Indian Antiquary Vol 43

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 168

164
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1914.
Mr. Bhandarkario has shown that this Sapadalaksha included the hill-country from Chamba on the west, to Western Nepal on the east, thus almost exactly corresponding with the area in which Western and Central Pahârî are now spoken. Now, in this tract at the present day it may be said that, while there are plenty of Râjpûts, there are no Gûjars. The main population is, as we have seen, Khasa, in which the non-military Gûjars must have been merged. The Sapadalaksha Gujar-Râjpûts, on the other hand, have provided Mewâr with its Chauhans. We have seen that one of the Swât Gujur septs is also called Chauhân, and the second of the two explanations for the presence of the Gujurs in their present seats is that they are not a backwash of immigration from Rajputâna, but are the representatives of Gurjaras who were there left behind while the main body advanced and settled in Sapâdalaksha. Instead of taking to agriculture and becoming merged in the population, they retained their ancestral pastoral habits and their tribal individuality.72
We have seen that there were originally many Râjpûts in Sapadalaksha. In the times of the Musalmân rule of India many more Râjpûts from the plains of India took refuge amongst their Sapâdalaksha kin and there founded dynasties which still survive. Particulars regarding these will be found in the Introduction to the three Pahârî languages and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that it is plain that down even to the days of late Musalmân dominion the tie between Sapâdalaksha and Rajputâna was never broken. And this, in my opinion, satisfactorily explains the fact of the close connexion between the Pahari languages and Rájasthânî.
We thus arrive at the following general results regarding the Aryan-speaking population of the Pahârî tract.
The earliest immigrants of whom we have any historical information were the Khatas, a race hailing from Central Asia and originally speaking an Aryan, but not necessarily, an Indo-Aryan, language. They were followed by the Gurjaras, a tribe who invaded India about the sixth century A. D. and occupied the same tract, then known as Sapâdalaksha. At that time, they also spoke an Aryan, but not necessarily an Indo-Aryan, language.73 Of these Gurjaras the bulk followed pastoral pursuits and became merged in and identified with the preceding Kha-a population. Others were fighting men, and were identified by the Brahmans with Kshatriyas. In this guise they invaded Eastern Rajputâna from Sapâdalaksha, and, possibly, Western Râjputâna from Sindh, and founded, as Râjpûts, the great Râjpût states of Rajputâna.7
70 l. c. pp. 28 ff. Sapádalaksha becomes in modern speech sawa-lakh, and means one hundred and twenty-five thousand, a reference to the supposed number of hills in the tract. At the present day the name is confined to the 'Siwalik' hills.
71 We see traces of this merging in the great Kanêt caste of the Simla Hills. It has two divisions, one called Khasia and the other Rão (Ibbetson I. c. r. 268). The former represent the Khasas, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Rãos are Güjars who have become merged into the general population and have adopted a name Rão, indicating their closer connexion with the Rajputs.
72 The writer's personal opinion upon this disputed point is given at length near the end of this article (p. 166).
73 It is possible that the Gurjaras, at the time that they first entered the hills, did not speak an IndoAryan language. We are quite ignorant on the point. But this must not be taken as suggesting that the languages of their descendants, the Rajpûts and the Gujurs, is not Indo-Aryan. It is now-a-days certainly Indo-Aryan, and belongs to the Inner-Group of these languages.
74 It is interesting, on this point, to note that the Central Pahârî of Kumaun and Garhwal (ie., of Eastern Sapadalaksha) agree with Eastern Rajasthânî in having the genitive postposition ko and the verb substantive derived from the achh, while in the Western Pahari of the Simla Hills (i.e., Western Sapadalaksha) the termination of the genitive is the Western Rajasthani rô, while one of the verbs substantive (4, is) is probably of the same origin as the Western Rajasthanî hat. As for Gujarat, the genitive ends in no, and the verb substantive belongs to the achh group. West of Western Pahari we have the Pôthwarî dialect of Lahndâ. Here also the genitive termination is no, but the verb substantive differs from that of Gujarati. On the other hand Gujarati agrees with all the Lahndâ dialects in one very remarkable point viz., the formation of the future by means of a sibilant. We thus see that right along the lower Himalaya, from the Indus to Nepal, there are three groups of dialects agreeing in striking points with, in order Gujarati, Western Rajasthânî and Eastern Rajasthânî.