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| The
Hindu Phenomenon |
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A
UNIQUE PHENOMENON
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Just
as Sanskrit was to unify diverse groups into one people with a
common culture, Hindavi or Hindi was to play the same role in the
preservation of this cultural unity. It is not generally known that
Hindavi or Hindi was the successor to Sanskrit as an all-India
language from the ninth century onwards; that it was not limited to
what is now regarded as the Hindi-speaking region; and that its
pan-Indian spread was possible precisely because like Sanskrit, it
did not grow out of one Prakrit. As scholars have pointed out, Hindi
developed, like Romance languages in Europe, as an exogenous and not
as an endogenous language. Viswanath Prasad writes:
- It is generally surmised about the
modern Indian languages that each of them must have evolved from
some Prakrit or Apabhransa. Some people think the same about
Hindi. But in so far as Hindi does not reflect the features and
characteristics of any one Prakrit or Apabhransa, it does not
sound reasonable to think that it has derived from any one of
them. The fact of the matter is that Hindi has developed, like
the European Romance languages, by a process of sankramana, and
not vyuthkramana, i.e. as an exogenous language and not as an
endogenous language. According to Udyotana Suri's Kuvalayamala,
there were at least sixteen regional languages and dialects
current in the eighth-ninth centuries.
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A
Unique Phenomenon |
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