History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c41.s26.4

v3.c41.s26.4

Now this is a complete survey of India so far as alphabet is concerned, and we may take it that it also represents the state of the country as regards language, a state which is practically the same as now. In Eastern Panjab and Kashmir, down to Benares we have the Eastern Hindi with its peculiar script, in Malwa and Rājputana western Hindi, in northern Sind and Western Panjab we have a language distinct from others; and Sindhi in Sind. On the sea-coast a still more distinct language and writing which is called Malawāri. Perhaps this was imported from Malabar by sea and the Saindhava at Almansura must be a mixed jargan of Arabic and Hindi. Both apparently do not survive now. Gujarati (alphabet and language) apparently had not a distinct existence in 1030 A. D. as even the name Gujarat for the province had not come into existence at that time. It will be seen that Al-Beruni does not mention the Marathi alphabet; probably the Lāri or the language of Lāta as spoken in North Konkan is another name for old Marathi which became uniform when the Yādavas became supreme in the 13th century even in Konkan. Marco Polo (1280) mentions that there were different languages in Gujarat and in Thana. Marathi is now a general language which has suppressed its different dialects viz. the Lādi of North Konkan, the Konkani in south Konkan as far as Goa, and the speech of Mahārastra proper, Vidarbha and Khandesh, owing to the supremacy of the Yādavas and the prevalence of the Bhāgavata worship of Vithoba of Pandharpur both of which things happened about the end of this sub-period viz. from 1170 to about 1200 A. D. That Marathi as a distinct language with minor dialectic differences had not only come into existence but had developed about the 12th century is clear from the literature now found of the Mahānubhāvas and even Dnyāneśvari of 1290 A. D. in its finished excellence presupposes the development of the language at least a century before it. We find a Marathi sentence in an inscription from Konkan recorded by the Śilāhāras of Thana. In Bengal also it may be taken that the modern vernacular of that province had come into literary existence. Its different script, the Gaudi, is mentioned by Al-Beruni.