Pashto

“ We shall consider the Paisaci languages first. The Aryan family of languages is well known to belong to the Indo-European languages. This Aryan family, according to the latest researches is sub-divided into (1) Iranian (Eranian or Erano-Aryan) languages (2) Indo Aryan or Sanskritic Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian being also grouped into persian and non-Persian. Of these the Paisaci languages include Pashai, spoken in Laghman in Afghanistan ; a number of Kafir dialects of which the principal are Bashgai, Wai, and Kalasha ”

“ But, strictly speaking, the medieval Persian language is called Pahlavi when it is written in one of the characters used before the invention of the modern Persian alphabet, and in the peculiarly enigmatical mode adopted in Pahlavi writings.... Like the Assyrians of old, the Persians of Parthian times appear to have borrowed their writing from a foreign race. But, whereas the Semitic Assyrians adopted a Turanian syllabary, these later Aryan Persians accepted a Semitic alphabet. ”

“ In the Kafir group again we find the Pashai language spoken over a very considerable area. The map accompanying Sir George Grierson’s monograph on ‘The Pisaca Languages of North-Western India’ [Asiatic Society Monographs, VIII., 1906] , shows Pashai as the language spoken along the right bank of the Kunar river as far as the Asmar tract as well as in the side valleys which from the north descend towards it and the Kabul river further west. ”

“ I am glad to have one of my officers speak Pushtoo, for although both in Scinde and Afghanistan Persian is the language most spoken by the upper classes, it is of no use with the peasants. In the work of digging wells, bargaining for fodder for the horses, and so forth, Pushtoo will be very useful, for although it differs from the language of the Belooches, it is near enough for them to understand it; and, of course, when we are once through the Bolan it is the language of all the countrymen. ”

“ Arabic will also be very useful to you. I have constant communications with India, with Turkey, and with Herat. I buy goods from all these countries; and sell Persian products to them. In Afghanistan, indeed, Persian is spoken generally by the trading and upper classes; but Arabic is essential to trade with Constantinople and Smyrna, with Bokhara and the Turkomans; and it is our chief medium of communication with India traders, who, although speaking several distinct languages, all have more or less knowledge of Arabic. ”

“ Persian has maintained its dominance in Punjab to a large extent. For example, a collection of things become 'cheezan' here instead of 'cheezain'. This principle prevails throughout. What is being emphasised here is that Hindi is still far from Punjabi heart in spite of being close to Punjabi; of course, Punjabi will come closer to Hindi when it will adopt the Hindi script attempt creating its literature.
By now almost every major issue has been discussed here. Only one thing now remains to be said. Many people argue that the Punjabi language lacks sweetness, beauty and emotions. ”

“ But if he desires to distinguish himself as an eminent translator, and to understand not only the general purport of a composition, but even the graces and ornaments of it, he must necessarily learn the Arabick tongue, which is blended with the Persian in so singular a manner, that one period often contains both languages wholly distinct from each other in expression and idiom, but perfectly united in sense and construction. ”

“ The moolahs learn some Arabic because the Koran is written in that language: otherwise, foreign languages are not taught. The Court pages seem to be taught rather more than other boys; some of them learn the different languages of the country—Pushtu and Turki—as well as Persian. The Amîr’s eldest son, Prince Habibullah, was learning English when I was in Kabul, though I never heard of anyone else learning the language. I have heard the Amîr speak Persian, Pushtu, and Turki. ”

“ As to other eases, I fail to enunciate any natural law, which causes the occurrence of the স্বরান্ত sound.
The scope of my subject did not allow me to notice the allied and cognate sound peculiarities as occur in other Aryan languages; I refer you however to a few Iranian peculiarities, just to suggest how wide our field of research is. In the first place we may notice, in connection with the sound of the vowel ঋ, that in Iranian, the radical 'ar' (ঋ) is reduplicated by ই; that the Indian sound of ঋ has always been 'ri' and not 'ru,' is clearly demonstrated by it. ”

“ The Pehlwi, the language of the Parthians who occupied the centre of Persia, a territory that adjoins the Semetic countries, appears very decidedly to be a connecting link between the Semetic languages on the one hand and the Parsian and Zend and the Indo-European tongues, viewed as a class, on the other. The Zend, the dialect of ancient Media, or North Persia, is supposed to be closely allied to the Armenian. The Parsian, Pehlwi, and Zend, respectively bearing these relations to the languages of the neighbouring countries, are closely connected as sister dialects among themselves. ”

“ They nominate the Khans, and sometimes even dethrone them; and often five hundred of their horsemen have taken possession of a city, without the Khan daring to resist them. I have not been able to detect, in the Turkish that they speak, a single Persian or Arabic word, and their dialect may be regarded as the best point of transition from the Mongolian language to that of the Djagatai. The same remark may be made respecting the type of their physiognomy as of their language; for these stand in a similar relation to those of the other races of Central Asia. ”

“ It is well known that the Iranian languages change s to h. The Tertiary Prakrits of the Outer Band find analogous difficulty in pronouncing a sibilant. The north-western languages change it to h as in Persian. Marathi changes s to ś before palatal sounds, and the same change occurs in Bengali in the case of every uncompounded sibilant. Eastern Bengali and Assamese go farther. Here s is again sounded almost like h. On the other hand, in the Midland, s rarely becomes h and then only when medial. In the Outer languages the palatal consonants are also liable to change ”

“ He finds no abiding place in this mortal caravan-serai, this shifting House of Mirrors; for his Soul is ever passing forward on the high Quest. Knowledge and skill are as dust, and self as nothing, compared with the Love that goads and urges him on.
As a language, Urdu has a most composite ancestry, and comprises elements derived from the original languages of India, from Sanskrit, the tongue of the Aryan invaders, from Persian, from Turkish, from Kurdish and other Tartar tongues, from Arabic, even from Egyptian and Abyssinian ”

“ In the mutual intercourse of nations, language assumes foreign elements easiest and preserves them the longest. The Persian dialect of modern Iran is overloaded with Arabian-Turkish words. Fars in the south, as well as Mazandran in the north, is in this only a little distinctive. In East Iran, nevertheless, the borrowed richness of language is certainly less ”

“ The language division corresponds roughly with the tribal system of the Pathans, who are aristocratic in the north and democratic in the south. The classical dialect of Pukhtu is that of the Yusufzais, in which the earliest works in the language were composed. The Orakzai dialect differs from that of the Afridis, in that it is broader but less guttural and spoken more rapidly. The standard dialect is that of Peshawar. The literature is richest in poetry, Abdur Rahman, of the 17th century, being the best-known poet. ”

“ Pehlvi or Pehlevi.
Iranic: extinct dialect of Old Persian, belonging to the Pahlav district of Western Iran or Media, but with large Semitic infusion. It is the language of the Sassanian coins, of several inscriptions of early Sassanian kings, and of the earliest comments on the Avesta, closely allied to the Zend and Old Persic; it is also called Huzvaresh, a suggestion of Spiegel’s. See Spiegel’s “Grammatik der Huzvareschen Sprache;” Haug’s Old Pahlavi-Pazand Glossary, by Asa, Bombay, 1870.
Pehuenche.
American: tribes of Araucans. ”

“ Avoiding, however, the discussion of this point, we shall content ourselves with observing, that closely connected with the Sanscrit, if not derived from it, are the Bengáli, the high Hindustáni, or grand popular language of Hindustan, generally used by the learned in their intercourse and writings, the languages of Multan, Guzerat, and other provinces, without mentioning the mixed dialect called Mongolian Hindustáni, a corrupt jargon of Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and Hindu words, first used by the Mongols, after the conquest, in their intercourse with the natives. ”

“ The eastern part of the Indus valley in Kashmír forming the provinces of Ladákh and Báltistán is occupied by a Mongol population speaking Tibeto-Chinese dialects. Kashmírí is the language of Kashmír Proper, and various dialects of the Shina-Khowár group comprehensively described as Kohistání are spoken in Astor, Gilgit, and Chilás, and to the west of Kashmír territory in Chitrál and the Kohistán or mountainous country at the top of the Swát river valley. ”

“ We have to adopt one language, one script, one literature, one ideal and one nation, but the adoption of a single language precedes all the other unities, so they we can communicate with and comprehend each other. A Punjabi and a Madrasi must not sit together mute at a gathering, but try to communicate their ideas and emotions, and this should be done in our own language, Hindi, rather than in an alien language like English. ”

“ Attempt is being made on all parts of the country to make Urdu as the common language of these heterogeneous elements. The largest number of Mohammedans dwell in the Panjab and in Bengal. The Mohammedans of the Panjab speak Panjabi dialect at home, but the educated ones read and write Urdu. In the same way attempt is being made, though not yet in a decisive form, to universalize Urdu amongst the Mohammedans of Bengal, as also in the Western Presidency. ”

“ I laboured under the disadvantage of being unable to speak Russian to the cook, or Turki to the other servants, but fortunately old Jafar Bai, who was entrusted with the purchases of supplies in the bazar, spoke Persian, and as I have a working acquaintance with that language he could act as my interpreter. To counterbalance my lack of tongues I had a fair knowledge of cooking and a good deal of energy, a quality useful in dealing with the slackness of the Oriental, particularly in Mohamedan countries, where a woman is obliged to hold her own, as her sex is of so little account. ”

“ Old y often appears as j: Zend yāma (glass) , New Persian jām; yavan (a youth) , New Persian javān. Two consonants are not allowed to stand together at the beginning of a word; hence vowels are frequently inserted or prefixed, e.g. New Persian sitādan or istādan (to stand) , root stā, birādar (brother) , Zend and Pahlavī brātar. [78]
Amongst modern languages and dialects other than Persian which must be also assigned to the Iranian family may be mentioned:—Modern Dialects.
1. Kurdish, a language nearly akin to New Persian, with which it has important characteristics in common. ”

“ As one passes across Asia from the Yakuts, through Kashgar, Turkestan and Azerbaijan to Constantinople, the pronunciation of the Turkish languages becomes decidedly softer, the suffixes become more intimately united with the words to which they are appended (approaching though not attaining the unity of Finnish inflexions) , and the verbal forms grow more numerous and more complicated. ”

“ Whether there was any identity between the name thus used, and that of Pahlava, which is applied to a people mentioned often in Sanskrit books, is a point still unsettled.
The meaning attached to the term Pahlavi by Orientals themselves, writing in Arabic or Persian (exclusive of Parsis) , appears to have been 'Old Persian' in general, without restriction to any particular period or dialect. It is thus found applied to the cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis. (Derived from West as quoted above, and from Haug's Essays, ed. London, 1878.) ”

“ It must be a familiar experience, that from the sound alone from a good distance, a Bengali can know whether an Oriya poem or some Hindi দোঁহা's are being recited. Even where there is no musical chanting, the character of the metres will indicate the characteristic difference. All this is due wholly to different accent systems. As the style of a language is the expression of the thought of the speakers, so is the metrical system in a language, due to the special accent system of the people. ”

“ It betrays therefore a radical misunderstanding of the whole bearings of the question, and of the whole science of philology, to speak of Urdu and Hindi as two distinct languages. When certain agitators cry out that the language of the English courts of law in Hindustan should be Hindi and not Urdu, what they mean is that clerks and native writers should be restrained from importing too many Persian and Arabic words into their writings, and should use instead the honest old Sanskrit Tadbhavas with which the Hindi abounds. ”

“ Tribal dissensions are constantly in existence, and seldom or never do all the Afghans pay allegiance to the nominal ruler of their country. Their language (Pushtu) is distinct from the Persian, though it contains a great number of Persian words, and is written, like the Persian, with the Arabic characters. ”

“ Their ignorance of Indianness and Indian literature is the main reason of this. When they cannot imbibe Indianness, how can their literature make us Indian? Students confined to the study of urdu cannot attain the knowledge of the classical literature of India. It is not that these texts cannot be translated into a literary language like urdu, but it will be useful only to a Persian in his pursuit concerning Indian literature. ”