Dakhni: Mother of Modern Urdu and Hindi

DAKHNI

The Language in which the Composite Culture of India was Born

T. Vijayendra

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets -- Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir -- were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic. For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

Wali Dakhni, born as Wali Muhammad (1667-1731 or 1743) was born in Aurangabad and went to Gujarat in search of a Guru. He became a disciple of Wajihuddin Gujarati and soon became famous. He came back and settled in Aurangabad but travelled twice to Delhi. His first trip produced the dramatic results and made him known as father of Urdu poetry. He died in Ahmedabad and Hindu fascists recently razed to ground his tomb in the aftermath of Godhra riots. Wali Dakhni composed 473 ghazals besides masnawis and qasidas. His ghazals are still sung by several singers including Abida Parveen.

Thus in the early eighteenth century, after Wali’s visit, Urdu as a literary language took birth. Both modern Hindi (written in Devnagari script) and Urdu (written in Perso-Arabic or Urdu script) are variants of Khari Boli spoken in Delhi and Meerut region. Court circles, Persian and Arabic scholars and especially the Muslims of Delhi adapted this language with much eagerness, and from the end of the 18th century the Mughal house turned only to Urdu. For the first 60 years or so the influence of the Dakhni poets, Sufi thinking and an Indianness of diction prevailed over Urdu. The term Four Pillars of Urdu is attributed to the four early poets: Mirza Jan-i-Janan Mazhar (1699-1781) of Delhi, Mir Taqi (1720-1808) of Agra, Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) and Mir Dard (1719-1785).

Although Amir Khusro (1253-1325) and Kabir (1398-1448) used Khari Boli in the 14th and the 15th century, ‘Hindi’ became a literary language only in the latter half of the 19th century. Till then the authors were mainly writing in Braj and Awadhi. It was Raja Shiva Prasad ‘Sitare Hind’ (1824-1895) and Bharatendu Harishchandra (1849-1882) who first started writing in Khari Boli in Devnagari script. They were obviously influenced by the popularity of Urdu, which was written in Perso-Arabic or Urdu script. In the beginning the difference was mainly in the script and the authors knew both the scripts. In fact the famous Hindi author, Premchand (1880-1936) first wrote in Urdu under the name Nawabrai. Thus modern Hindi is only about 150 years old and like Urdu, has also been inspired by Dakhni.

A twentieth-century Kerala Hindi scholar, Dr. Muhammad Kunj Mettar, established Dakhni as source for modern Hindi. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay also maintained that it was Deccan that established the use of Khari Boli replacing Braj in the North. In fact, even the name Hindi for the language originated in the South. A Tamilian, Kazi Mahamud Bahari in 17th century used the word Hindi for Dakhni in his Sufi poetry called Man Lagan.

What is Dakhni?

Dakhni is the lingua franca of the Deccan. The Deccan is roughly the area between the Narmada and Tungabhadra or Krishna. On the east it is bounded by the Mahanadi and on the west by the Western Ghats. It is the great South Indian plateau. Politically it is comprised of Berar (present-day Vidarbha with Nagpur as its important city), ten Telangana districts of Andhra Pradesh, the Maharashtra districts of Latur, Nanded, Ahmednagar, Beed and Aurngabad, and the Karnataka districts of Bijapur, Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur and Bellary.

However as a spoken language Dakhni is widely used even outside this region. It is the lingua franca of all the Muslims in South India and is understood by all those who have access to Hindi. In many Hindi films, Dakhni words and dialogues are used and in films like ‘Hero Hiralal’ and ‘Sushman’, Dakhni was the main language. Recent films like ‘Angrez’ and ‘Hyderabadi Nawab’ also use Dakhni profusely. There are no current census figures for speakers of Dakhni because no one reports Dakhni as a mother tongue. Still the estimates of Dakhni speakers will run into crores, because its variants are spoken in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamilnadu. As folk tradition, in the urs of Sufi saints, in the songs used by beggars and fakirs, Dakhni is still widely used.

Linguistically it is a variant of Khari Boli as spoken in the Meerat region in U. P. However it has some specific differences. For “no’ it uses nako instead of nahin, for the word ‘only’ as used in Indian English it uses cha instead of hee and for OK it uses hau instead of han. In terms of vocabulary, up to 30% is constituted of local words so that in Telangana it has Telugu words, in Karnataka Kannada words and in Maharashtra Marathi and so on. As a rule, it is the first language of the Muslims in the region but most people exhibits bilingualism.

The Origin of Dakhni

The standard understanding of the origin is as follows. Medieval Deccan, known as Al Hind in the Arab world, was extremely rich. It attracted adventurers, traders, scholars and saints from all over the world. Turks and later Mughals came from the north. But the sea route through Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala was equally flourishing. Egyptians, Abyssinians and Arabs came through this route. Afsani Nikitin a Russian traveller, who spent several months in Bidar, thought that it was the capital of India!

Allauddin Khilji after conquering northern India moved to the Deccan to attack Devagiri on February 1295. He again attacked the city during 1306 and 1307. Malik Kafur carried the third attack to defeat the last of the Yadav kings of Deccan. Muhammad Tugluq transferred the capital from Delhi to Devagiri in 1326. In its wake thousands of families shifted from Delhi to the Deccan. Thus in the 14th century, soldiers and traders with their own dialects moved to the Deccan and settled among the Marathas, Kannadigas and Telugus. There were also many Hindus among them, such as Rajputs, Jats, Banias and Kayasthas. They brought dialects spoken in the Delhi region and these formed the basis of a literary speech, known as Dakhni.