Hindko language

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Hindko is an ancient language spoken in northern Pakistan. The word "Hindko" literally translates to "Indian Mountains." or more appropraitely as "Mountains of the Indus country." The word "Hind" is the Persianized reference to the regions associated with the Indus River immediately to the east of Persia and "Ko" means mountains. The term is also found in the Greek reference to the mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as Caucasus Indicus. The language is spoken in the areas of the North West Frontier Province (including Hazara), Punjab and Kashmir by an estimated 7 million people. They are commonly referred to as Hindkowans or Hindkowan Pathans.

Contents

1 History and Origin
2 Who Speaks Hindko?
3 Demographics
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

History and Origin

During the pre-Buddhist era in what is today Pakistan, the language of the masses was refined by the ancient grammarian Panini who set the rules of a structurally rigorous language called Sanskrit which was used principally for scriptures (analogous to Latin in the Western world). Meanwhile, the vernacular language of the masses, Prakrit developed into many tongues and dialects which spread over the northern parts of South Asia. Hindko is believed to be closely related to Prakrit. Due to the geographic isolation of the regions, it has undergone very little corruption, but has borrowed considerable vocabulary from its neighbors, in particular Pashto. It shows close affinity to Punjabi and the Lahnda sub-group of Indo-Aryan tongues and can be sub-divided into a northern and southern dialect (the southern dialect spoken in Pakistani Punjab shows some similarity with Siraiki as opposed to Punjabi). This language is very similar to the Mirpuri dialect of potohari and both Hindko and Mirpuri speakers can understand each other very well.

Who Speaks Hindko?

The main group who speak Hindko are referred to by many academics (and in publications such as the Encyclopædia Britannica) as Punjabi Pathans, also known as Hindkowans, as they show substantial intermingling with Pashtuns who comprise the majority in most of the regions inhabited by northern speakers of Hindko. Many claim descent from Pashtun groups of a wide variety and often adhere to Pashtunwali and are almost entirely Sunni Muslim. For example, compared to 50 years ago, the Yousafzai Pashtun tribe of Mardan prefer to speak Hindko as opposed to their dialect of Pashto. In more recent times, many Hindkowans have become bilingual in Pashto or Hindko as well depending upon where they reside. The term Hindko is often used to refer to the speakers of the Hindko language, but in popular usage it may designate the language as well. The NWFP Imperial Gazetteer (1905) regularly refers to the language as Hindko. More than one interpretation has been offered for the term Hindko. Some associate it with Hindustan (as the word maybe used during the medeival muslim period in the sub-continent), others with the Hindu people, and still others with the Indus River, which is of course the etymological source of all these terms. Long before independence Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, employed the term Hindko to mean "the language of Hindus" (viii, 1:34). Farigh Bukhari and South Asian language expert and historian Christopher Shackle believe that Hindko was a generic term applied to the Indo-Aryan dialect continuum in the northwest and adjacent district of Attock in the Punjab province to differentiate it in function and form from Pashto. Linguists classify the language into the Indic subgroup of Indo-European languages and consider it to be one of the Indo-Iranian languages of the area. An estimated 2.4 per cent of the total population of Pakistan speak Hindko as their mother tongue, with more rural than urban households reporting Hindko as their household language.

Demographics

The speakers of Hindko live primarily in six districts: Mansehra, Abbottabad, Haripur, Peshawar, Nowshera and Kohat in NWFP, and Attock in Punjab and parts of Kashmir; Jonathan Addleton states that "Hindko is the most significant linguistic minority in the NWFP, represented in nearly one-fifth of the province's total households." In Abbottabad District 92 per cent of households reported speaking Hindko, in Mansehra District 47 per cent, in Peshawar District 7 per cent, and in Kohat District 10 per cent (1986). Testing of inherent intelligibility among Hindko dialects through the use of recorded tests has shown that there is a northern (Hazara) dialect group and a southern group. The southern dialects are more widely understood throughout the dialect network than are the northern dialects. The dialects of rural Peshawar and Talagang are the most widely understood of the dialects tested. The dialect of Balakot is the least widely understood.

In most Hindko-speaking areas, speakers of Pashto live in the same or neighbouring communities (although this is less true in Abbottabad and Kaghan Valley than elsewhere). In the mixed areas, many people speak both languages. The relationship between Hindko and Pashto is not one of stable bilingualism. In the northeast, Hindko is the dominant language both in terms of domain of usage and in terms of the number of speakers, whereas in the southwest, Pashto seems to be advancing in those same areas.

Historically, there were two languages each in upper Afghanistan and lower Afghanistan: Persian and Pushto and Hindko and Pushto. Chach Hazara was a great centre of resistance to the British.

The Gandhara Hindko Board has published the first dictionary of the language and its launching ceremony was held on March 16, 2003. According to a press release, Sultan Sakoon, a prominent Hindku poet, has compiled the dictionary.

References

1980: "Hindko in Kohat and Peshawar." Bulletin of SOAS, 1980, 482-510
1978: "Rival linguistic identities in Pakistan Panjab." Rule, protest, identity: aspects of modern South Asia (ed. P. Robb & D. Taylor), 213-34. London: Curzon
1986: Addleton, Jonathan S., "The Importance of Regional Languages in Pakistan," al'Mushir, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1986), pp. 55-80.

External links