History of Hindustani - Formation

Formation

Most of the grammar and basic vocabulary of Hindustani descends directly from the medieval language of central India, known as Sauraseni. After the tenth century, several Sauraseni dialects were elevated to literary languages, or khari boli ("standing dialects"), including Braj Bhasha, Awadhi and the language of Delhi; the latter still goes by the name Khari Boli in the rural areas outside the city of Delhi itself. During the reigns of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, where Persian was adopted as the official language and Delhi was established as their capital, the imperial court and concomitant immigration infused the Delhi dialect with large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic words from the court; the introduced words were primarily nouns and were employed for cultural, legal and political concepts. The new court language developed simultaneously in Delhi and Lucknow, the latter of which is in an Awadhi-speaking area; thus, modern Hindustani has a noticeable Awadhi influence even though it is based primarily on Khari Boli.

The term Hindustani is derived from Hindustan, the Persian name for the subcontinent. The term Ordu, or "camp language" (cognate with the English word, "horde"), was used to describe the common language of the Mughal army. The works of the 13th century scholar, Amir Khusro, are typical of the Hindustani language of the time:

Sej vo sūnī dekh ke rovun main din rain,
Piyā piyā main karat hūn pahron, pal bhar sukh nā chain.

"Seeing the empty bed I cry night and day
"Calling for my beloved all day, not a moment's happiness or rest."

Persian was crucial in the formation of a common language of the Central, North and Northwest regions of South Asia. Following the Mughal conquest of South Asia and the resulting vast Islamic empire, especially in the northern and central regions of South Asia, a hybrid language formed from Arabic, Pashto, Turkish, Persian and local dialects began to emerge around the 16th and 17th centuries CE; the language would eventually be known as Urdu (from a Turkish word, "Ordu", meaning "army", in allusion to the army barracks of visiting troops).

Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan, built a new walled city in Delhi in 1639 that became known as of Shahjahanabad. The market close to the royal fort (Red Fort) was called "Urdu Bazar" and the language was eventually named "Urdu". The language grew from the interaction of Muslim soldiers who often spoke Persian and native peoples. Soon, the Persian script and Nasta'liq form of cursive was adopted, with additional figures added to accommodate the South Asian phonetic system, and a new language based on the South Asian grammar with a vocabulary largely divided between Persian (and indirectly some Arabic) and local Prakrit dialects. Elements peculiar to Persian, such as the enclitic ezāfe, and the use of the takhallus, were readily absorbed into Hindustani literature both religious and secular. This language was developed by Kashmiri Pandits and nowadays widely spoken in South Asia.

The poet Wali Deccani (1667–1707) visited Delhi in 1700. He is termed "Bava Adam" (founding father) of Urdu poetry by Maulana Muhammad Husain Azad wrote in the monumental Aab-e-Hayat (Water of Life). His visit is considered to be of great significance for Urdu Gazals. His simple and melodious poems in Hindustani, stunned the Persian loving nobles of Delhi and made them aware of the beauty and capability of "Rekhta" or "Hindawi" (an old name for Hindustani) as a medium of poetic expression. His visit thus stimulated the development of Urdu Gazal in the imperial city of Old Delhi.

Hindustani soon gained distinction as the preferred language in courts of South Asia and eventually replaced Persian among the nobles. To this day it retains an important place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals and nazms, came to both influence and be affected by South Asian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritages. A famous cross-over writer was Amir Khusro, whose Persian and Urdu couplets are to this day read in the subcontinent. Persian has sometimes been termed an adopted classical language of the South Asia alongside Sanskrit due to its role in South Asian tradition.