Old Hindi
Earliest historical form of Hindustani (Urdu and Hindi) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old Hindi[lower-alpha 1] or Khariboli was the earliest stage of the Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of today's Hindi and Urdu.[2] It developed from Shauraseni Prakrit and was spoken by the peoples of the region around Delhi, in roughly the 10th–13th centuries before the Delhi Sultanate.
Old Hindi | |
---|---|
Region | Around Delhi |
Era | 10th–13th centuries[1] |
Early forms | |
Devanagari Perso-Arabic | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
During the Muslim rule in India, Old Hindi began acquiring loanwords from the Persian language, which led to the development of Hindustani.[3][4] It is attested in only a handful of works of literature, including some works by the Indo-Persian Muslim poet Amir Khusrau, verses by the poet Namdev, and some verses by the Sufi Muslim Baba Farid in the Adi Granth.[5][6] The works of Kabir also may be included, as he use a Khariboli-like dialect. Old Hindi was originally written in a Nagari script (ancestor to the standardized Devanagari) and later in the Perso-Arabic script as well, in Nastaliq calligraphy.[7]
Some scholars include Apabhraṃśa poetry as early as 769 AD (Dohakosh by Siddha Sarahapad[8][9]) within Old Hindi,[10] but this is not generally accepted.[11]
With loanwords from Persian being added to Old Hindi's Prakritic base, the language evolved into Hindustani, which further developed into the present-day standardized varieties of Hindi and Urdu.[10]