Historical Outline of the Languages of Western Indian

Author(s): K B Vyas
Publisher: Z_Vijay_Vallabh_suri_Smarak_Granth_012060.pdf

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A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THE LANGUAGES OF WESTERN INDIA 167
topic on earth. In respect of form, lyrics, ballads, sonnets and elegies in poetry, and essay, fiction, short story, drama, autobiography, and travel literature now came into existence as a direct consequence of contact with western literature. The still newer forms of literature like the short story, one-act plays and radio-plays have recently come into greater vogue and achieved success. Such is modern Gujarati language and literature.
VIII Besides its standard form in which literature is composed Gujarāti has several interesting dialects which are only spoken forms of speech, though almost universally current among the masses of Gujarāt. They are the Kāțhiāwādi, Pattanī or north Gujarātī, Carotari or middle Gujarātī, and Surati or south Gujarātī.
The Bhils on the eastern border speak their own dialect--the Bhilli, which bears a close affinity to Gujarāti. To the north beyond Mount Abu is spoken a language which has traces of Gujarāti within its predominantly Rajasthani corpus. To the south-east in the Dānga area the speech is an intermixture of Gujarāti and Marathi-predominantly Gujarati on the western side, and leaning more to Marāțhi on the eastern side.
There are also racial dialects of Gujarāti which are spoken by particular communities. For example, Kāthis and Ahirs of Saurāṣtra speak an archaic dialect nearer to Apabhramśa than to modern Gujarāti. The Khārvās of the coast-line of Saurāṣtra have their special dialect known as Khārvi. Parsis speak Parsi-Gujarāti, while Vohrás of north Gujarāt, Memoņs of Saurāştra, and Bāraiyas and Dhāraļās of middle Gujarāt speak Gujarātī with their characteristic dialectal traits. Some of these dialects are given a place in modern Gujarāti creative literature-particularly in the short-story and fiction-in order to impart local colour to the work.
Gujarāti in its long history stretching over a thousand years as outlined above came in contact with several external influences and assimilated some of them. Thus it is that Arabic words like umdā,* insaf, javáb, kharca, taiyar, makan, vatan, sarbat; and the Persian words like gulab, gumasto, cālāk, jakham, dago, dastāvej, darji, fudino, bakhşīs, bāju, majūr, hajâr, etc.; and the Turki words like kalgi, kābu, cakmak, camco, jājam,
These and other loan-words are reproduced in their characteristically Gujarāti form.