Complete Art and Culture | LEC 20: Languages of India | GS History by Aadesh

Language of India. Water changes every mile and language changes every four miles. Friends, many of you must have heard this proverb. It means that in India, the language changes every little distance and the language changes every little more distance. This proverb actually shows the diversity of languages spoken in India. According to Census 2011, at least 19,500 mother tongues and 121 major languages are spoken in India. Many mother tongues or dialects of the same language are spoken in different areas. If we take Hindi as an example, then it has at least 40 dialects or mother tongues. Like Bhojpuri, Magahi, Brij Basha, Haryanvi etc., major languages have been classified on the basis of number of speakers. There are 121 major languages in India. It means that at least 10,000 people or more speak them. Obviously, India's language diversity is unique in the whole world. India's rich language diversity has gradually evolved with the development of Indian civilization. We can trace the development of language and writing in India from the Harappan civilization 3500-1900 BC, which is considered one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Many writing remains have been recovered from the ruins of Harappa. Unfortunately, Harappan scripts have not been deciphered yet. Therefore, we do not know much about their language. But the development of Indo-Aryan languages started from the Vedic age that came after the Harappan age. Most of which was Sanskrit. Friends, in today's video we will understand the origin and development of the languages spoken in India. The languages spoken in India can be divided majorly into three language families. Indo-Aryan group, Dravidian group and Sino-Tibetan group. Language family means that the languages of a language family have a common origin or ancestry due to which they share many things like grammar, pronunciation, root words etc. So let's start with the languages of the Indo-Aryan family. Whose languages are spoken and understood by the majority of the Indians today? Indo-Aryan family The important languages of the Indo-Aryan family are Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali. And the modern languages developed from these like Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi are also included in this. The Indo-Aryan group of languages itself is derived from a larger Indo-European language, which was spoken in Central Asia and Europe in the Neolithic age i.e. pre-historic age. It is believed that when the Aryans came to India, they brought their old language with them. With time, Sanskrit developed from local interaction. Today, about 74% of Indians speak the languages of the Indo-Aryan family. Let us now study this language family in a detail. Sanskrit The development of Sanskrit in India started from the Vedic age around 1900 BC. It is the oldest language developed in India. Sanskrit has a very important role in tracing the cultural-political history of India. One of the oldest literature of the world, Vedas, was composed in Sanskrit. Later, Upanishads, Puranas and Dharmashastras were also written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit gradually spread throughout the Indian subcontinent and became the language for the development of Sanatan Dharma. The special thing about Sanskrit is that even after 2000 years, there have not been many changes in it. The rules of Sanskrit grammar are still the same as Panini had told in Ashtadya in 400 BC. Although Sanskrit has always been in India, but its golden face was seen during the reign of the There were many dramatists, poets and scholars in the Gupta period who contributed literature in this language and took it to new heights. Some important scholars of the Gupta age are Everyone is familiar with Kalidasa's works like Kaljai, Abhigyan, Shakuntalam, Meghdutama. Sanskrit gradually became the language of the educated class. Knowledge of Sanskrit was mandatory for Brahmins and kings, but its popularity among common people gradually started decreasing. And other languages of the Indo-Aryan family filled this space. The most important among these are Prakrit and Pali. The development of Prakrit language started in India around 600 AD and continued till 1000 AD. Actually Prakrit is not a single language but a language group which was different from Sanskrit. In the age of Mahajanapadas, Prakrit became the language of the common people. One form of Prakrit was Magadha Prakrit or Ardhamagadhi which was spoken in Magadha Mahajanapada. Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, was also born in Magadha and the ancient Jaina texts were composed in Ardhamagadhi. If we talk about the Pali language, it has also been developed from Prakrit. Buddha's scriptures are in Pali itself. The three important texts of Buddhism Vinaya Pitaka, Suta Pitaka and Abhidhamma Pitaka are written in Pali. Prakrit had changed into Upabhramsa by the 8th and 9th century AD. Upabhramsa was actually not a single language, but the dialects spoken in North India before the development of modern Indo-Aryan languages were named Upabhramsa. It is believed that later languages like Hindi, Bengali developed from Upabhramsa. Let's know about them in brief. The next phase of development of Indo-Aryan languages started after 1000 AD. In this phase, modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Rajasthani etc. developed. Friends, the development of language is a very complex process and over time it develops its vocabulary from many sources. If we look at Hindi, it has influences of Sanskrit, Upabhramsa, English, Urdu etc. After Indo-Aryan languages, let's now look at the Dravidian language family. About 25% of India's population uses Dravidian languages. Dravidian family languages are mostly spoken in southern India. Historians believe that the languages of the Dravidian family developed indigenously in India. This means that compared to the Indo-Aryan language family, there was very little outside influence on them. Ancient Dravidian languages gave birth to 21 Dravidian languages. These have been divided into three main groups. These three main groups are Northern, Central and Southern Dravidian groups. Northern Dravidian group, it has three languages. Braa is spoken in Balochistan. Malto is spoken in the tribal areas of Bengal and Orissa. And Karak in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Central Dravidian group, it has 11 languages. Gandhi, Khand, Kuwi, Nanda, Parji, Gadaba, Kholna, Pingu, Nike, Kuvi and Telugu. Except Telugu, the rest are tribal languages and are spoken by the tribals in small pockets. Southern Dravidian group, 7 languages come under this group. Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Tulu, Kadugu, Toda and Koda. The oldest of these is Tamil. Out of the 21 Dravidian languages, four are most popular and are currently spoken by a large population in South India. These four are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Out of these, Tamil is the oldest language which developed along with Sanskrit. In the 21st century, Tamil is spoken by more than 66 million people. Apart from India, Tamil is spoken in Northern Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji and Myanmar. Todaka Pam, written between the 1st century AD and the 4th century AD, is considered the first known literature of the Tamil language. Sanskrit and Tamil borrow many words and grammar rules from each other. Many Tamil words are also found in the Rig Veda. This is concrete evidence of the shared culture between North and South in ancient India. After Tamil, if we talk about Malayalam, it used to be a dialect of Tamil which was spoken on the extreme southwest coast of India. With time, it developed into a separate language. Apart from Tamil, Malayalam also borrows words from Sanskrit. Ramacharitam written around 12th century AD is considered to be the first known literary work of Malayalam. After Malayalam, let's talk about Kannada. Kannada is the official language of Karnataka state. The earliest inscriptions of Kannada are found from the 5th century AD. The earliest literature Kavaraja Marg was written in the 9th century AD. The rule of Vijayanagar empire from 14th to 15th century is considered to be the golden phase of Telugu literature along with Kannada. Telugu is spoken by the largest population among the Dravidian languages. Telugu is one of the most spoken languages in India after Hindi and Bengali. The first known work of Telugu literature Nanaya Bhatta was written in the 11th century which is a poetic translation of a part of Mahabharata. Due to geographical proximity, Telugu and Kannada borrow many words from each other. After the Dravidian family of languages, let us look at the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although the population of India speaking the languages of the Sino-Tibetan group is less, but it is important because mostly these are spoken on the north and north-eastern frontiers of India. Therefore, the development of this language has been influenced by the languages spoken in China, Tibet and Myanmar. The population of people speaking the languages of the Sino-Tibetan family in India is approximately 0.6%. Sino-Tibetan languages have been categorized into further four groups. The first is Tibetan. It includes the languages spoken in the areas around Tibet, such as Sikmi, Bhutia, Balti, Sherpa, Lihuli, Ladakhi and Tibet. The second is Himalayan, which includes languages like Kanowri, Limba. The third is the North Assam group of languages. It includes languages like Abor, Meri, Aka, Dhafla and Mishmi. Fourth is Assam-Burmese group. It includes Kukichan, Makhir, Bodo and Naga. So friends, you have seen how diverse India is in terms of languages. Due to thousands of years of coexistence, many languages were born here and the form of many languages also changed. Sanskrit was the dominant language of ancient India. Gupta age is considered to be the golden face of Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the court language of the Guptas and many important literatures were written in Sanskrit during the time of the Guptas. In the medieval time, Sanskrit was replaced by Hindi. By the time of modern times, Hindi was born from the interaction of Sanskrit and Prakrit. Today 40% of the country's population speaks or understands Hindi. When India became independent from the British in 1947, there was a lot of controversy about which language should be made the national language. In such a diverse country with so many languages, this disagreement was inevitable. North Indians wanted to see Hindi as the national language. On the other hand, South Indians did not agree with this. Then there were also tribes in India who had their own rich language history. Friends, the issue of language is a very divisive issue. If we look at Europe today, it can be said that due to language nationalism, Europe got divided into many small countries. Then the diversity of India was much more than Europe. To get rid of this problem, our constitution makers resorted to the middle path. They refused to declare any language as the national language. The help of official language was taken to uphold the sentiments of all sections. So friends, let's understand the provisions related to the official language of India. Official Language of Indian Union According to Article 3431 of the Indian Constitution, the official language of the Union government will be Hindi written in Devanagari script. But English will be used for the official purpose of the Union for the first 15 years of the Constitution. This meant that if the Parliament does not make any law after the 26th of January 1965, then the use of English will end. And all the official functions of the Union government will be carried out in Hindi. Due to this provision, there was a lot of protest in non-Hindi speaking states. To resolve this issue, the Parliament brought the Official Language Act 1963. Hindi is the official language of the Indian Union. But English was also given the status of subsidiary official language. This means that all the work of the Union government can be done in both Hindi and English. Along with this, the Constitution also gave provision for Scheduled Languages. Scheduled Languages are mentioned in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution. The state government was given the freedom to make any language its official language. Initially, 14 languages were kept in the category of Scheduled Languages. These languages were SMEs Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Odia and Tamil. Later, through different constitutional amendments, Sindhi, Konkani, Manipuri, Nepali, Bodu, Maithili, Dogri and Santali were also included in the Scheduled Languages. Due to which now the number of Scheduled Languages has become 22. Friends, let us now see the summary of this video. Summary In this video, we learned about the rich linguistic history of India. We understood the 3 major language families used in India. Along with this, we also saw the provisions related to the official language of India. According to a UNESCO report, 197 languages of India are threatened. This means that very few people are left who speak them. Manji, a language spoken in Sikkim, now has only 4 speakers left and all of them belong to the same family. Ganesh N. Devi, the founder-director of Bhasha Research Centre, Vadodara, believes that since 1961, India has lost 220 languages forever. Today, in this age of globalization, our language diversity is in danger. After liberalization, privatization and globalization, English has become the preferred language for higher studies and competitive exams. This has caused a lot of damage to regional languages. The Indian government has taken this issue seriously and has put special focus on local and regional languages in the new education policy. The effort is to ensure that students do their primary education in local languages. At the same time, efforts are being made to make technical education, which was previously available only in English, available in regional languages. It is also our duty to maintain our language diversity and use our local languages a lot. Friends, the discussion of language is incomplete unless we know its literature. It is said that if language creates society then literature reflects society. In our next video we will study the literary traditions of major Indian languages.