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THE ALPHABET group. This covers the country between Sirhind in the Punjab and Allahabad in the United Provinces, between the Himalaya range in the north and the river Narbada in the south; in other words, the Madhyadesa or "Midland" of ancient Sanskrit geographers, the holy land of Brahmanism, the centre of Hindu civilization. Western Hindi is spoken nowadays by about 42 million people.
One of its various dialects, Hindustani, which is primarily the language of the northern Doab, was carried over the whole of India by the Moslems, while the literary Hindustani (in its two forms, Urdu and Hindi), used by Moslems and Hindus, has become the modern literary language of India. Early in the seventeenth century it was already known in England that Hindustani was the lingua franca of India. Hindustani can be written in various scripts; it is mainly a matter of religion: Moslems employ the Persian-Arabic alphabet with a few additional signs for sounds peculiar to Indian languages not found in Persian (Fig. 138. 1): most Hindus use the Deva-nagari character for literary purposes and the current hands Kaithi and Mahajani for daily-life: see below.
Simple Hindustani can be, and often is, written in both the Persian and Deva-nagari scripts.
There are, however, two forms of Hindustani, which cannot be written in both the Persian alphabet and the Deva-nagari character. Urdu is that form of Hindustani which makes a free use of Persian and Arabic words in its vocabulary. The term derives perhaps from urdu-e-mu'alla, or royal military bazaur outside the Delhi palace; zabaw-i-urdu, "language of the camp."
Urdu is used chiefly by Moslerns and by Hindus influenced by Persian culture, and is written in a variety of the Persian-Arabic alphabet. Hindi is the modern development of Hindustani which is free from Persianization and owes more to Sanskrit instead; it is used only by Hindus who have been educated on a Hindu system, and is usually printed in Deva-nagari character, its current hands being Kaithi, Mahajani and similar scripts which will be dealt with below.
Recently, the Pakistan Education Advisory Board accepted the suggestion that Arabic script should replace Persian for the national language, Urdu. (The Times 7.2.1949)
Sarada Script This script (Fig. 162, 3, and 170) is described by Buehler as descendant of the western type of the Gupta character. It originated in the eighth century A.D. and is still employed for Kashmiri, a language which is spoken by about two million people in the valley of Kashmir and the contiguous valleys to its south and east. Kashmiri can be divided into the Kashmiri of the Moslems and that of the Hindus; the former, who are in the majority but are mainly uneducated, and the Hindus who have Moslem education, both employ a variety of the Persian-Arabic alphabet; while the other Hindus, who are the educated minority, generally use the Sarada script, which is also taught in Hindu schools. Much of the Kashmiri literature is written in Sanskrit and in the Deva-nagari character. The Sarada script
