Khariboli

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Khariboli
खड़ी बोली

Spoken in: India

Region: Northern India

Total speakers: ca. 180 million (1991)

Language family: Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Central zone
Western Hindi
Khariboli

Writing system: Devanagari script

Official status

Official language in: Image:Flag of India.svg India

Regulated by: Central Hindi Directorate (only in India)^[1]

Language codes

ISO 639-1: hi

ISO 639-2: hin

ISO 639-3: hin

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Khariboli (also Khadiboli, Khadi-Boli, or Khari dialect; identified as Hindi by SIL Ethnologue), (/ kʰəɽiː boːliː /; Hindi: खड़ी बोली, Urdu: کھڑی بولی, khaṛī bolī; lit. 'standing dialect') is a dialect of the Hindi language native to western Uttar Pradesh and the Delhi region in India. It is also the standard dialect of Urdu, which is grammatically identical to Hindi. This dialect defines the officially approved version of the Hindi language. It is regarded as the Hindi prestige dialect of the Hindi-speaking states of India.

1 Early influences
2 Literature
3 Post-Independence
- 3.1 Sanskritization
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Early influences

The region which is native to Khari-boli Hindi is western Uttar Pradesh, which spoke a decidedly rustic and unliterary tongue before the 18th century. The area was however flanked to the west and east respectively by the aristocratic Muslim cultures of Delhi and Lucknow; those aristocrats, whose provenance generally lay outside India, patronised a literature that drew largely upon the Persian, Turkish and Arabic languages which they had brought with them to this country. It was by the mingling of these several influences that the Khari-boli dialect of Hindi developed.

The area around Delhi has long been the center of power in north India, and naturally, the Khari-boli dialect came to be regarded as urbane and of a higher standard than the other dialects of Hindi. This view gradually gained ground over the 19th century; before that period, other dialects such as Avadhi, Braj Bhasha and Sadhukaddi were the dialects preferred by littérateurs.

[edit] Literature

The earliest examples of Khariboli can be seen in some of Kabir and Amir Khusro's lines. More developed forms of Khariboli can be seen in some mediocre literature produced in early 18th century. Examples are Chand Chhand Varnan Ki Mahima by Gangabhatt, Yogavashishtha by Ramprasad Niranjani, Gora-Badal ki katha by Jatmal, Mandovar ka varnan by Anonymous, a translation of Ravishenacharya's Jain Padmapuran by Daulatram (dated 1824).

In 1800, the British East India Company established a college of higher education at Calcutta named the Fort William College. John Borthwick Gilchrist, a president of that college, encouraged his professors to write in their native tongue; some of the works thus produced were in the Khari Boli dialect of Hindi. These books included Premsagar (Prem Sagur) by Lallu Lal^[2]; Naasiketopaakhyan by Sadal Mishra; Sukhsagar by Sadasukhlal of Delhi and Rani Ketaki ki kahani by Munshi Inshallah Khan. Munshi Premchand, whose literature was created in the early 20th century, was one of the greatest of those who contributed to Hindi literature.

Earlier, the Khari-boli was regarded as a mixed brogue unworthy of being used in literature. However, under government patronage, it has flourished, even as older and previously more literary tongues such as Brij Bhasha, Maithili and Avadhi have declined to virtual non-existence as literary vehicles.

[edit] Post-Independence

After India became independent in 1947, the Khari-boli dialect was officially recognized as the approved version of the Hindi language, which was declared as one of the official languages of the central government functioning.

[edit] Sanskritization

Under governmental encouragement, the officially sponsored version of the Khari-boli dialect has undergone a sea-change after it was declared the language of central government functioning in 1950. A major change has been the Sanskritisation of Hindi (introduction of Sanskrit vocabulary in Khariboli). Three factors motivated this conscious bid to sanskritize Hindi, being:

The independence movement inculcated a nationalistic pride in India's ancient culture, including its ancient classical language Sanskrit;
Independence was accompanied by partition along religious lines, with Muslim-majority areas seceding to form Pakistan, and a partial rejection of Persian and Arabic influence in the Hindu-majority areas; Saadat Hasan Manto, the Pakistani Urdu writer opposed to Hindi-Urdu divide, stated that the increased Sanskritisation of Hindi was probably a move towards establishing a distinct identity of the Hindi language.^[3]
The people of south and east India were averse to the dominance of the language and culture of north India in the affairs of the country. The Hindu populations of these regions did not identify with Hindi itself or with the Mughal (Persian, Turkish) cultural influences that had shaped Hindi, but they were more receptive to Sanskrit. Sanskritization was thus viewed as a means to make Hindi more palatable as a national language.

In its non-Sanskritized form, Khariboli is the normal and principal dialect used in the Hindi cinema. It is almost exclusively used in contemporary Hindi television serials, songs, education, and of course, in normal daily speech in almost all the urban regions of north India, wherever Hindi is also the state language. The rural dialect varies from region to region.