سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

There is a Sindhi saying that “those who are near, are closer to the heart”. It might be true for human relationships but in so many other things, reverse seems to be the case. We tend to forget about many things that are so close to us, for example breathing, walking etc. We are not attentive to such common occurrences around us. (Language too is one of the things that are close to us forever.) Sometimes we do take note of things about language seriously, when some confusing expression compels us to think about its correct usage: (رت ڳاڙهو آهي/ رت ڳاڙهي آهي)* The immediate response should usually be to refer to a book or a dictionary/ thesaurus; as there are instances where the scholars and linguists of the past have given the final word about such occurrences in a language. People do not even bother to do that because the well-known things of grammar like subject, object, number, gender, tense etc are usually known to them and think that they understand the intricacies of the language. In fact this thing limits people from doing some basic research about the language. It has perhaps just been a century and a half that some scholars, instead of using childish and easy methods of the study of languages, have started thinking on absolutely authentic and scientific basis. For a correct and useful study about a language, it is necessary to either completely ignore previously held beliefs or consider a need to review them to find the minute details, applying analytical and scientific research methodology.

Ancient Greeks pondered over their very common daily life events and ordinary things in such a way that the whole world in general, and the West in particular, admire them and have learnt through the Greek experience, thereby broadening their own horizons of the thought process. But in this modern era if one were to adhere rigidly to the beliefs of the ancient Greek scholars, it would not be “wise” from an academic perspective. For example Herodotus, the Greek scholar in 500 BC has written in his book “History” (2^nd Edition, Chapter 2) about a Greek king Samtecus; that once the king came across a thought about finding out which language was the most ancient in the world. What he did was that he ordered two newborn infants to be given in the custody of a deaf and dumb man and sent them to live in the jungle/woods. He thought that   since the children would not hear any word of any language, the first word they utter would be the first word of the first ever language. After some time the children were able to utter their first word, and that was ‘Becoos’. Incidently there was such a word in Fergian language, where it meant “food”. That was it. It was announced on the basis of this experiment that Fergian was the first human language. Herodotus also believed it, because he thought that it was also the very first need of man. But sadly, while narrating this story Herodotus also gives an account of a herd of sheep and goats that belonged to the deaf man. Since the sheep and goats could only produce the sound of BAA BAA, did that influence the language of the children? Then the language of sheep and goats would be the first language of the world!

Arguing about the origin of words, Plato in his dialogue titled “Kritelus’ has put a question: Is the mutual relationship between things and their names natural, or artificially man made, This is where the argument of Analogy and Anomaly started in the science of language. Those who favoured Analogy thought that language was a ‘natural’ thing and so must be standard and logical- (Greeks believed that nature was logical and standard and only man was illogical and substandard), while the supporters of Anomaly disagreed with this view; they kept exploring and pointing out irregularities and absurdities in the stature and structure of language. The Analogists felt that the actual and real meaning of words could be obtained from their appearance and structure—and such a study was called Etymology. This term still exists although now it has a different meaning.

The ancient Greeks studied their language quite well but it was all based on the concept that all the expressive powers of human thought/wisdom were present in the structure of their language. Therefore they devised ordinary principles and elements of their grammar and gave them a scientific shape; but obviously these principles were confined to one language. Devinesuss Therakus in 200 BC and Appoloseuss Dissoleus in 200AD presented their versions of grammar based on a similar philosophy. Another Greek philosopher and scholar Aristorchus (144-216 BC) did quite a detailed study on Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, which was a very appreciable effort by him in those times. Anyway, the partial/ biased and typical inference that these Greek scholars put forward about the knowledge of language prevailed and remained acceptable until the 18^th century. After this period the scholars gradually abandoned the concept of language, being a natural or God-gifted thing. Instead a new thought process and research started during the following years, the concepts that were presented are given below:

• People started copying/mimicking the sounds and noises in their surroundings and this is how the language started. This is called the “Bow Vow” theory.
• When people heard some special and rhythmic sounds, they started making these sounds. This is called the “Ding Dong” theory.
• People produced certain automated sounds that depicted their emotions of anger, joy, fear etc and this was the start of the language. This is called the “Pooh Pooh” theory.

On the other hand the famous French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) commenting on etymology, went to such an extent that he said “etymology is a science where there is no value/importance of vowels and even the consonants do not remain in a particular shape /count!”

 Meanwhile the Romans compiled a grammar for Latin but they shaped it according to the Greek experience. The grammar given by Donatus in the 4^th century and Pirisiaan in the 6^th   century prevailed upon this period and were considered the final word. While during this period, Latin in the spoken form was changing its hue like Romance i.e. taking shape of native European languages like Romanian, French, and Italian etc. [1]

Scholars of most of the European countries were busy in reading the classics in Latin, the signs of which can still be seen in most of the Western universities where classical Latin is still taught as a subject. The scholars of the medieval period did formulate some new principles of grammar, for example the difference of nouns and adjectives, but they could not match the efforts of their predecessors; because the language of their era had changed, and they too considered the stature and structure of classical Latin as natural and exemplary. Following the example of these scholars, many scholars of relatively modern times also wrote books on grammar, but they too held their preconceived ideas shaped according to the previously held beliefs about Latin and other languages as being the best example of universal rules of Logic. The most famous amongst these books is ‘Grammairre Generale et Raisonee’ that was written in 1660 in a monastery of the French city of Port Royal. A mere philosophical view about languages continued till the 19^th century. Herman, a German scholar also prepared a book in 1801 about grammar where he attempted to prove that if there ever was a scholarly language in the universe, it was Latin (1).

One can say that for the scholars of the medieval era the only classical language in the written form was Latin. They had no interest in any other language and no such attempt to study any of the other languages has been found. Although in the Renaissance era of Europe, Greek language got some popularity and after the “Crusades”, studies related to Arabic and Hebrew languages started. This era did see some interest for learning and research. Many people returning from journeys from far flung countries had learnt the languages of those parts and in addition to this, Christian priests had their books translated in local languages in the occupied territories. Some work on grammar and dictionaries of these languages also started. From the year 1500, the Spanish priests, alongside their preaching, wrote many books about Native American and Phillipinian languages. But from a linguistic point of view, not much of importance is given to the priests’ work. Firstly these priests had no formal training to recognize the sounds of these foreign languages and secondly they tried to accommodate the grammars of these languages according to the principles of Latin grammar, which resulted not only in a waste of hard work but a lot of important information about languages of those times became unavailable to the modern researchers.

The surge of trade and travel between countries resulted in an increase of production of grammars and dictionaries of many well-known languages. The extent of advancement and progress of Linguistics at the end of the 18^th century can be imagined by looking at how the Queen of Russia, Katherine, ordered the formation of a competitive glossary of 200 languages of Europe and Asia (2), which contained 275 words. The second edition of this got published in 1791, whereby 80 more languages including some African and American languages were added. The arrangement of this comparative glossary was something like this:

On the other hand some scholars concentrated on the ancient scripts of their languages. In this context the English language and other closely related languages like Frisian, Dutch, Scandinavian and Gothic, were studied in detail by a linguistic expert Franciscus Jones (1589-1677). Later another scholar George Hicks (1642-1715) (3) prepared a Gothic and Anglo-Saxon grammar and also published a collection about ancient forms of English and other closely related languages. (4)

The knowledge of these 18^th century scholars (about language) was such that:

• They put forward the grammatical qualities of a language ordinarily in a philosophical style with an attempt to mar it in favour of Latin language, forgetting the individual character of different languages.
• Instead of thinking about the spoken version, they only considered them with relation to the written signs ie the alphabet.
• Because they never realized that the usage of classical Latin had acquired status of an artificial and purely academic exercise; therefore they thought that a language can survive only by virtue of its learned and educated people. And that “ordinary” people could only change and distort their rich heritage.

Due to this predefined prejudice these scholars of grammar by their own free will, kept forming and formulating principles of grammar that they thought were logical and were incontestable. Because of these misconceptions, despite their having the possession of solid material like scripts of ancient languages, information about unrefined language of the primtive tribes, manuscripts of modern languages and evidences from Latin, modern Romanic languages and Anglo-Saxon and facts about successive evolution of Germanic languages, they were unable to make use of all the material and facts. Although they knew that certain languages had an inherent similarity, they kept ignoring the study of the similarities because according to their concept they were just an accidental finding. Since they believed that there had been no changes in Latin language and it was in its original form, they thought that other languages of neighboring areas had arisen from each other by means of a spoilt usage. Many amongst them thought of Hebrew as an ancient language but some others had different opinion. Goropeus Becanus, a Dutch gentleman, who lived in Antorup, declared out of his patriotism that all the European languages had been derived from the Dutch language.

Almost in the same era, towards the end of the 18^th century, the European scholars came to know about the grammar by Pannini. This book about Sanskrit grammar instead of being based on a particular hypothesis was compiled in the light of facts and observations. With the help of this book a comparative study became possible for European linguists. Pannini’s grammar had set the principles of analysis of a language, according to which the study of different elements of language brought to light the similarities in them that were otherwise concealed. It was a linguistic expert, William Jones (1746-1794), who first gave an explanation that Latin, Sanskrit, English, Persian etc were different forms of some prehistoric language. According to him, “Sanskrit, Greek and Latin had so many similarities that could not be accidental; in fact it could be inferred that these three languages are born from one original language that does not exist anymore: and Gothic (Germanic) and Celtic too are perhaps derived from the same original language.”(5)

The comparative study done by European linguists about Indo-European languages started after this statement of William Jones. This has really been very fruitful. William Jones’s opinion that Germanic languages are related to Latin, Greek etc has been proven correct, and similarly his guess about Celtic (Irish, Welsh, and Cornish etc) languages has also been proven correct. Persian, Albanian, Haitian and many other Eastern languages that had very limited available literature, too have been found to be associated with Indo-European group.

If a language is spoken in a large territory, or due to migration and travelling, it is spoken in various regions, it will definitely have some changes in its spoken pattern from place to place. As a result different but related languages would come into existence, for example Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Ketalian, Spanish and other Romanic languages could be grouped together. Similarly other related languages e.g. Indo-Pakistani, Slavian and its related languages when studied in depth, show certain similarities and could be thought to have been developed in this way. It is a purely historic occurrence that we have written record of ancient languages. Those original unwritten languages, that do not exist now are called Proto-Slavic, Prot-Germanic, and Proto-Indic etc in linguistic terminology. Later, when some similarities between languages, that are thought to have been accidental, are found, we could consider them of the same main group (e.g. Indo- European) and according to William Jones we can make a strong case that all these languages hold their origin in some prehistoric language. Such an original or primary language may be called Proto- Indo-European in Historical Linguistics.

A series of comparative study of Indo-European languages started with the comparing of conjugative verbs of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic languages, and a German scholar Freinz Bopp published a book in 1816 (6) which is thought to be a very basic book of this series. Another German scholar Jacob Grim published the first edition of his ‘Deutsh Grammatik’ in 1819 and the second edition three years later in 1822, in which he gave a detailed narrative of the phonetic similarity between the consonants of Germanic and other Indo-European Languages. Although it discussed all aspects of language, but special importance was given to the phonetic similarity. This almost proves that like in other human matters, in the long-term evolution of language, appearance of such sounds and the changes that take place in it have a regular and organised pattern.

The above-mentioned German scholar Franz Bopp in 1833 presented a comparative grammar of Indo-European languages (7), which is very important book in the field of Linguistics. That same year another book of great importance on the subject of etymology of Indo-Germanic languages, was published (8) which was responsible for a truly clear definition of etymology. The Greeks had always considered a relative study of words with things. But now it was established that a word should be studied in such a way that it elaborates its original versions and its altered forms in related languages. In this context the English word ”Mother” has its 9^th century origin in “Muther”, which is related to the ancient  Naris language word Muzer, ancient Frisian. “Muthur”, ancient Saxon Muther; and Moutier in ancient German (derived from Muthur of Proto-German). The Germanic forms of the word (Mother) are related to Maata of Sanskrit, Mata of Avestan (ancient Persian), Mayyer of Armenian and Meyalir of Greek and Mother of Albanian (here it means sister and it can be seen how a word of ancient origin changes its meaning), Mateer of Latin, Mathir of ancient Irish, Maati of ancient Slavic and Moti of Lithuanian (where it means wife; another example of change of meaning as mentioned about Albanian). All the forms of this word are supposed to have originated from the word Mateer of Proto- Indo _European. One must remember that the ancient forms of the word taken as an example do not present any clearer meaning.

It is clear that certain languages have so many similarities that they cannot be just accidental occurrences. Infact some of these similarities are such that they can be assumed to be due to certain peculiarities of a single parent language. For example sounds, syllables, words, sentences are present in every language and they are the basic building blocks of any language. Although many other peculiarities like nouns and verbs are not similar in all languages but since they are found in all languages, one gets an impression that they might have some relation to each other. At the same time, some similarities in languages are purely accidental. For example a Modern Greek word Matee (meaning eye) is almost like a Malayalam word Mata that also means “eye”. Anyway, from the knowledge of evolution of these two languages, one can say that this similarity is merely accidental. The word Mata is present in the ancient forms of that language. While the word Matee of Modern Greek is derived from ancient Greek form Am Matioon which itself got originated from Amama. Likewise there are certain similarities that are known to be borrowed. For example the Sindhi word Kitli came from English ‘kettle’ or the English word “peach” from peash in French; that came from ancient French Peska that arose from Perska of Latin, the latter from Pereeska of ancient Latin, that in turn came from a Greek phrase Perseka Fruta which means “Persian fruit”. Many such words are sometimes borrowed by other languages to fulfil the needs that arise from time to time. Such borrowings could be termed facilitation because when one takes a good value from somewhere, the word describing it also comes with it. Indeed sometimes the language creates its own new words to improve its properties; a famous example of this phenomenon is found in the Red Indians of USA who called a train as an “iron horse”. Such words like aagaadi (fire-engine) etc are also found in Sindhi.

When we say that the similarities amongst languages are due to a relation between them, it means that these languages have emerged from a single ancient language. For example the present day Sindhi and Bengali may have been derived from some single ancient language. It is really not possible to point to a certain time when one or more languages came about by an alteration of some ancient original language or that the Sindhi and Bengali languages originated at a certain specified time. By and large all the research and endeavour of the linguistic experts have not been able to come to an acceptable unanimous conclusion about the origin of language in the prehistoric era. Language is an ever-expanding sea, and it is impossible to know when, where and how it changed its hue to its present form. Albeit, one can ponder about the circumstances and conditions that influenced a change in a certain language. People speaking the same language (especially in its unwritten form), may disperse and relocate geographically, resulting in the breakup of their social bondage. And in accordance with their day to day needs and circumstances, there arise differences in the accent, pronunciation and vocabulary to an extent that even the meanings are changed; and these social groups depending on their internal and external influences, pass through the stages of history; their originally same language too takes different forms. Therefore the number of people speaking a specific language can not be known. And it becomes such a gravely important fact that it cannot be understood by merely looking at the prevailing cultural and political conditions. It is indeed a language that determines a peculiar attitude and existence of a nation and continues to exist over a period of time. Only language in its historical background borne of years and years of its existence, can maintain its specific and permanent form. Nations are as ancient as their languages are in their history.

When a nation becomes cognizant of its character, its foremost concern is directed to its history and language. This book is a very important attempt of this kind by our dear friend Siraj. The learned author has presented his study of Sindhi language in this book and the readers will be able to assess his effort and passion. This book rejects some common and peculiar notions about Sindhi language and gives a novel viewpoint. In this day and age, considering Sindhi language, to be born in the 11^th or the 12^th century is an absurd and baseless attempt in linguistic terms. That the influence of Arabic may be due to the exchange of few words between the two languages--- Sindhi borrowing more words than Arabic (doing so). And it is definitely quite possible that this has been due to the principle of convenient approach in languages. And the proposition that Sindhi got its vowels (that too in the phonetic sense) from Arabic, and that it has adopted the Arabic grammar etc, is such that it could be termed “preposterous”. Mr. Siraj has rejected such artificial theories regarding Sindhi language with strong arguments. The learned author refuses to accept that Sindhi originated from Sanskrit. He believes that Sindhi (present) and even Sanskrit (and most of Indo- Pakistani languages) all arose from one such original language that too he calls “SINDHI”, or perhaps he would like to call it Proto-Sindhi or Proto- Indic (or Proto-Indo-European) as more appropriate. He thinks that this ancient language was born in the Sindhi territory (Indus valley) and people from Sindh took it to other different parts of Indo-Pakistan and other countries, where it changed its forms due to the change of milieu and new requirements. This can be compared with the case of Romans acquiring Italian from its Latin form and as was the case with other European languages of the Romanic group. The learned author has tried to decipher the seals found in Mohen-jo-Daro, thinking that the written signs of that original first language might be found in the seals of Mohen-jo-Daro and Harrappa. And from what he considers as deciphered forms of the finds, he infers that Sindhi (in its present form) is a developed and grown up form of that original ancient language. Such a conclusion (that Sindhi is great ancient language) will be something to be glad about and a matter of pride for every Sindhi—because our dignity and greatness is nothing without the grandeur and splendour of our Sindhi language.

M.Ibrahim Joyo

Hyderabad, Sindh.

20^th April 1964

References:

1. “De Emmendanad Ratione Graecae Grammaticae” (1801)
2. “Linguarium Folis Orbis Vocabularia Comparativa”—St Petersburg, 1786-89—edited by P.S.Pallos
3. “Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo Saxonicae et Mesogothicae”—Oxford, 1689.
4. “Linguarum Thesaurus”----Oxford, 1705.
5. “Asiatic Researches”—Calcutta, 1788 (pp1, 422)
6. Franz Bopp: “Uber Das Konjugations Systeme der Sanskritprache”, -1816—Frankfurt an Main.
7. “Vergelenchende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Greichischen, Latinische, Gottischen und Deutschen Sprochen”.
8. F.Pott: “Etymologische der Indo-Germaniischen”.

[1] --- The word Romance or Romantic literature initially was used for any literary activity or presentation that was written in the languages of Romance (i.e. local languages) instead of Latin.