Different Theory's about Origin of Sindhi Language

Many academics, scholars, linguists andexperts of ethno-archaeology have put forthdifferent theories on the origin and ancestry ofSindhi language. But still the linguistic roots of Sindhi are not traced out with authenticity.They include G.A. Grierson, Ernest Trumpp,Caldwell, Hoernle, George Stack, Emeneau,H.T. Sorley, N.A. Baloch, Sirajul Haq Memon,Murlidhar Jetely, Parso Gidwani, Massica, S.K.Chatterji, M.H. Panhwar, Bherumal Advani,Jairamdas Daulatram, G.A. Allana and Y.K.Wadhwani etc.

Tracing the origin of the Sindhilanguage, the western scholars of 19th and20th century such as Stack, Hoernle, Trumpp,Beames, Grierson, and following them manyIndian scholars, Bhandarkar, Vasnani,Chatterji, Bherumal Advani etc, relied mainlyon the statement of Prakrit grammarianMarkandeya. They traced the origin of modernSindhi to Vrachada Apabhramsa, said to beone of the most corrupt forms of languagederived from Sanskrit. The indigenous scholarsof Sindh, however, seek to find the origin oftheir language in the ruins of the WorldHeritage site of Mohen-jo-daro, one of theprincipal cities of the Indus Valley civilization,wherefrom so far no clue has been found tojustify their theories, except the undecipheredscript of a language prevalent in these days.

Of the various theories as yet floatedabout the origin of the Sindhi language, someare unacceptable while others appear to beprobable in some respects and improbable inothers. But, mostly hypothetical approach isvisible among the scholars engaged in tracingout the roots of Sindhi language. On the otherhand, E. Trumpp (1872) and Grierson (1903) despite being authority in the field, were earlierresearchers while the scientific data pertainingto the burials of Mohen-jo-daro came later inthe thirties, rejecting theories of IndusCivilization being exclusively Dravidian incharacter.

It is therefore not out of place to concludethat unless the Indus Script is fully deciphered,no authentic theory about the origin andancestry of Sindhi language could be developedforthwith. It is, however, beyond any doubt thatthe Sindhi language has developed sincecenturies fully well through universal process oflanguage change caused by its interaction withboth the Dravidian as well as other Indo-Aryanlanguages having their sway in the South Asia.Ernest Trumpp was the first scholarfloating the theory that Sindhi was derived fromSanskrit.

“Sindhi is a pure Sanskriticallanguage, more free from foreignelements than any other language of theNorth Indian vernaculars. The old Prakritgrammarians may have had their goodreason to designate the Apabhramsadialect, from which the modern Sindhi isderived, as the lowest of all the Prakritdialects. But if we compare now theSindhi with its sister-tongues, we mustassign to it, in a grammatical point ofview, the first place among them. It ismuch more closely related to the oldPrakrit than Marathi, Hindi, Punjabi andBengali of our days. It has preserved an exuberance of grammatical forms, forwhich all its sisters may envy it. For, whileall modern vernaculars of India arealready in a state of completedecomposition, (the old venerable mothertongue being hardly recognizable in herdegenerate daughters), the Sindhi has,on the contrary, preserved most importantfragments of it and erected for itself agrammatical structure, which surpassesin beauty of execution and internalharmony by far the loose and levelingconstruction of its sisters. The Sindhi hasremained steady in the first stage ofdecomposition after the old Prakrit,whereas all the cognate dialects havesunk some degrees deeper. The rules,which the Prakrit grammarianKramadishvara has laid down inreference to Apabhramsa, are stillrecognizable in the present Sindhi, whichby no means can be stated of the otherdialects. The Sindhi has thus become anindependent language, which, thoughsharing a common origin with its sistertongues, is very materially differing fromthem.” (Trumpp: 1872:1)

G.A. Grierson thought that Sanskrit wasone of the primary languages of thesubcontinent and was in vogue somewhere inits northwestern part. His theory originallywritten in 1903 A.D. was held by a large numberof scholars from Sindh. We have mentionedabout the statement of the Prakrit grammarian Markandeya (XVIII, 1) that the ApabhramsaPrakrit, spoken in Sindh was called ‘Vrachada’.It is from this that Sindhi is derived. According tohim, the Sindhi language belongs together withLahnda or Western Punjabi to the northwestgroup of the outer circle of the Indo-Aryanvernacular. He believes that both Sindhi andLahnda are closely related to Dardic languagesfurther in the north, to Kashmiri in particular(1919: 136).

Dr. N.A. Baloch believes that Sindhi isan ancient Indo-Aryan language, probablyhaving its origin in a pre-Sanskrit Indo-IranianIndus Valley language.

The Lahnda and Kashmiri appearto be its cognate sisters with a commonDardic element in all of them. The distinctnature of Sindhi, Lahnda and Dardiclanguages (of Kashmir and Kohistan inGilgit) rather suggest that they owe theirorigin to the common stock of Aryantongues spoken at the time of early Aryansettlement all along the Indus Valley. Ithas already been accepted thatPaishachi, the mother of Dardiclanguages was a sister, and not adaughter of the form of speech thatultimately developed as the literarySanskrit. Sindhi in particular, may haveimbibed some influence of the ancientlanguage of the Mohen-jo-Darocivilization having affinities with theSumerian and Babylonian tongues. In themore historical times, the influence of Iranian languages on Sindhi appears tobe a certainty. This influence wasfollowed by the influence of Sanskritthrough Pali-Prakrit, particularly from thedays of Kanishka (78-144 AD). In themore recent times, the influence ofArabic, which was the State language inSindh from 8th to 11th (possibly 13th)century A.D. and of Persian, which wasthe State language for more than fivecenturies (14 to19th) has been deep andpermanent. Thus, with its long history andrich linguistic background, the philologicalpeculiarities and structural complexities ofSindhi are so challenging that at thepresent stage of our knowledge, it is notpossible to trace many of its words totheir origin. Besides, for want of time andadequate research, it has not beenpossible to go deep into the etymology ofwords. There is a considerable room forimprovement in this aspect of the work,but it must be left to the future researchworkers” (1960: 19).

M.H. Panhwar taking support ofarchaeology rejects the theory of Sindhi beinga Dravidian language and summarizes thelanguage situation of Sindhi in the light ofchronology authenticated by scientific dataproduced as a result of the Carbon Testing ofthe Mohen-jo-daro remains. According to theconclusion drawn by him in the light of thechronology of the development of Sindhi, as aProto Indo-European language. He believes that:“It evolved into Proto Indo-Iranian,Proto-Indian and Dravidian to becomeProto-SINDHI. Then it came into contactwith Rig Vedic Sanskrit (1000-600 B.C.),Late Sanskrit (600-500 B.C.), Aramaic &Pahlavi (500-400 B.C.), Pali (325-187B.C.), Pali & Greek (87 B.C.- 283 A.D.)and Pahlavi (283-356 A.D.) to take formof early SINDHI. Under the influence ofSanskrit during 356-711 A.D. and Arabic& Sanskrit during 711-1011 A.D. it tookshape of Medieval SINDHI by 1011-1315A.D. The Persian again came in contactwith it during 600-1315 A.D., that was anera of Classical SINDHI. It further evolvedunder the influence of Persian (1600-1843 A.D.), and became Mid-19thCentury SINDHI.

MODERN SINDHI finally took itsshape after coming in contact withEnglish-Persian during 1843-1947A.D”(Panhwar: 1988)

Yashodhra K. Wadhwani believes thatthe modern Sindhi, like most other North IndoAryan languages attained the status of anindependent language for widespread use in itsmore or less present-day form, somewherearound the 10th century AD. Although somelanguage would certainly have been in voguein Sindh ever since the dawn of civilization, theclaim of such hoary antiquity for present-daySindhi smacks of undue dogmatism andlinguistic fanaticism. We must be sporting enough to admit that modern Sindhi, like mostother North Indo-Aryan languages, attained thestatus of an independent language forwidespread use in its more or less present-dayform somewhere around the 10th century. It iswith the origin and development of this modernSindhi that we should and can possiblyconcern ourselves. Of course, even the verseof a 10th century poet from Sindh quoted byBaloch has not a single word that a presentday Sindhi speaker can understand evenvaguely. Drastic language-change could be themain cause (Wadhwani: 1981: 239).Jairamdas Daulatram examines in detailthe nine peculiarities of Vrachada given byMarkandeya and shows that they hardlycorrespond with developments found inmodern Sindhi. On these grounds, he rejectsVrachada as the source of modern Sindhi, andproposes that the Lower Indus Valley regioncomprising modern-day Sindh might haveevolved a local Sindhi Apabhramsa havingintegral links with Nagara Apabhramsa, bothhaving a common earlier source, viz an ancientvariant of the pre-Vedic Prakrit. Defining ‘TheAncestry of Sindhi’ (Bhartya Vidya, Vol. XVII),he considers it as an Indo-Aryan Language.

The new Indo-Aryan languagesprevalent in different regions of undividedIndia to the North of the Deccan have,generally speaking, been as itspredecessor, the Middle Indo-Aryan(through its last phase, the Apabhramsa)and the old Indo-Aryan in this ascending line.” By 'Old Indo-Aryan' he means thePrimary Parkrits, the spoken dialects of theVedic period. He then demonstrates,through evidence quoted from variousSanskrit and Arabic sources, that what theycalled Sindhudesa was situatedsomewhere to the north of present-daySindh (Jairamdas: 1957). Allana, G.A. believes that there is nostructural relationship, whatsoever, betweenSindhi and Sanskrit. One can find only ‘wordstock’ borrowed by Sindhi from Prakrit, Paliand Sanskrit, more so due to the co-existenceof these languages in the Indus Valley for avery long time. However, after taking intoaccount the viewpoint of other scholars ofdifferent schools of thought, he concludes that:1. Sindhi has not sprung from Sanskrit.2. No vernacular of the sub -continent hasbeen derived from Sanskrit.3. Sindhi is an original language spoken byindigenous people of the Indus Valley. (Allana:1957)

Another Sindhi scholar Siraj claims thatSindhi in itself is the oldest language, prevalentright from the time of the Indus ValleyCivilization, and it is the basic or originalsource of Sanskrit as well as other alliedlanguages. He believes that the IndusCivilization was one of the earliest; and it wasthe language of the Indus people, who later onspread northwards and eastwards to developthe Vedic Aryan civilization, and (westwards toevolve) the Sumerian civilization, the Phoenician alphabet, etc. Their reason forleaving the homeland was the development ofdeplorable and discriminatory practice ofreligious and social customs of caste, plight ofuntouchables, etc. The erstwhile theory thatthe Vedic tradition was established in India bya European or allied race coming to India fromoutside is based on racial and nationalfanaticism. It is very much evident in thevarying claims of scholars suggesting their ownnative land as the original habitat of the IndoEuropean people. According to him, Sindhilanguage preserves a wealth of kinship termsunparalleled elsewhere; and many of its otherwords also cannot be traced to any outsidelanguage. Siraj also claims that Sindhipreserves the oldest forms of numerals, evenolder than those in Sanskrit. Siraj believes thatcertain sounds also are peculiar to Sindhialone among all Indo-Aryan languages ofSouth Asia. He differs with both Dr. ErnestTrumpp and Dr. N.A. Baloch saying that Sindhiis not derived from Sanskrit, but on thecontrary, Sanskrit is the genuine daughter ofSindhi. (Siraj: 1964)