Old Hindi

Old Hindi (Old Hindi: خـــــــــــــــٿٰـا Kharā) was the earliest formstage of Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu.[1]

Old Hindi
خـــــــــــــــٿٰـا
Language family
Writing systemDevanagari, Urdu
Language codes
ISO 639-3hiw

It was spoken by the peoples of the Hindi belt, especially around Delhi, in roughly the 13th–15th centuries. It is attested in only a handful of literature, including some works by the poet Amir Khusrau, verses by the poet-saint Namdev, and some verses by the Sufi saint Baba Farid in the Adi Granth.[2][3] The works of Kabir also may be included, as they use a Khariboli-like dialect. Old Hindi was originally written in Devanagari and later in the Perso-Arabic script as well.[4]

Old Hindi poetry can be found as early as 769 AD.[5]

References

  1. Mody, Sujata Sudhakar (2008). Literature, Language, and Nation Formation: The Story of a Modern Hindi Journal 1900-1920. University of California, Berkeley. p. 7.
  2. Masica, Colin P. (1993). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 54. ISBN 9780521299442.
  3. Callewaert, Winand M. and Mukunda Lāṭh (1989), The Hindi Songs of Namdev, Peeters Publishers, ISBN 978-906831-107-5
  4. Hindi: Language, Discourse, and Writing. Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University. 2002. p. 171.
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