A Short History of the Urdu Language

Everyone seems to know how the Urdu language came into being. John T.
Platss A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English defines the word
Urdu as:
Army; camp; market of a camp; The Hindstn language as spoken by the
Muhammadans of India, and by Hinds who have intercourse with them or who
hold appointments in the Government courts, &c. (It is composed of Hind,
Arabic, and Persian, Hind constituting the back-bone, so to speak): The royal
camp or army (generally means the city of Dehli or Shhjahnbd); the court
language (=urd-i-muall-k zabn); the Hindstn language as spoken in
Dehli.
This seems to be the history generally agreed upon. Urdu (derived from the
Turkish word Ordu meaning army camp) originated in the army camps of the
Mughals and is a mixture of words taken from different languages such as
Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hindi. The soldiers who spoke these languages
created a new lingua franca to communicate among themselves and thus Urdu
was born. Unfortunately this simplistic view is the result of colonial myth
making. According to Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Assistant Professor at University
of Virginia and the editor of The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu
Literature, The Mughals did follow the Central Asian tradition of setting up
vast encampments almost city-like in proportions that could
be shikargahs (royal hunting camps) or simply a court away from the formal
court at the Capital. But to infer that such camps led to new language
formations is to stretch the idea of urdu = camp way too far. Certainly no new
language grew out of Mughal camps in Northern India.
If we consider that to be the truth then where did Urdu come from?
There are several theories. Some claim that Urdu has its roots in the Punjabi
language, others that it was born in Deccan or somewhere in Sindh but these are
all based on pure speculation and do not hold up to linguistic or historical
investigation. The myth that Urdu is a camp language was first of all proposed
by Mir Amman (1750-1837) who first presumed Urdu was born that way. In his
preface to Bagh-o-Bahar (1802), a translation of Amir Khusraus Tales of the
Four Darweshes, carried out on the behest of Fort William College, he wrote
that Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (who reigned between 1628 and 1658) made
Delhi his capital and named its bazaar Urdu-e-moalla. In fact his passage can
be quoted in full:
The account of the Urdu tongue I have thus heard from my ancestors; --that the
city of Dilli, according to the opinion of the Hindus, was founded in the earliest
times, and that their Rajas and subjects lived there from the remotest antiquity,
and spoke their own peculiar Bhakha. For a thousand years past, the Musalmans
have been masters there. Mahmud of Ghazni came [there first]; then the Ghori
and Lodi became kings; owing to this intercourse, the languages of the Hindus
and Musalmans were partially blended together. At last Amir Taimur (in whose
family the name and empire remain to this day), conquered Hindustan. From his
coming and stay, the bazar of his camp was settled in the city; for which reason
the bazar of the city was called Urdu. Then King Humayun, annoyed by the
Pathans, went abroad [to Persia]; and at last, returning from thence, he punished
the surviving [Pathans], and no rebel remained to raise strife or disturbance.
When King Akbar ascended the throne, then all tribes of people, from all the
surrounding countries, hearing of the goodness and liberality of this unequalled
family, flocked to his court, but the speech and dialect of each was different.
Yet, by being assembled together, they used to traffic and do business, and
converse with each other, whence resulted the common Urdu language. When
his majesty Shahjahan Sahib-Kiran built the auspicious fort, and the great
mosque, and caused the walls of the city to be built; and inlaid the peacock
throne with precious stones, and erected his tent, made of gold and silver
brocade; then the king, being pleased, made great rejoicings, and constituted the
city his capital. Since that time it has been called Shajahan-abad, (although the
city of Dilli is distinct from it, the latter being called the old city, and the former
the new,) and to the bazar of it was given the title of Urdu-e Mu'alla.
From the time of Amir Taimur until the reign of Muhammad Shah, and even to
the time of Ahmad Shah, and Alamgir the Second, the throne descended lineally
from generation to generation. In the end, the Urdu language, receiving repeated
polish, was so refined, that the language of no city is to be compared to it; but
an impartial judge is necessary to examine it. Such a one God has at last, after a
long period, created in the learned, acute and profound Mr. John Gilchrist, who
from his own judgment, genius, labour and research, has composed books of
rules [for the acquisition of it].
Mir Amman had written about Urdus origin was paraphrased by many writers
over the next 100 years or so and this repetition naturally lent credence to the
theory and it became common knowledge that Urdu was a camp language,
made up of words from different languages.
The real story is considerably complex.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say about Urdu:
Urdu developed in the 12th century from the regional Apabhramsha of
northwestern India, serving as a linguistic modus vivendi after the Muslim
conquest. This mixed speech was variously called Hindvi, Zaban-e-Hind, Hindi,
Zaban-e-Delhi, Rekhta, Gujari, Dakkhani, Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla, Zaban-e-
Urdu, or just Urdu, literally the language of the camp. Major Urdu writers
continued to refer to it as Hindi or Hindvi until the beginning of the 19th
century, although there is evidence that it was called Hindustani in the late 17th
century.
According to Mehr Afshan Farooqi, The grammar and the syntactical structure
of Urdu are based on the local speech of the times in the region around Delhi
(later identified as khari boli). However, this language was not the chosen
vehicle for literary production. Awadhi and Brajbhasha were the languages of
poetry and other literary pursuits to the extent they were used for such a purpose
in this early period. Though marginalized by Persian, the language of the royal
court on the one hand and Braj and Awadhi, at the regional courts and in the
creative efforts of saints and Sufi poets on the other, Hindvi lingered on as a
lingua franca, travelling to western, central and southern India through
merchants and travelling Sufi mystics who were encouraged by their pirs to
move to distant regions and establish their own centres.
From which of the several dialects did Urdu originate? Some linguists believe
it was most probably an offshoot of Shourseni Prakrit, spoken in and around
Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. According to Shamsur Rehman Farooqi it changed
into Goojri in Gujarat and Dakhani in the Deccan. As its literary potential grew
poetry in Hindvi became a mixture of Persian and indigenous meters.
The name 'Urdu' seems to have begun its life as zaban-e urdu-e mualla-
e shahjahanabad (the language of the exalted city/court of Shahjahanabad, that
is, Delhi).
The rest as they say is history.
People who through ignorance or other motivations present a simplistic view of
language ignore the fact that Khusrau was writing in Urdu considerably earlier
than the arrival of the Mughals. In fact traces of Urdu have also been found in
Babars diaries. There is no doubt Urdu has been influenced by other languages
but the influence has been in picking up words. Grammar was hardly affected.
The English language has words from several languages does that make it a
camp language? Certainly not.
Dr. Rauf Parekh writing in Dawn says, A language takes centuries, even more,
to evolve. It is a slow, long, constant, complex and natural process. A language
invented to serve a specific purpose, such as enabling the troops to
communicate with one another, is labelled as artificial by linguists. Though
there have been hundreds of such attempts, some aimed at facilitating
international communication between nations and peoples speaking different
languages, none has been successful. Esperanto, a language formed with the
basic roots of some European languages, died despite its early success. In other
words, experiments to devise a language have failed and no artificial language
could survive. Urdu, like other languages of the world, has been classified by
linguists on the basis of its morphological and syntactical features. Urdu nouns
and adjective can have a variety of origins, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish,
Pushtu and even Portuguese, but ninety-nine per cent of Urdu verbs have their
roots in Sanskrit/Prakrit. So it is an Indo-Aryan language which is a branch of
Indo-Iranian family, which in turn is a branch of Indo-European family of
languages. According to Dr Gian Chand Jain, Indo-Aryan languages had three
phases of evolution beginning around 1,500 BC and passing through the stages
of Vedic Sanskrit, classical Sanskrit and Pali. They developed into Prakrit and
Apbhransh, which served as the basis for the formation of later local dialects.
Around 1,000 AD, the modern Indo-Aryan era began and with the arrival of
Muslims Arabic, Persian and, to a lesser extent, Turkish vocabulary began
assimilating into local dialects. One of those dialects later evolved further and
became an early version of Urdu/Hindi. Now the only question remaining
unanswered is which dialect or dialects developed further to become a language
that was basically one and was later divided into two languages, Hindi and
Urdu, on the basis of two different scripts.
I think it is high time we rid ourselves of what is essentially a faulty theory. Our
national language demands it.