Joe Shearer
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
- Messages
- 27,493
- Reaction score
- 162
- Country
- Location
The fact of the matter is that Urdu can be, and in practice is very individual. Each individual, that is, defines his own version, as he/she speaks. When I speak to a Bihari, my Hindi takes on cadences and accents which are relaxed and flowing, and largely Sanskritic but with convenient words in Urdu included, with which both of us are perfectly comfortable. I am sometimes (not always) able to spot somebody from Siwan district, as a Muslim, from the mix he uses, the subtly greater portion of Persian words that he uses. In Lucknow, I am spotted as a gauche Bengali the moment I open my mouth and they hear my vowel sounds, forget about my vocabulary, which is there a source of mild mirth, though so eminently acceptable a few degrees further east. Further on, in Saharanpur, which I have been visiting these past few weeks, it is neither vowel nor vocabulary: those accursed people speak at 78 rpm (think of a Malayali speaking Malayalam, or Tamil, or Hindi, or English) and it is difficult to understand what has just been said. It doesn't help that the place is close to the meeting point of four states, UP, Uttarakhand, Haryana and HP, and traces of regional accent keep swirling around. By and large, it is the huge influence of Haryanvi/Rajasthani that scuppers us bhaiyas from the far east.
This is the place where one is forcefully made aware of the divide starting in Prakrit times a few centuries before Christ, more than a millennium before Islam, when Ardhamagadhi dominated the east, and the whole Gangetic plain, and Sauraseni was seen by Indian language teachers (wrongly) as a dialect of that.
Punjab was creating its own language and vocabulary even further removed than this split, based on Sauraseni, and first distinctly heard through Baba Farid in the 11th century; even in historical memory, Punjabi has been splitting into its locational dialects, and Hindko, Potohari or Potwari and Saraiki are today known as distinct languages, that were once considered dialects. I suspect that a similar process is taking place in the east, and Bengali is dividing into two, as the usages of our Bangladeshi linguistic kin become more and more settled at the popular level; it is only a matter of time before their spoken version finds its way into literary forms and supplants 'standard' Bengali.
But Urdu is still the language of convenience in north India and it is quite clear that only a handful of pedants and pundits will speak 'pure' unsullied Hindi replete with tatsam words, which come out sounding like the lady from the TV skit shown earlier in this thread. I say that Urdu is the language of convenience because every one who says 'intezar' instead of 'apeksha' has slipped off the tight and narrow path that is 'pure' Hindi, and is speaking Urdu, even if it is an Urdu with a vocabulary of one non-tatsam word. It is possible to use this very convenient vehicle because of its grammatical structure being one that people from Assam to the Punjab, and from Hyderabad to Kashmir, can comprehend and use in daily use.
As for the original question, how much Sanskrit and how much Persian, there are theoretically more than a billion answers to that question, considering that each individual effectively defines his or her own Urdu. Every day, every time he or she opens his or her mouth.
Again, another very effective summary. Much appreciated.
Was just playing around because of the timeline mentioned by you. You are correct, the Ikshwakus were a prominent tribe during the Rg vedic period. However, as you mentioned they were the "Solar race", the Rg veda concerns itself with the "Lunar race" of the Ailas (Yadus, Turvasas, Druhyus, Anus and Purus) and does not concern itself with the second most important dynasty of the Rg veda, the Ikshwakus. The word is mentioned once in the Rg veda but only while referring to the sun. A tribe of the Ikshwakus, the Trksis is mentioned twice more but that too only because of help rendered to the Purus. It is only the Ailas & more specifically the Purus that the Rg veda is concerned with.
