22.2051, Sum: 11th Century North Indian Languages

Thu May 12 18:32:25 UTC 2011

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-2051. Thu May 12 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.2051, Sum: 11th Century North Indian Languages

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1)
Date: 10-May-2011
From: Amitha Knight [amitha at amithaknight.com]
Subject: 11th Century North Indian Languages

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 14:28:57
From: Amitha Knight [amitha at amithaknight.com]
Subject: 11th Century North Indian Languages

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Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 22.1878                                                                                                                                               

Hi everyone, 

I recently posted a question to the list about languages spoken in 
Northeastern India in the 11th century--specifically what the locals in 
the Puri/Bhubaneswar and Chittagong areas would have called their 
languages when speaking about it.

Here's a summary of the information I received (attributes in 
parentheses, but any mistakes are all mine!):

First off, I was cautioned that the history of Oriya and Bangla is still 
being hotly debated. Mike Morgan informed me that calling these 
languages "North Indian" rather than "East Indian" is problematic and 
Tanmoy Bhattacharya warned me to be careful when claiming that 
Oriya is an older language than Bangla (both mistakes I made in my 
initial email). Thanks for the corrections!

Mike Morgan suggested breaking my question into two more specific 
ones:

1) What would WE call the language spoken at this time?

Bengali and Orya do have a common language ancestor, though 
Magadhi Prakrit seems to more of a linguistic term or literary term 
rather than a term for the spoken language of the time (Richard Barz, 
Mike Morgan, Thibaut d'Hubert). They may have spoken a form of 
Aprabrahamsa at this time (Richard Barz, Tanmoy Bhattacharya) but 
some would argue that the common language had already broken up 
by this time period and that we would probably call the languages early 
Bengali or Oriya (Richard Barz, Mike Morgan, Thibaut d'Hubert). 
Thibaut d'Hubert also states that the language spoken in Chittagong is 
made even more complicated because of the strong influence of the 
Tibeto-Burmese language, with the modern day Chittagongian dialect 
being difficult for other Bangla speakers to understand at all.

2) What would THEY call the language spoken at this time? (i.e. What 
would my character say the languages were called?)

As national identity and linguistic identity are thought to be more recent 
concepts, Mike Morgan suggested that referring to "our speech" or 
"Puri speech" might have been appropriate (and may still be in some 
areas). Richard Barz also agreed that people were/are still "very 
casual" about terminology for local spoken languages and cites as an 
example that "Hindi" is the Persian word for "Indian", applied by 12th 
century conquerors of Northern India. He suggests that people might 
have called their languages "bhasha" (also suggested by Thibaut 
d'Hubert), the Sanskrit word for 'language', "in pre-modern times used 
for any spoken language that wasn't Sanskrit." Thibaut d'Hubert points 
to "sanksrit commentary of Munidatta (late 13th century) calling this 
language 'prakrita-bhasha', which is used here as the opposite of 
Sanskrit." Ricard Barz also suggests "boli"  or "buli", the term for 
dialect. 

Some suggested references:

The Indo-Aryan Languages by  C.P. Masica (Richard Barz)
The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language by S.K. Chatterji 
(Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Thibaut d'Hubert, Naira Khan, Mike Morgan, 
Bill Poser)

Many thanks also to a person who responded via twitter (@tweezew) 
who offered some general guidance about researching 11th century 
India.

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my query. I will keep you 
posted if I manage to find a publisher for my manuscript!

Amitha Jagannath Knight
amitha at amithaknight.com
http://www.amithaknight.com
twitter: @amithaknight 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Bengali (ben)
                     Oriya (ori)

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