Indian Antiquary Vol 43

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

Page 170

166
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1914
The question of the language spoken by the Gujurs of Swât is different and more difficult. Two opposing theories have been given in the preceding pages, and the present writer will now attempt to give his own views on the subject. It must, however, be observed that these views are founded on imperfect materials, and are only put forward as what seems to him to be the best explanation till further materials become available.
We do not know what language was spoken by the Gurjaras of Sapadalaksha. It has been stated that it was not necessarily Indo-Aryan. This is true merely as a confession of ignorance. We simply do not know. All that we can say is that in some respects (such as the use of handi as a postposition of the genitive, the form chhau, for the verb substantive, and the use of lå to form the future tense) its modern descendant, Rajasthâni, shows points of agreement with the Piśâcha languages of the north-west.
These Sapadalaksha Gurjaras came into Eastern Rajputâna, and their language there developed into Modern Rajasthani. But as has been shown in the part of the Survey dealing with Rajasthani, this is not a pure language. The Gurjaras settled among & people speaking an Indo-Aryan language of the Inner Group akin to Western Hindi. They adopted this language, retaining at the same time many forms of their own speech. The result was Rajasthani, a mixed language in which, as has been shown elsewhere, the influence of the Inner Group of Indo-Aryan languages weakens as we go westwards. In the north-east of Rajputâna, in Alwar and Mewat, the influence of the Inner Group is strongest.
Now the Gujurs of Swât speak this mixed Mewati Rajasthani, and not the language of the Sapadalaksha Gurjaras, whatever that was. Of this there can be no doubt. Swat Gujuri therefore must be a form of Mewati Rajasthânî, and we cannot describe the latter as a form of Swât Gujurî, for we know that it originally came from Sapâdalaksha, not from Swat.
Mr. Smith has described how the Gâjars of Rajputâna can have entered the Panjab, and, whether the details of his theory are correct or not (and the present writer, for one, sees no reason for doubting them), we may take it, that the main point,-their entry from Rajputâna-is proved.
We are thus able to conceive the following course of events. The Mewat Gâjars went up the Jamna Valley, and settled in the Panjâb plains. There they amalgamated with the rest of the population and lost their distinotive language. Some of them settled in the submontane districts of Gujrat, Gujranwala, Kângra, and the neighbourhood. Here they partially retained their old language, and now speak a broken mixture of it, Pañjâbî, and Hindôstâni. The use of Hindôstâni forms in this mongrel submontane Gujari, far from the River Jamna, on the banks of which Hindôstani has its proper home, is most suggestive.
Finally, other Gæjars, more enterprising than their fellows, went on further into the mountains, beyond the submontane tract, and are now-a-days represented by the Gujurs of Swât, Kashmir, and the neighbourhood.
These last wander free over the mountains of their new home, and have little intercourse with the other inhabitants of the locality. They have hence retained the original language which they brought with them from Mewat. But even here we shall see in the specimens sporadic waifs picked up on their journey-stray Hindôstâni and Pañjabi forms, retained like solitary flies in amber, within the body of the Gujur speech.