Taqi, who ranks next to Sauda as the most eminent Urdu poet. Arzu died at Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the devastation of Delhi by Nadir Shah (1739). Another of the early Delhi poets who is considered to have surpassed his fellows was In'amullah Khan Yaqin, who died during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748-1754), aged only twenty-five. Another was Mir Dard, pupil of the same Shah Gulshan who is said to have instructed Wali; his _diwan_ is not long, but extremely popular, and especially esteemed for the skill with which it develops the themes of spiritualism. In his old age he became a _darwesh_ of the _Naqshbandi_ following, and died in 1793. Entry: 3
The Aryans of India are probably the most settled and civilized of all Asiatic races. This type is found in its purest form in the north and north-west, while the mixed races and the population referred to the Australoid type predominate in the peninsula and southern India. The spoken languages of northern India are very various, differing one from another in the sort of degree that English differs from German, though all are thoroughly Sanskritic in their vocables, but with an absence of Sanskrit grammar that has given rise to considerable discussion. The languages of the south are Dravidian, not Sanskritic. The letters of both classes of languages, which also vary considerably, are all modifications of the ancient Pali, and probably derived from the Dravidians, not from the Aryans. They are written from left to right, exception being made of Urdu or Hindostani, the mixed language of the Mahommedan conquerors of northern India, the character used for writing which is the Persian. From the river Sutlej and the borders of the Sind desert, as far as Burma and to Ceylon, the religion of the great bulk of the people of India is Hindu or Brahminical, though the Mahommedans are often numerous, and in some places even in a majority. West of the Sutlej the population of Asia may be said to be wholly Mahommedan with the exception of certain relatively small areas in Asia Minor and Syria, where Christians predominate. The language of the Punjab does not differ very materially from that of Upper India. West of the Indus the dialects approach more to Persian, which language meets Arabic and Turki west of the Tigris, and along the Turkoman desert and the Caspian. Through the whole of this tract the letters are used which are common to Persian, Arabic and Turkish, written from right to left. Entry: ETHNOLOGY
Although Urdu chiefly represents Musalman culture, its use is by no means confined to adherents of that faith. It has just been mentioned that the most popular Urdu novelist is a Hindu (a Brahman from Kashmir); and the statistics of the vernacular press show that this form of the language is widely used by Hindus as well as Musalmans. Thus, of eighty periodicals in Urdu published in the United Provinces, twenty-nine are conducted by Hindus; similarly, in the Punjab, of forty-eight Urdu journals, twenty are edited by Hindus. Entry: 4
The total area of Baluchistan is 132,315 sq. m. and its population in 1901 was 914,551. The population is largely nomadic. The fact that so many as 15,000 camels have been counted in the Bolan Pass during one month of the annual Brahui migration indicates the dimensions which the movement assumes. The religion of the country is so overwhelmingly Mahommedan that out of every 100,000 inhabitants 94,403 are Mussulman, and only 4706 Hindus, while the balance is made up by Christians, Sikhs and other denominations. Out of the total number 280 in the thousand are literates. The chief languages spoken are vernaculars of Baluchistan, Pushtu, Panjabi, Urdu and Sindhi, The [v.03 p.0294] Baluchi language belongs to the Iranian branch of the Aryan subfamily of the Indo-European family. It is divided into two main dialects which are so different that speakers of the one are almost unintelligible to speakers of the other. These two dialects are separated by the belt of Brahui and Sindhi speakers who occupy the Sarawan and Jalawan hills, and Las Bela. Owing probably to the fact that Makran was for many generations under the rule of the Persian kings, the Baluchi spoken on the west of the province, which is also called Makrani, is more largely impregnated with Persian words and expressions than the Eastern dialect. In the latter the words in use for common objects and acts are nearly all pure Baluchi, the remainder of the language being borrowed from Persian, Sindhi and Panjabi. There is no indigenous literature, but many specimens of poetry exist in which heroes and brave deeds are commemorated, and a good many of these have been collected from time to time. The philological classification of the Brahui dialect has been much disputed, but the latest enquiries, conducted by Dr G. A. Grierson, have resulted in his placing it among the Dravidian languages. It is remarkable to find in Baluchistan a Dravidian tongue, surrounded on all sides by Aryan languages, and with the next nearest branch of the same family located so far away as the Gond hills of central India. Brahui has no literature of its own, and such knowledge as we possess of it is due to European scholars, such as Bellew, Trumpp and Caldwell. Numerically the Brahuis are the strongest race in Baluchistan. They number nearly 300,000 souls. Next to them and numbering nearly 200,000 are Pathans. After this there is a drop to 80,000 mixed Baluchis and less than 40,000 Lasis (Lumris) of Las Bela. There are thirteen indigenous tribes of Pathan origin, of which the Kakars (_q.v._) are by far the most important, numbering more than 100,000 souls. They are to be found in the largest numbers in Zhob, Quetta, Pishin and Thal-Chotiali, but there are a few of them in Kalat and Chagai also. The most important Baluch tribes are the Marris, the Bughtis, the Boledis, the Domkis, the Magassis and the Rinds. Owing partly to the tribal system, and partly to the levelling effect of Islam, nothing similar to the Brahmanical system of social precedent is to be found in Baluchistan. Entry: BALUCHISTAN
All these revolutionary agencies were at work, though in a tentative and limited fashion, when the great change, following on the Mutiny of 1857, of the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the Crown inaugurated a new era. Since 1860 their operation has become extremely rapid and far-reaching. The use of lithography both for Urdu and Hindi annually gives birth to hundreds of works. The extension of education through both public and private agency has created an immense mass of school-books, and the spread of instruction in English and the activity of translators have filled the vernaculars with a multitude of new words drawn from that language. The newspaper press, in Urdu and Hindi, now counts over two hundred journals, the majority issued in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and in the Punjab, but a few at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta. Of this great body of literary production it is possible to speak only in general terms. Style and vocabulary are still in a somewhat fluid and unsettled condition, and the subjects treated are almost as various as they are in European literatures. Much, indeed, of the work produced has scarcely any claim to literary excellence, and in the crowd of writers we may content ourselves with mentioning only a few whose influence and authority make it probable that they will hereafter be known as leaders in the new culture. Entry: 4
Not only has Urdu adopted a Persian vocabulary, but even a few peculiarities of Persian construction, such as reversing the positions of the governing and the governed word (e.g. _báp mera_ for _mera bap_), or of the adjective and the substantive it qualifies, or such as the use of Persian phrases with the preposition _ba_ instead of the native postposition of the ablative case (e.g. _ba-khushí_ for _khushi-se_, or _ba-hukm sarkar-ke_ instead of _sarkar-ke hukm-se_) are to be met with in many writings; and these, perhaps, combined with the too free indulgence on the part of some authors in the use of high-flown and pedantic Persian and Arabic words in place of common and yet chaste Indian words, and the general use of the Persian instead of the Nagari character, have induced some to regard Hindostani or Urdu as a language distinct from Hindi. But such a view betrays a radical misunderstanding of the whole question. We must define Urdu as the Persianized Hindostani of educated Mussulmans, while Hindi is the Sanskritized Hindostani of educated Hindus. As for the written character, Urdu, from the number of Persian words which it contains, can only be written conveniently in the Persian character, while Hindi, for a parallel reason, can only be written in the Nagari or one of its related alphabets (see SANSKRIT). On the other hand, "Hindostani" implies the great _lingua franca_ of India, capable of being written in either character, and, without purism, avoiding the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. It is easy to write this Hindostani, for it has an opulent vocabulary of _tadbhava_ words understood everywhere by both Mussulmans and Hindus. While "Hindostani," "Urdu" and "Hindi" are thus names of dialects, it should be remembered that the terms "Western Hindi" and "Eastern Hindi" connote, not dialects, but languages. Entry: HINDOSTANI
_Hindostani as a Lingua Franca._--It has often been said that Hindostani is a mongrel "pigeon" form of speech made up of contributions from the various languages which met in Delhi bazaar, but this theory has now been proved to be unfounded, owing to the discovery of the fact that it is an actual living dialect of Western Hindi, existing for centuries in its present habitat, and the direct descendant of Sauraseni Prakrit. It is not a typical dialect of that language, for, situated where it is, it represents Western Hindi merging into Panjabi (Braj Bhasha being admittedly the standard of the language), but to say that it is a mongrel tongue thrown together in the market is to reverse the order of events. It was the natural language of the people in the neighbourhood of Delhi, who formed the bulk of those who resorted to the bazaar, and hence it became the bazaar language. From here it became the _lingua franca_ of the Mogul camp and was carried everywhere in India by the lieutenants of the empire. It has several recognized varieties, amongst which we may mention Dakhini, Urdu, Rekhta and Hindi. Dakhini or "southern," is the form current in the south of India, and was the first to be employed for literature. It contains many archaic expressions now extinct in the standard dialect. Urdu, or _Urdu zaban_, "the language of the camp," is the name usually employed for Hindostani by natives, and is now the standard form of speech used by Mussulmans. All the early Hindostani literature was in poetry, and this literary form of speech was named "Rekhta," or "scattered," from the way in which words borrowed from Persian were "scattered" through it. The name is now reserved for the dialect used in poetry, Urdu being the dialect of prose and of conversation. The introduction of these borrowed words, which has been carried to even a greater extent in Urdu, was facilitated by the facts that the latter was by origin a "camp" language, and that Persian was the official language of the Mogul court. In this way Persian (and, with Persian, Arabic) words came into current use, and, though the language remained Indo-Aryan in its grammar and essential characteristics, it soon became unintelligible to any one who had not at least a moderate acquaintance with the vocabulary of Iran. This extreme Persianization of Urdu was due rather to Hindu than to Persian influence. Although Urdu literature was Mussulman in its origin, the Persian element was first introduced in excess by the pliant Hindu officials employed in the Mogul administration, and acquainted with Persian, rather than by Persians and Persianized Moguls, who for many centuries used only their own languages for literary purposes.[2] Prose Urdu literature took its origin in the English occupation of India and the need for text-books for the college of Fort William. It has had a prosperous career since the commencement of the 19th century, but some writers, especially those of Lucknow, have so overloaded it with Persian and Arabic that little of the original Indo-Aryan character remains, except, perhaps, an occasional pronoun or auxiliary verb. The Hindi form of Hindostani was invented simultaneously with Urdu prose by the teachers at Fort William. It was intended to be a Hindostani for the use of Hindus, and was derived from Urdu by ejecting all words of Persian or Arabic birth, and substituting for them words either borrowed from Sanskrit (_tatsamas_) or derived from the old primary Prakrit (_tadbhavas_) (see INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES). Owing to the popularity of the first book written in it, and to its supplying the need for a _lingua franca_ which could be used by the most patriotic Hindus without offending their religious prejudices, it became widely adopted, and is now the recognized vehicle for writing prose by those inhabitants of northern India who do not employ Urdu. This Hindi, which is an altogether artificial product of the English, is hardly ever used for poetry. For this the indigenous dialects (usually Awadhi or Braj Bhasha) are nearly always employed by Hindus. Urdu, on the other hand, having had a natural growth, has a vigorous poetical literature. Modern Hindi prose is often disfigured by that too free borrowing of Sanskrit words instead of using home-born _tadbhavas_, which has been the ruin of Bengali, and it is rapidly becoming a Hindu counterpart of the Persianized Urdu, neither of which is intelligible except to persons of high education. Entry: HINDOSTANI
_B. Phonetics._--The alphabet of the Indo-Aryan languages is, on the whole, the same as that of Sanskrit (q.v.), and the system of transliteration adopted for that language is also followed for them.[2] Some new sounds have, however, developed in the Secondary and Tertiary Prakrits. New signs will be used for them, and will be explained in the proper places. Sanskrit knew only long _e_ and _o_, but already in the Secondary Prakrits we find a corresponding short pair, _e_ and _o_, of which the use is considerably extended in the tertiary stage. The Sanskrit diphthongs _ai_ and _au_ disappeared in the secondary stage, _e_ and _o_ being substituted for them respectively. On the other hand, in the same stage, we frequently come across pairs of vowels, such as _aï_, _aü_, with a hiatus between the two members. In the tertiary stage, these pairs have been combined into new diphthongs _ai_ and _au_, shorter in pronunciation than _ai_ and _au_. The pronunciation of _ai_ and _ai_ may be compared with that of the English "aye" and "I" respectively. In the languages of the Outer Band, there is again a tendency to weaken this new _ai_ to _e_, and the new _au_ to _o_. All the tertiary languages weaken a short final vowel. In most it is elided altogether in prose, but in some of those of the Outer Band (Kashmiri, Sindhi and Bihari) it is half pronounced. Some of the Outer languages have also developed a new _a_-sound, corresponding to that of _a_ in the German _Mann_. The stress-accent of classical Sanskrit has as a rule been preserved throughout. In the tertiary stage it generally resolves itself into falling on the ante-penultimate, if the penultimate is short. If the latter is long it takes the accent. In the eastern-languages there is a tendency to throw the accent even farther back. There is also everywhere a tendency to lighten the pronunciation of a short vowel after an accented syllable, so that it is barely audible. Thus, _cál