An Essay on the Punjabi Language

Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language that is spoken by people of the Punjab region in North Western India and in North Eastern Pakistan. Punjabi can be divided into two categories. The categories are Western Punjabi and Eastern Punjabi. Western Punjabi broke up into Saraiki, Potwari and Hindko. These came to be counted later almost as separate languages. Eastern Punjabi remained independently as what is Punjabi today. It is the official language of the state of Punjab in India. The term `Punjabi’ refers to the land which belongs to five waters. The word has its roots in Persian. It refers to the five major eastern tributaries of the Indus River. For the community of Sikhs, Punjabi is their principal language. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most spoken language. There are more than one hundred and six million native speakers of the Punjabi language. This makes it the tenth most widely spoken language in the world. There are about seventy six million native Punjabi speakers in Pakistan and about thirty million Punjabi speakers in India. Punjabi is a descendant of the Saurasheni Prakrit which was spoken as the main language in medieval Northern India. After the partition of India, the Punjab region was divided between Pakistan and India. Though the Punjabi people made up the second biggest linguistic group in Pakistan after Bengali, Urdu was declared the national language of Pakistan. Punjabi did not get any official status. The Indian territory of Punjab which also included Haryana and Himachal Pradesh became a Hindi majority region. Punjabi is also spoken as a minority language in several other countries where the Punjabis have migrated in large numbers such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. History Punjabi can be traced back as an independent language to the ninth century after Christ. The earliest traces of Punjabi can be found in the works of Nath Yogis, Gorakshanath and Charpatnath in the ninth century. Punjab faced the brunt of Moghul invaders during the middle ages. The internal conflicts within Punjab also proved harmful to the growth and development of the Punjabi language and its literary works. Guru Nanak, who lived between 1469 and 1539, was the founder of the Sikh religion and he gave a new impetus to the Punjabi language. The fifth Guru, Arjun Dev, 1563-1606, compiled the Sikh scripture, the `Adi Grantha’ or the `Grantha Saheb’ in Punjabi. During these middle ages, the Hindu and Sikh writers wrote in the Punjabi language. The best known Hindu Punjabi poet of the seventeenth century was Chandar Bhan who was originally from Lahore. The Muslim writers were also prolific in terms of creativity in Punjabi. A Muslim poet named Abdullah, 1616-1666, wrote `Bara Anva’(Twelve Topics) in Punjabi which is a thesis on Islam. During this period, many Muslim Sufi poets came into the limelight. Their compositions, which were purely in Punjabi, form an integral part of the Punjabi literature in both content and spirit. One of the famous Sufi poets was Ali Haider, 1689-1776, who wrote a large number of `Siharfis’ or poems involving thirty stanzas. Each stanza began, though, with a letter of the Persian alphabet. Poems on historical figures and stories formed a major literary part of the eighteenth century. After the British took over Punjab, Hindi language gained prominence in Punjab. The Hindus too with their reform movements like Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharma gave importance to Hindi. Punjabi, in its Gurumukhi character, was taken up and used mainly by the Sikhs. Dialects Punjabi language has many dialects which are spoken in the sub regions of greater Punjab. Since the partition of Punjab in 1947, Punjabi that is spoken in both Pakistan and India has drifted apart from each other. The Indians rely heavily on Sanskrit vocabulary through Hindi. The Pakistanis rely mostly on Farsi and Urdu influence with the Shahmukhi script. The Majhi dialect is Punjab’s prime dialect. It is considered as textbook Punjabi and is spoken in the historical region of Majha. It has had its influence on both Amritsar and Lahore. Modern Punjabi consists of many dialects. The Majhi or the standard Punjabi is the written standard in both parts of Punjab. The Punjabi language in India has replaced several Persian and Arabic loan words acquired through Urdu with words of Sanskrit origin because of the domination of Hindi instead of Urdu in India. Recent modernisation and industrialisation has seen an English influence in both parts of Punjab. Major Punjabi dialects are Majhi, Shahpuri, Malwi, Doabi, Pwadhi, Dogri and Multani. The Multani dialect of Punjabi is spoken in Pakistani Punjab. Riasati and Thalochri are sub dialects of Multani. It is spoken by a majority of people in the northern parts of Sindh, Hyderabad and Karachi. Dogri is spoken by about four million people in the Jammu region of India. Pwadhi is spoken in Powadh and in some regions of Punjab and parts of Haryana between the Sutlej and the Ghaggar rivers. Doabi is spoken in Indian Punjab in Jalandhar, Nawanshahr and Hoshiarpur between the Beas and the Sutlej rivers. Doabi means in Persian the land between two rivers. Malwi is spoken in the eastern part of Indian Punjab. Main areas are Ludhiana, Barnala and Faridkot. Shahpuri dialect is mainly spoken in Pakistani Punjab. It is named after the town of Shahpur. Majhi or the prime dialect is spoken in central Punjab spanning Lahore, Faisalabad, Sheikhupura, Sialkot, Amritsar and Gurdaspur. A few portions of the Guru Granth Saheb use the Punjabi dialects but the book is also interspersed with several languages including Brijbhasha, Khariboli and Sanskrit. Guru Gobind Singh, the last Guru of the Sikhs, composed `Chandi di Var’ in Punjabi. Some of his works were written in languages like Brijbhasha and Farsi. Punjabi is extra ordinary among the modern Indo-European languages because it is a tonal language. Script In the twentieth century, the Punjabi speaking Sikhs started giving importance to the Punjabi written in the Gurumukhi script as an emblem of their distinct identity. Punjabi identity was affected by the communal sentiments in the twentieth century. Pakistani Punjabis use the older Shahmukhi script which is a modified version of the Persian Nastaliqi script. Gurumukhi and Shahmukhi are the two official scripts of the Punjabi language. Gurumukhi script was derived from Brahmi which was used for Ashoka’s edicts and was known for its vowel signs. Literature The Punjabi literary origin started with Baba Farid or Fariduddin Ganjshakar in the early thirteenth century. The literary tradition continued with many ancient Sufi Muslim writers and with Guru Nanak Dev, the first Guru of Sikhism. The early Punjabi literature was essentially spiritual in nature and has had a strong oral tradition. The poetry written by Sufi saints has formed the folklore of Punjab and has still remained popular where people sing with great affection in all parts of Punjab. Muslim Sufi writers composed many works in Punjabi between 1600 and 1850. The most well known Punjabi Sufi poet was Baba Bulleh Shah (1680-1757). He wrote in the Kafi style. He practiced the Sufi tradition of Punjabi poetry that was established by poets like Shah Hussain (1540-1600), Sultan Bahu (1630-1690) and Shah Sharaf (1640-1725). He was also a contemporary of the legendary poet Waris Shah (1722-1798) who wrote Heer Ranjha. This is one of the most popular medieval Punjabi works. Other popular tragic love stories are Sohni Mahiwal, Mirza Sahiba and Sassi Punnun. Shah Mohammad’s `Jangnama’ is a fine piece of poetry that describes an account of the First Anglo Sikh war that occurred after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The great linguist, George Abraham Grierson, used the word Punjabi and its dialects in his multi volume, `Linguistic Survey of India’ which he wrote between 1904 and 1928. A major figure in the revival movement of the Punjabi literary tradition, Bhai Vir Singh, started insisting that the Punjabi language was the exclusive prerogative of the Sikhs. Grammar Punjabi has three typical tones that developed from the lost voiced aspirate series of consonants. Phonetically, the tones are rising or rising-falling contours and they can spread over more than one syllable. The grammar of the Punjabi language is the study of the word order, case marking and other morphological structures. Punjabi language has homonyms. They are words that have the same spelling and pronunciation but with different meanings and usually different parts of speech. Punjabi nouns have an assigned gender and they can be either masculine or feminine though some nouns can be used for both the genders due to dialectical variations. The gender value is purely grammatical for inanimate objects. The assignment of gender to inanimate objects is arbitrary. The nouns also can be singular or plural. There are two cases – direct and oblique and this applies to almost all the nouns. A typical Punjabi noun can have on an average five to six different forms depending on the values of number and case. In Punjabi, there are six types of pronouns. They are personal, reflexive, demonstrative, indefinite, relative and interrogative. Punjabi adjectives can be classified into two categories – inflected and uninflected depending upon whether they change forms for number or case or not. Punjabi verbs change forms for gender, number, person, tense and phase. Like nouns, the verbs have two genders – masculine and feminine and two number forms that are singular and plural. The verbs also take forms for three person cases – first, second and third person categories. The verbs can be in perfect or non perfect forms. The verbs take form for future tense only and an auxiliary verb form is used for the present and the past tense. Postpositions are similar to the prepositions in English. They link the noun and the pronoun to other parts of the sentence. There are various particles that are used in the Punjabi sentences for emphasis and negation. There are four main types of particles – emphatic, negative, honorific and vocative. Punjabi phrases can be classified broadly into two types – nominal phrases and verb phrases. There are at least three ways in which emphasis can be represented in written Punjabi sentences. They are iteration of words, using emphatic particles or changing the phrase order. Punjabi in Modern Culture Punjabi language is now getting accepted among the Punjabis for wider use in modern media and communications network. This language has always remained as an integral part of the Indian film scene, particularly in Bollywood. There has been a trend of Bollywood songs written totally in Punjabi. The pop and folk songs in Punjabi have become very popular both in India and Pakistan at the national level. Many television dramas based on characters from Punjab are telecast every day by various channels. The numbers of students who are opting for Punjabi literature has increased in Punjab. Punjabi cinema in India has also seen a big revival and many Punjabi films are being made nowadays.