A UNIQUE PHENOMENON

In the north, in Panjab, and in the east, in the languages and dialects prevalent between Bihar and Bengal, we notice that although in their spoken form they had local peculiarities, they were nevertheless gradually tending towards a common standard. It is clear from the Apabhransa literature of the eighth to the twelfth centuries that, on account of the particular feature of development mentioned above, the literary language of the time was in a large measure standardized, and in the written form there were not many regional variations. The emergence of Hindi as a common language of literary usage is clearly evident from the Apabhransa literature of the time. The best examples of the exogenous development of the Hindi language and its literature are to be found in the writings of the Siddha poets. There is no doubt that we find the oldest forms of Hindi in those works.

 

In 1916, after the publication by the late Pandit Haraprasada Shastri of a collection of Siddha poetry under the title Bauddha Gan o Doha, various theories were propounded about the language of that body of writing. Mr. Shastri himself, and some other scholars thought it the earliest form of Bengali. On the other hand, others discovered in it the old forms of Oriya or Maithili or Bhojpuri or Magahi.

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