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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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A UNIQUE PHENOMENON |
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Turkic conquerors with their proselytizing creed, inevitably
introduced a new element on the Indian scene. But in a fundamental
sense the unity of Indian civilization was not disrupted. The
conquerors, of course, spoke their own Turkish language in their
homes and also Persian, which they had acquired in Afghanistan
before coming to India, was the language of culture for them. But up
to the second half of the sixteenth century Persian served only as
the formal and official language at the court and of law courts
administering the Shariat. It was then that, at Raja Todarmal's
instance, it was made the language of the revenue department in
place of Hindavi and other Indian languages. This gave Persian a new
status since Hindu employees and aspirants to government jobs had to
learn it. This was to culminate in the Persianization / Arabization
of Hindavi to make it Urdu.
In the middle of the sixteenth century Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote his famous Padmavati, a work of Sufi mysticism in the guise of a Rajput romance, in the same language as Tulsidas wrote his Ramcharitmanas, except that Jayasi used more of Prakritic elements than Tulsidas who, as a Sanskrit scholar, leaned on that parent language. It was in the Deccan, at the end of the century that Persianized diction grew up in Dakhni Hindavi as a result of the introduction of the Persian script. Members of the Muslim ruling elite used the Hindavi they took with them from the north to distinguish themselves from the local Telugu- and Marathi-speaking people and they took to the Persian script in assertion of their identity.
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