سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

CHAPTER 2

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Sindhi Language

In order to ascertain the origin and the status of Sindhi language, it is necessary to have at least two types of evidences i.e. internal and external. For external evidence we would demonstrate on cultural and anthropological grounds as to how did Sindhi relate to other foreign languages. And internally we will have to explore how the internal grammatical structure of Sindhi connects it to other languages.

 

External factors:

Cultural and territorial proximity has a major influence on the similarities of languages. There was a time when Sindh was a sovereign country and was a lot bigger than its present geographical boundaries. It included parts of present day Punjab and Bahawalpur, Lasbela (Balochistan), Kachh (India) and some southern parts of present day Balochistan. That is why Sindhi has very deep relations with languages of these regions. In fact one can say that the dialects and sub- dialects of this region ie Punjabi, Multani, Seraiki, Kachhi etc are greatly influenced by Sindhi and in a way can be considered akin to it. In addition to the local languages, Sindhi is also closely related to languages of the neighbouring regions. In the pre-historic and even the historic period, for a long time India was a common social and political entity, and in this period the court languages, indigenous as well as foreign, must have influenced the regional languages. Such a conclusion would not be unscientific. Taking the Moghul period for example, their Darbari or court language, Persian, was able to influence a pure language like Bengali; and this influence can easily be noticed all over the Indian peninsula. Likewise the Sanskrit dominated for a long period of time in India, therefore most of the words, idioms and arrangements of Sanskrit (both classic as well as Vedic) are found in nearly all the languages of that region. Many of them are derived directly from branches of Sanskrit, Prakrits or their spoilt forms. Therefore nearly all the languages of India seem informally influenced by this phenomenon. And almost certainly there has been a reciprocal influence of these local languages and Prakrits onto classical and may be more ancient forms of Sanskrit. S.M.Katre has discussed this in detail in his book, “Prakrit Languages and Their Role in Indian Culture” (1). One can find thousands of words in all these languages that can be proven to have originated from Sanskrit. Even Dravidian languages could not avoid such an influence and countless words of Sanskrit origin got absorbed in these languages. Even the word Dravid can be proven to have Sanskrit origin, for argument’s sake. Although it is true that since Dravidian languages were native to India and were widely spoken in India, a lot of Dravidian words can be noticed in ancient Sanskrit.

Before describing the relationship of Sindhi with languages outside India, it would be better if I gave my own theory, because this is the theory that basically determines Sindhi’s relationship with other languages. And the theory is that in the pre- historic era, there was a period in which a nation existed in the region extending from Harrappa to Mohen-jo-Daro i.e. from present Sindh and some areas of Punjab in its north, that was civilized in all aspects and possessed a fully developed civilized culture and had a spoken as well as written language. The people were disciplined, cultured and more prosperous than other nations in the world. A glimpse of their civilization is clearly seen in the remains of Harrappa, Mohen-jo-Daro, and Kahu jo Daro. Approximately in 5000 BC this nation had a language that, with some exceptions, still prevails in the present day Sindh region. It was a purely indigenous language which was free of any foreign influence. Between the civilizations of Mohen-jo-Daro   and Harrappa there was a period, when certain factors like civil war, some social evils, issues of personal property, social customs, strict religion and caste system became responsible for destruction of such a magnificent civilization. And this period of destruction was not a short one. It must have taken centuries. Perhaps the civil war and other social evils resulted in a trend in which people of various tribes, started moving out of Sindh; some went to the East while others towards the West, using sea and land routes in search of new homes. Those who moved West, settled wherever they found an accommodating atmosphere but with an attempt at continuing their traditional values.  Some of these tribes moved to Sumer and Babylon where they built houses and started living a peaceful life like their ancestors. Wherever they moved, they must have had to face enormous difficulties and must have fought wars with the local inhabitants. And a time came when they became part of the social system and enjoyed privileged position in the region and they would have left a print on the religion and social setup of that region. While living there, they could not forget their native motherland. And as is common in ancient civilizations, where they would give their ancestors a status of demi-gods and deities, they too could not keep themselves from exaggerating (in poetic forms) in remembrance of the motherland. They called her “Damoon” or “Dilmoon”, saying that it was a land of gods, of silver and gold from where they got horses, ivory, clothes etc for a long time. But at the same time, the conditions that had forced them to leave their homes made them bitter and they started cursing their own brethren (of their previous homeland) and predicted their destruction. Historically too this proved to be true and over a short period of time, due to civil war and a sudden turn in the course of the river Indus, Mohen-jo-Daro and Harrappa were destroyed and buried for ever. This is also the opinion of Dr Noah Crammer who is considered an expert on Sumerology in USA. After reading the inscriptions on the tablets from Sumer, he has put forward this theory that the people of Sumerian civilization who praise a country Dilmoon, calling it the land of gods, were no doubt referring to the land of Mohen-jo-Daro. He has given historic and cultural proofs. He says that it is proven that Sumer, Urr and Susa had trade and commercial relations with Sindh by land and by sea, the signs of which can be seen in the fact that some 30 seals from Indus civilization have been found from Sumerian excavations. And likewise Sumerian seals have been found in the remains of Mohen-jo-Daro. These findings prove the political and economic trade between the two civilizations. Findings of items of ivory from Sumer and its mention in their literature strongly prove that Dilmoon civilization is the name of the country or civilization where they got the ivory from and that country is mentioned to be in their East.

One of the tablets has this writing inscribed on it:

“The country, that is to the east of Sumer and from where a lot comes here by ships; that is the country from where the sun rises and it is like heaven, where there is no disease, no widows and orphans and all the countries send their goods to Dilmoon”.

 These words must have been spoken out of reverence and compassion, and the background was that Mohenjo Daro’s civilization was in fact the source of Sumerian civilization. Probably some of their ancestors had come from that land. Dr Crammer goes on to write (later) that some scholars consider Dilmoon as the land in Persian Gulf; but in my opinion that can not be true as there is no trace of elephants found in that region now or even in ancient times. Numerous Danish anthropologists have, for years dug the ancient cities of Bahrain without any luck and have now given up. (2)

The opinion of Dr Crammer supports my theory. Among the seals found from Mohen-jo-Daro three or four are such that (according to my decipherment) contain the words “Kot Moon”, “Kot Thul Moon” and “Kot Mohn”. In my view, some city in the 2^nd or 3^rd layers at a previous stage of Mohen-jo-Daro was called “Thul Muhn’ or “Thul Moon’, which the Sumerians (in 1800 BC) appear to have called “Dil Moon” (Dilmoon). Postponing the explanation of the decipherment of these seals, it suffices to say that on the basis of cultural and other evidences, one can claim with reasonable surety that Indus civilization was the source of Sumerian civilization.

Several Sindhi tribes moved to Sumer and Babylon, while others set forth eastwards and passing through Punjab settled in the Ganges-Jamna delta and started reorganising their civilization—and since the availability of water was a benchmark for civilizations, to quite an extent these Sindhis while on the move, left  impressions of their culture on the banks of Sindhu/Indus river. The signs of their civilization can be found on stones and rocks in Attock in district Cambelpur and on the banks of the river in that vicinity. Scholars are of the opinion that such pictographic writings of a later phase of Indus civilization found on stones at a distance from each other, are possibly because at that stage these people were constantly on the move. The inscriptions on these stones are similar to the pictographic signs of Mohen-jo-Daro and Harrappa.There are pictures of elephants, cows, oxen, human skeleton, man with a shield and a man carrying something on his shoulders.(3).  Their continuous migration was spread over centuries. The Sindhis that settled in the Ganges- Jamuna delta soon overshadowed the locals socially and politically, as they were culturally stronger than them. But they too, with time, had developed certain weaknesses and cultural gaps. They had already developed differences related to caste system and personal property and in a new country, in order to maintain their social and economic position, they created such an artificial society where locals could not progress. Their traditions transformed to such a disciplined religion which, with the passage of time, took the shape of Vedic religion. But since they had a rich cultural heritage and were educated, they preserved the history of their past, ancient places and people in written forms. And whereas from the Vedas one finds narratives of the past admiring and praising their original country--Sindh and their saviour, the river Sindhu/ Indus. They named their brave men as “Sindh” and “Sindhu”. One can find numerous brave Rajas with names like Sindh and Sindhu in the Vedic literature.

One can not confidently say about the condition of languages of India at that time. But the assumption is that Sindhi was the principal language of India—the other being Dravidian. The excavations of Mohen-jo-Daro have proved that some Dravidian tribes also lived in Sindh. Although some skeletons of Dravidians have been found but just because of that it can not be claimed that the whole civilization was Dravidian. The Dravidians dwelled in South India—and these tribes had connections with some Australian tribes through sea voyages. Anyway, linguistically one can confidently say that in those times there were two chief languages: one was Sindhi that is still spoken in present day Sindh and parts of Punjab, and the other was Dravidian that was present in India in different forms. Surely in Northern India too there were various forms of Apabhramsas and local dialects. But it is hard to say what they were like. When people from Sindh moved to the east towards the Ganges-Jamna delta, they took their language with them. This language was a mature language that had a writing system. This Sindhi language with the admixture of local dialects became a new language—and with the passage of time due to development of a strong and disciplined society and culture, the language got maturity and individuality, the record of which can be found in the most ancient Vedas. If the words are carefully examined, we find the words of original Sindhi to have a very close relation to Vedic Sanskrit. One can draw two conclusions from these findings: Sindhi was born from Sanskrit or Sanskrit from Sindhi. For the former, the theory of Aryans’ coming from outside and spreading throughout India is quoted as a proof (that they came from outside and later spread all over India). And it is assumed that the Aryans brought the language with them.

The concept of Aryans having come from outside this region has been rejected now. And at the same time Professor Langden, Dr Hunter, Haranzee and other scholars have proved that the earliest records of Vedic writings show that they have a Brahmic or Devnagri script and that this script was derived from the pictographic language of Mohen-jo-Daro. If these Vedic people got the written form of the language from the script of Mohen-jo-Daro, one can certainly say that the Vedic people not only got their script from the Indus civilization but even their language originated from there. Since I believe that these people were the progeny of Sindhis so this was their ancestral language and it assumed a different form due to a new atmosphere. One has to keep in mind a difference of at least 1000 years between Mohen-jo-Daro and Vedic civilizations—and changes in language over a period of 1000 years are quite understandable. With the passage of time the similarities among these languages must have decreased. An early indication of this situation is found in the ancient Sanskrit syntax. Whenever prefixes and suffixes were added to make new words of Sanskrit, that process was called “Sindhi” which later was pronounced as “Sandhi”. And now even European scholars have started using this word Sandhi as a technical word in English and other languages. It is not unthinkable to see that the change of the character of vowels from ‘i’ to ‘a’ can occur. We have incidences where such forms have changed and taken a different shape. The root of this word is “Sidh” > Sid (Sanskrit—Seenad) (meaning flowing, joining, striking, limiting etc) from which the words with ‘i’ vowel like Sindhi, Sindhu, Sidho (straight), Seendh (of hair parting), are formed while on the other hand the ‘a’ vowel results in words like Sandhhan (to pickle), Sandh (joint), Sandaan (‘anvil’, which some scholars have tried to prove to be Arabic in origin), Sandho (marking of limit) etc. Only from this root I believe there are about 131 words of pure Sindhi that are in usage.

It can now be concluded that a long time before the Vedas were written, some tribes of this newly settled and disciplined people, had started moving from Sindh and Northern India by means of land and sea because of various reasons like mutual differences, caste system, search of better facilities and resources etc. The main cause as mentioned earlier may be the injustices of the caste system. Most of them were Weysh and Sudras who were so mistreated by Brahmins and mischievous Khatris that they had to leave their abode to find other greener pastures. These Wyesh and Sudras went through Asia, Iran and formed some dwellings in Turkmenistan etc. They might have moved futher to different parts of Europe. The increase in population must have been great as in those days, there was no concept of population planning that is responsible for controlling the population. In the beginning sexual practices were of a general pattern and based on collective groups, where there was still no concept of one to one relationship or marriage. All the men and women of a tribe were free to have relationships with each other. The concept of rape and adulterous relations was not present, because sexual contact was considered, in addition to reproduction, as a good omen for increase in the yield of crops. At the time of sowing the seeds, men and women of the tribe engaged in such acts as they considered them a productive power of nature to make the land more fertile yielding better crops. Because of the absence of any taboos and social curbs on human realtionships, the population increased quickly and because of lack of agricultural acumen, the crops must have fallen short of the demand of the tribes. And so an important cause of peoples’ movement or migration was a need to find better resources of food. These Indian (Sindhi) families kept spreading in Asia and Europe, the signs of which have been found in Iranian Avistian civilization, in Hittite folks and Phoenicians. It is these Phoenicians or “Panni” folks who produced the present script of all the European languages. The strange uniformities and similarities found in the Indo-European languages are due to the fact that their basic source was the Sindhi language and other languages of India that sprang from it. The Europeans have propounded an entirely opposite theory based on racial bias.

Before discussing the intrinsic structure of a language, the most important thing to be kept in mind is that Sindhi is a very mature and phonetically rich language. A Sindhi can pronounce most of the sounds present in almost any language of the world; because his language contains all those sounds, and because Sindhi was one of the sources of sounds of Indo-European languages. It is very difficult to accept sounds from other languages and sometimes it may take centuries to adopt certain peculiar sound from an alien language. Sindhi, being the source of most of the sounds of Indo-European languages, has retained them, whereas the other related languages lack some of them. To prove this point I will give the example of Balochi language: Balochi is considered to be in the Indo-Iranian group and the sound of  خ (kh-χ) is commonly found in the latter; (the sound of خ (kh-χ) is commonly present in Avestan, Pehlvi, Persian and Pashto) but the Balochs could not absorb this- خ (kh-χ) sound; and even today words likeخدا  (khuda= god) and  خر (khar = donkey) are pronounced “huda” and “har” respectively; all the words having خ (kh-χ) are pronounced with ‘h’ sound. Therefore a language that contains all the common sounds and phonetic forms can only be the source for other languages, that do not have some of them, provided that a very close relation between these languages is proven. Any suggestion contrary to this would be against common sense.

Such a contrary opinion was given because these European linguists had tried to compare the Indian languages with European languages using Sanskrit as a base. The European scholars found out about Sanskrit in the beginning of the 18th century, a time when the British ruled the political scene of India except Sindh. And so the English scholars could only study the languages of the areas that they controlled. Sindh came under their rule in 1843-1851 and they came to know about Sindhi even much later than that. During this time, they had already postulated attractive linguistic theories based on Sanskrit, thereby strengthening their racial supremacy by propounding the Aryan myth. Hemchander and Markundia had proposed that Sindhi came about from a Prakrit of Sanskrit and that too from its corrupt form i.e. Apabhramsa. The rest found nothing wrong in supporting this theory because they had a common background and purpose. But there were a few amongst these experts, who found it difficult to sacrifice their knowledge for their political goals. Dr Trumpp was the first among European scholars who pointed out that

“this (Sindhi) language although definitely appears to be related to Sanskrit, but it contains certain original qualities that Sanskrit does not possess and not only that but if seen in detail, it has a very individual and separate flavour”.

Trumpp knew the original stature of Sindhi but kept rather quiet in order to avoid confrontation. And when some other experts studied the Vedas they could not avoid asking why do these Vedic people (who the European scholars had started calling ‘Aryans’) praise the Sindhu/ Indus river and the Sindhi people so much in their Vedas! The state of our own scholars was such that they could not hold the double-edged sword of religion and Sindhism. If they were to call Sindhi as original, it would undermine the importance of Sanskrit and the Hindu religion; on the other hand they could not keep themselves from being proud of being Sindhis. Therefore while they sang praise of Sindh and the Sindhu/Indus River, they accepted Sindhi as being the daughter of Sanskrit. Even people like respected Bherumal while praising the grandeur of Sindh and its ancient language, did it in a way similar to the Europeans, that Sindhi must have originated from Sanskrit; in fact he went all the way to call the original Sindhi words to have originated from Sanskrit. In this way while some tried to prove Sindhi as an offshoot of Sanskrit, others in retaliation tried to associate it with Arabic. Here it should suffice to give an example of such a lopsided approach. It is commonly thought that the ‘ ’ sound of Sanskrit is changed by Sindhi to ‘r’ sound. There are numerous words that end in the sound of ‘r’ while in other Indian languages and Sanskrit they end in a ‘ ’ sound. These linguists claimed that this change occurs in Sindhi, for example جل - جر Jal Jar (water), نيل- نير Neel Neer (indigo) etc. No one ever thought that the reverse may be true and that Sanskrit may have taken up the Sindhi ‘r’ as ‘ ’ sound. Now that the science of Linguistics has progressed and Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European languages have been artificially created, they have come to know that these words contained the sound of ‘r’ long before Sanskrit; the signs of which are found in Indo-European languages. Sanskrit and many other Indian Prakrits convert this sound into ‘l’. Since we have taken up the issue of ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds let us complete it.

There is a confusion of ‘r’ and ‘l’ sound in the main Indo-European languages. Many a times a word in Sanskrit is found in both the forms ending in ‘r’ and ‘l’ i.e. the word that originally has the ‘r’ also exists in a form with ‘l’, and again with a ‘r’ in the old Vedic literature. All such words are present in Sindhi in its original form with ‘r’ sound.

On the other hand words that originally had ‘r’ are present with ‘r’ sound both in Sindhi and Sanskrit. In the language of Rig Vedas and in ancient Iranian, usually the ‘r’ and ‘l’ of the Indo-European are used only as ‘l’. (4)

In the examples quoted below, words of Greek, Latin and other Indo-European languages have been used instead of the artificial Indo-European form, and since these languages are considered the latter’s offshoots, so in principle the presence of ‘r’ and ‘l’ in them is just like in the Indo-European. First we will take the example of those words where Sindhi ‘l’ has changed by Sanskrit to ‘r’, but in all other Indo-European languages they appear with a ‘l’ sound just like in Sindhi.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Lithuanian
چيڪلو cheeklo (ci:klo) (swing)	چيڪرو cheekro (ci:kro)	ڪيڪلاس Keklaas (kekla:s)
لوڻڪَ loonaka (lu:hLkL) (a vegetable)	runkat		lankat
سل sal (hole)	siroon		klonis	sloonis
سلڻ Salanu (sLlLh ) (to divulge)	siruas	kliaas		slovo
ادل adalu (LdLl ) (brother)	soodaar	adilfaas
پلئه palau (pLlL ) (revenge)	perso	pelikeas
پال paalu (pa:l ) (ripen)	pepertee	pemplemi
لڙڻ laran (lLɽLh) (sway)	seree	klino
سلابت salaabat (sLla:bLt ) (like a sun)	sooria		sole-solar

Those words where Sanskrit has maintained the Sindhi ‘ ’.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Lithuanian
لڀڻ labhan (lLbhLh) (find)	labhiatee		Labaiet
پل Palu(grass) (pLℓ )	palao		Palea
پلرُ Paluru (pLl r ) (rain water)	palie		paelus

Words where Sindhi ‘ ’ is changed by Sanskrit to r while keeping the ‘ ’ sound.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Lithuanian
لوگهو logho (logho) (a large hole)	rugho-lugho	alakaes	lues
لپڻ lapan ( LPLɳ) (reach)	rip-lip	alifo

Those words where the Sindhi ‘r’ sound has been changed by Sanskrit and other Indian Prakrits into ‘ ’.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Lithuanian
رتو_ارتو rato-arto (rLto- Lrto) (red)	lohit-rohit	arantraas		ravdeet
وار vaaru (wa: r ) (hair)	baal	terkoos		(English-hair, Swedish-har,Danish, haar, German-haar
جر Jaru (ɟLr ) (water)	jal	ageeraas
نير neeru (blue) ni:r	neel	neeraas

There are a lot of words where the original ‘r’ sound exists in all Indo-European languages except Sindhi and Sanskrit, and detailing them would be futile but it must be emphasized that the original ‘r’ in mimicking Sanskrit and other Indian Prakrits has changed to ‘ ’. Here only a few examples of words that have maintained the Sindhi ‘r’ in Sanskrit and other languages will be given. (It must be kept in mind that the tenses and cases have not been considered; only different forms of the words are given.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Lithuanian
ورڻ waran (wLrLh) (return)	wartatee		werteeter
سُرڻ suran (s rLh) (creep)	suro	reio
نر naru (nLr ) (male)	nur	rneerus
سرڻ siran (sirLh) (kite)	saraptee	rerpo	serpo
راجا Raajaa ra:ja: (ruler)	raajan		rex
رٿ rathu (rLth ) (carriage)	rath		rota	tots
وير veeru (vi:r ) (brave man)	veer		veer	veears

Many Sindhi words are found in Sanskrit and other Dravidian languages in which the Sindhi ‘r’ has been changed by Sanskrit to ‘ ’ but Dravidian languages have kept the ‘r’ as it is. Although at some places because of the influence of Sanskrit, Dravidian has also changed the r sound to l sound.

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Dravidian languages
ڪارو kaaro (ka:ro) (black)	kaalaa	kaarh (Tamil & Canarese)
تاڙ/ تاڙي taaru/taari Ta:ɽ / ta:ɽi) (clapping)	taal	tarh (Canarese), tado/tarho (Telagu)
نيرُ neeru (ni:r ) (blue)	neel	neer(Tamil, Malyalam,Kond, Canarese), neeru(telagu), deer (Brohi)
مکڙي mukhree (m khɽi:)	mukala	makarh(Tamil, Malyalam), mokhar (Tamil), Magil (Kond & Canarese)

In many words the ‘ ’ sound remains the same in Sindhi, Sanskrit and Dravidian languages:

Sindhi	Sanskrit	Dravidian languages
بال baal (ba:l )	baal	bal (Canarese), Balo/bal (Telagu),
مالا maala (ma:la:) (necklace)	maalaa	mali (tamil), mal (Telagu & canarese)
ڪنولُ kanwal (kañwLl) (lotus flower)	koolia	koval-konarh (Kond), koli (Tamil)
ڪوئنتل kaoontal (kLoñtLl )	kontal	kontal (Tamil & Manda)
ڪنڍو/ ڪنڍل kundho (k ñdho/ k ndhLl )	kandal	gandha,gandho (Telagu),gandhal (Tamil)
ارس arsu/alsu (Lrs )	als	als (Kond, Canarese)

 

 

Many inferences can be made from the above examples. Firstly the changes of syntax that were thought to be due to the influence of Sanskrit were already present in Sindhi and secondly these changes of syntax, in fact, show the influence of Sindhi on Sanskrit language. The latter has, over the years, retained its individuality. And in the most ancient periods of history, Sindhi and Sanskrit in their own bounds, have been evolving, growing, becoming intricate and muddled up. Because of their common source they have uniformity as well as differences. These differences arose due to regional influences and time differences. In some forms they appear very similar to each other while at places they look absolutely different. But since in the Vedic era and afterwards Sanskrit was the only religious, political and social language of the entire India, it alongwith its newer forms must have left an impression on Sindhi. Sindh has had the Vedic religion at some period of time, in fact the origin of Vedic religion was traceable to Sindh, and therefore a lot of words are common in the cultural and religious circles of both the languages. One can surely say that Sindhi was the language of Sindh in those times. Many plays were written in the period of classical Sanskrit and one comes to know that although these plays were dominated by Sanskrit; many characters seem to speak various Prakrits in addition to Sanskrit. It has already been mentioned that the characters like poets, Brahmins and Rajas in these plays speak Sanskrit while the characters belonging to lower classes converse in Prakrit.

Due to foreign invasions and their devastating effects on education, literature and fine arts and due to their putting to torch of learning centres with stocks of literary and religious books, it has become impossible to prove our point. This was the reason behind the speculations about Sindh and its language. It is not possible that while in all the Prakrits of India, from 4^th century BC to 12^th century AD, books on literature, grammar, dictionaries and even on sexology are found, then howcome it was only Sindh region where no such literature was ever produced!

Now let us have a look at the literature of these Prakrits. From ancient times, Prakrit literature is found in religious and literary forms. Describing every Prakrit would be outside the scope of this book. Only a brief account of the literature of main Prakrits is given below:

1- Pali—This Prakrit has been the religious language of the Buddhists for a long time. Its written record is found on the pillars of Ashoka, which started from about 250 years in the Christian era. In addition to this some religious literature of Buddhism is also found before that. That religious literature includes musical notes that usually have rhyming pattern called “Gathas”; and these can be found only occasionally in the religious narratives.

We find that Pali religious doctrines are found in the form of “Ti Patak” which means ‘three baskets’. This literature is divided in three parts: ‘Wanee-patak’, ‘Sut-Patak’ and ‘Abhedhum-Patak’. These Pataks are further subdivided into different “Pistaks” or chapters, famous amongst which are Maha Wbhang, Bhikoni Wbhang, Mahawag, Chalwag and Parivar. In addition to these, the Sat-Pisatks are divided into 5 collections (Nikayins) i.e. Degh-nikaya, Majh-nikaya, Samyoti-nikaya, Angtar-nikaya and Khadaki-nikaya etc. This was about the religious literature. The non-religious literature has these main chapters (Pistaks):

Nitepkaran, Petkopadesar, Sutsumagh  etc

Malandpinh is their most famour pistak Various other ancient Pistaks are also there and Pali literature from around 500 BC to 500 AD is found in both religious and non-religious forms.

2- Ardhmagadhi-This was the other Prakrit that was used by Mahavir (the leader of Jain religion) for his preaching and that is why all the ancient religious writings of Jain religion are in this language. From the times of Mahavir to about 500 AD, literature kept progressing in this language. There are numerous religious writings; famous among them are Ayar, Sooyagood, Thaan, Samvaya, Wyahipanti, Nayadhamkao, Osugdasu, Antagdasu, Anotrovoaeedasu, Pinhawajinhaim, Vovagsoya and Duthevaya. These are termed “Twelve Aspects”. “Oung” is the name of another set of twelve religious principles. In addition to these ten Panya are also in the form of religious principles. Others like six Cheeyasut, four Moolsut and two separate books Nandee and Anvaogadara are also included in the religious writings. These are the earlier books of which the first twelve are based on the sayings of Mahavir. The writings after this period are thought to belong to the times of Chandra Gupt Morya.

3-Jain Maharastry-In this language too, principles of Jain religion were written in the form of Pistaks from the beginning. Mr. Herman Jacoby gave this name to the language and got these hymns published after editing them by the name of Erzalungan, the age of which is definitely proven to be atleast before the 2nd century AD. The main author was Poom Charaya and the book was Vimal Sooree, the history of the book is thought to date somewhere in the 2^nd century. A book of stories called Aweshak is even older.

4- Jain Shorseeny- Some of the religious inscriptions have been found to be in Shorseeny Prakrit. Pischeland W. Denecke had examined some books that are:

• Molachar of Witcker Acharya
• Kategyanipeka of Kartickisuman
• Chapahid, Samesaar and Panjthikaya of KandKand etc

But the most famous book called Pawayenesar belongs to Kand Kand and is from the 1^st century AD.

In addition to these religious books, many plays were also written in Pali, Maharastry and Shorseeny that are very ancient. Not only that; it is now known that famous playwrights like Kalidas, Asho Ghosh, Bhaas, Serarka and others had many of their characters conversing in Prakrits. And these conversations are an essential part of these plays. Perhaps that is why these are called Dramatic Prakrits. In the 3^rd century AD, numerous melodious lyrics of various poets were collected. “An Anthology of Lyrical Poetry” has been proved to be of the 3^rd century AD, and commentaries were also written about this collection. The commentaries of Hall, “Satsui” and “Vijalag” of Jeolubh have given the names of twelve poets.

Another literary inscription is said to be in Pushachee. A German expert Ludwig AlSedorof has proved that a very old Puschachee book (pistak) called “Brahtkatha” had a great influence on the language and myths and this volume (pistak) belongs to the beginning of the Christian era.

Similarly it has been observed that the religious writings were very common in all the Prakrits of India. Sindhi too was a revered language of those times, but the literature cannot be found because all the libraries had been destroyed by invaders.

In the 12^th century, a Muslim named Abdul Rehman (Apabhramsa name: Adhmaan) wrote a book in Apabhramsa called “Sandesh Rasik”(5) that has been discovered recently. This in fact means that up to the 12^th century, not only Hindus but even Muslims produced literary writings in Indian Prakrits, but surprisingly there was no one who could write in Sindhi! There could only have been one reason and that was the fact that in the Arab period all the scholarly, literary and other works of the ‘infidels’ were destroyed by torching their libraries. And on the basis of which our scholars, in order to protect the Arabs from this valid allegation, started saying that Sindhi language was born in the 11^th century!

The love for literature in the Arabs and their desire to preserve the Indian and Greek literature in Arabic came quite some time after the invasion of Sindh, perhaps in the Abbassid period.

The Arabs destroyed the libraries at the time of invasion of Sindh. At that time literature was mostly held by Pundits and Buddhist monks and their books were kept in their temples. The Arabs destroyed these temples considering them places of idol worship bringing them to extinction. And this is not a new phenomenon. Every invader destroys the land, places of worship and cultural centers of the captured region. The Arabs did nothing that was unknown in the human history. In those times man was at such a level of civilization that destruction of everything that belonged to the enemy was something to be proud about. Arabs had done to Sindh what the Tartars later did to Baghdad. Due to such activities the literature of Sindh went to ashes along with the temples and other places of worship. According to Henry Cousins.

“The Arabs destroyed everything, and built nothing”(6).

These words summarize the complete scenario in a very effective way.

It is not true that no sign of those scholarly and literary works can be traced. Arab historians themselves vouch for the literature of Sindh. It could be inferred from Abu Nadeem’s reference about presence of at least 300 scripts (or ways of writing-?) in Sindhi, may have meant that at that time there were around 300 alphabets/letters (phonetic or pictographic type) in the Sindhi script. Although this might be an exaggeration but at the least it proves that he had seen many books written in different styles in Sindh. Even though the old literature had been destroyed, nothing can keep a nation from the love of reading and writing and so the people of Sindh got busy in producing literature. At the same time, because of the companionship of Sindhi scholars, the Arabs too developed an appreciation of literature. After that Sindhi scholars were invited to Baghdad, Damascus and other centers of the Caliphate and were asked to write books about general knowledge, science and literature. There are many evidences of this occurrence. A book on Astronomy by a famous astronomer of Sindh, Bhoongar, upon orders by the Caliph Mansoor, was translated into Arabic by Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Fizari, in which he describes different planets, stars and their details and movements. Al-Fizari named this book as “Sindh-Hind”(7). This book is mentioned elsewhere too. Al-Beruny thinks that this book was written long before Mansoor’s time and he has named the author as being Phygar. The early Arab writers and scribers must have mis- spelt an original Sindhi name like Bhoongar as Bookar which later was further mis- spelt as Bugar, Fugar and Phygar by the European scholars, but in fact the name is Bhoongar. (8)

The purpose behind this entire story is to show that in Sindh, like in other parts of India, there must have been plenty of literary works and books and had that escaped the destruction at the hands of invaders, our present scholars could not have alleged that Sindhis were taught about culture by outsiders.

Continuing the argument about language, we now come to another aspect about the similarities and differences between Sindhi and other languages. Languages are denoted into various groups on the basis of their different grammatical structures. (One of them being the arrangement of its roots.) The peculiarity of Semitic languages is their tri-literalism; therefore Sindhi does not, in anyway belong to this group. Like Sanskrit most of the roots of Sindhi are bi-literal. The other thing that distinguishes a group of languages, is their intrinsic structure. Languages are commonly divided into three types:

1-Isolating languages

2- Agglutinating languages

3- Inflecting languages

1- Isolating languages: These are the languages where the syllables and sounds are used separately from each other. They possess their own permanent meaning. If the position of a syllable in a sentence is changed, the meaning and the form of the words will not change. The best example of such language is Chinese and related languages. As an example consider this sentence:

Woo                Poo                 Paa                  Ta

I                       no                    fear                 he

(Meaning: I do not fear him)

One can observe that in Chinese all the four words contain only one syllable each. Therefore such languages are called Mono-syllabic. Changing the position of these syllables would result in a meaningful change where the words retain their previous meaning:

Ta                    Poo                 Pa                    Woo

he                    no                    fear                 I

 (Meaning: He does not fear me)

This proves that each syllable carries its own meaning and can be individually used as a word even after the change in its position. The syntactical form does not change.

2- Agglutinating languages: These are the languages that join different syllables to each other resulting in newer meanings and new forms of syntax. A good example of this is seen in Turkish language.

	Turkish	Sindhi	Meaning
Noun (Singular)	eer	ghar-u (ɡʱLru ) گهرُ	house/ home
	eer + deen = eerdeen	gharaañ (ɡʱLra:ñ)  گهران	from home
	eer + im= eerim	gharam (ɡʱLrLm) گهرم	my home
	eer+im+deen=eerimdeen	gharaanm گهرانم (ɡʱLra:ñm)	from my home
Noun (Plural)	eer+lar=eerlar	ghar-a (ɡʱLrL) گهرَ	homes
	eer+lar+deen= eerlardeen	gharan+aañ/ aooñ (ɡʱLrLna:n)/ (ɡʱLrLnLu:ñ)	from homes
	eer+lar+im+deen= eerlarmdeen	gharaaoon (ɡʱLra:u:ñ)	from my homes
Verb	dee	chawan (cLwLn)	to say
	dee yoor	chaway tho (cLw ɛ tʰo)	he says
	dee yoorlar	cahawan thaa (cLwLntʰa:)	they say

Here you see that to make a plural or verb form, certain syllables are added at the end of words and the meanings keep changing accordingly. You would also see that in the initial forms Sindhi goes along with Turkish, but in the case of plurals, Turkish takes one way and Sindhi the other. It is because Sindhi, to an extent, is also an agglutinating language. (I am apprehensive that from these examples some of our scholars might start saying that Sindhi originaled from Turkish, if not from Arabic!!) Arabic and some other languages also have this peculiarity of joining the syllables to a lesser extent.

3- Inflecting languages: These include the Indo European (Indo-Aryan & Indo-Iranian) and Semitic languages. In any syntactical or verbal form, changes of person, gender and tense cause inflection in the syllables. For example:

Indo-European (Sanskrit).

Present tense (3rd person singular): sunootee=su (root) +no (present form) + tee (pronoun, 3r^d person singular)

Present tense (3r^d person plural): sunontee= su(root) + no +antee (pronoun, 3^rd person plural)

This example shows that if the third person pronoun is changed from singular to plural, the last two or three syllables get completely changed. This is true for all the Indo-European languages. You must have seen the following verb forms in English:

Sing                Sang                Sung

Similarly in Arabic:

Kasada             Kasadan          Kasado etc

And in Sindhi:

Disaañ (I see), Disooñ (we see), Dissi (you see), disso (you all see), disse (he sees), dissan, (they see) etc.

In all these examples the change of syllables is present.

One can infer from the above narration that Sindhi is an agglutinating as well as an inflecting language, but this connection and interchanging behaviour is its own and has been there for thousands of years. No sane man can draw the conclusion from this example that a language has originated from some other language just because it exhibits these changes of syllables. Every language has its own temperament, grammar, principles and peculiarities. In order to find the origin of a language it is not only the similarities that should be studied but the differences must also be considered. Merely on the basis of finding some similarities, it cannot be said that such and such language originated from another language or is influenced by some language. Like Arabic, French language has two genders of nouns i.e. masculine and feminine. Both in Arabic and French there is no neuter gender. Analyzing this happening, if someone were to say that Arabic has this due to French influence or vice versa, it would not be a scientific and logical conclusion. Giving a very wrong example, one of our scholars has tried to prove that in Sindhi the names of women do not change in any ‘case’*. And this is due to the influence of Arabic. In this context I have already said elsewhere(9) that first of all the very example and the supposition was wrong but even if the examples were right, the inference that was taken was very much like the above given example of French and Arabic.!!

Having discussed this peculiarity of Sindhi, let us now come to the Sindhi sounds. Phonetic system is a system that can indisputably give us the clue about the origin of a language. It can tell us whether the language is basic and orginal or a dialect (a Prakrit in case of Sindhi). Every language is based on its vowels and consonants. There are eleven vowels in Sindhi that are as under:

a, i.u,aa,ee,ay, (ai)y,o,oo,ao,aaoo.

L, i, , a:, i: ɛ, L ɛ, o u:, Lo, a:u:

 I have given the vowel sounds in Roman (and IPA) because one of our scholars is sure that Sindhi had no vowels before the advent of Arabs, and that Arabic has, in its benevolence, donated the  a,o,i vowels to Sindhi—and that is how our language came into being (10). The examples quoted by him are:  گِدَڙُ(fox) and ڪُڪُڙُ (cock) claiming that these words are made up of only consonants!! If the learned scholar had tried writing these words in Roman, he would have known that in addition to three consonants there is similar number of vowels in each word. If these words are written in Roman, the vowels appear in the following manner:

گِدَڙُ = gidaru (gIdL )

ڪُڪُڙُ  = kukuru      (k k )                           

Since in Sindhi writing system, short vowels are not usually written, the appearance of consonants has confused many. Short vowels are represented by diacritical marks of ـــــــــَــــ, ــــــــــِـــــ, ـــــــــُـــــ on or below the letters, and since the indigenous speakers manage without them the practice of writing them has been discontinued.

There are three consonants and three vowels in each word. Since Sindhi uses the Arabic script therefore in the usage of vowels, (zair) ــــــــــِــــ, (zabar) ـــــــــَـ  and (pesh)  ـــــــــُــــ are shown in the above examples.

In addition to the vowels, there are the following consonants in Sindhi:

ا  ب  ٻ پ  ڀ  ت  ٺ  ٽ  ٿ  گ  ڳ  ڱ  ج  ڄ  ڃ  چ  ڇ  خ  د  ڌ  ڊ  ڍ  ڏ  ر  ز  ڙ  س  ش   ڪ  ک  ل  م  ن  جهه گهه  هه  ف  غ  ڻ  ي 

While the following extra letters have come from Arabic:

ث  ص  ض  ذ  ط  ظ  ح  ق  ع  ء

These letters are extra because most of the sounds that they carry are non existent in Sindhi, or they are present in some other form in Sindhi. The typical Arabic sounds are neither used and pronounced in Sindhi nor do they fit in the mood of Sindhi language. In fact removing these consonants from Sindhi would make it more easily writeable and typing and publishing work of Sindhi would become easy and cost-effective.*

Among the sounds in Sindhi ٻ ڄ ڃ ڏ ڳ ڱ ڻ ( , , , , , , ) are (except ڻ ) not found in any other language. ڏ and ٻ ( and ) are present in Kathiawari Memoni language, but since these Memons were originally from Sindh and had moved to Kathiawar(in India) from here, therefore these sounds are found to persist in their language which is very closely related to Sindhi language. The sound of ڻ ( ) though is present in some other Indo-European languages as well.

* The work done by Ibrahim Joyo on making a Sindhi typewriter was so enormous that if he had done this for another language, he would have been adored for it. At two or three occasions I pointed to him the hindrances caused by these extra letters, but since he had to face people who held the progress of a language as secondary, he chose to remain silent over this argument. Had our scholars thought with an open mind (leaving aside religious narrow-mindedness) on this aspect, it would have removed a major obstacle in the growth of Sindhi language; and it would have been easy to type and publish with lesser costs; Sindhi could have stood in line with other modern languages.

The entire structure of Sindhi is based on 42 letters representing 42 sounds leaving aside the 10 extra letters (mentioned above) from Arabic. As mentioned earlier, Sindhi language is mainly based on bi-literal roots. The local scholars estimate about 2000 roots; some from Sanskrit, but the European scholars, taking away some dual rooted  words,  have  estimated  it  to

have 800 roots, most of which have verbs, verbal forms and nouns (11). No one has worked in detail on the roots of Sindhi language. Worthy of praise is Mr. Abdul Karim Sandeelo who has stressed upon this aspect in his “Tehqeeq Sindhi Lughaat” (Research on Sindhi Dictionaries). Even though I differ with him but cannot keep myself from admiring his hard work and literary effort. Even Mr. Sandeelo at numerous places has left those words as such where he could not find their roots in Sanskrit, while at some places he has given some roots that are absolutely mismatched.

I think Sindhi has got about 2200 absolutely perfect roots, from which all the Sindhi words (except words from Arabic and other languages) can be derived. Compiling a glossary of these roots is a separate and difficult task that can only be taken up by an institution like Sindhi Adabi Board. Here I will quote examples of a few roots that are source of hundreds of words; these roots can also be found in Sanskrit, but with the difference that these Sindhi roots remain unchanged and are in their original form in their usage in Sindhi, while in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, firstly, they are not used in their original form having an abstract value; and secondly in order to form words- verbs, nouns etc the roots have to be changed. As in Sindhi, the addition of ڻ ( ) and يڻ (L ) and similar other syllables to the roots makes the  infinitive and other words. Similarly in Sanskrit the addition of (ar, as, am, ee, an, aa, t, d, p, bh, chh, j, h) etc to the roots forms words. In fact this is because during the study of old Sanskrit it was found that these (word ending) signs are present in most of the words, the order of words was arranged according to the suffixes and therefore these suffixes were considered necessary for forming verbs as well as nouns.

The Sanskrit root (soo) is equivalent to the Sindhi سُ (s ) (su). In Sanskrit addition of ‘ar’ or ‘an’ to it forms: ‘soor’ or ‘soon’, means “produce sound”. On the other hand the meaning of the Sindhi root سو su: (soo) or سؤ s L (sua) is “sound” and the verbal forms of which are سئڻ s L  (suan) سڄڻ s L  (sujjan) (meaning “to hear”), and similarly in a pure Sindhi way, many words can be formed from it. The Sindhi word   سڄاڻs a:  (sujaan) being considered as an antonym of  اڄاڻ L a:  (ajaan) has been thought to be (su+jaan) meaning one who knows. But actually its real origin (su)سُــà سُئَڻُ suL  (suan(àسُڄڻ s L  (sujan) and thenسڄاڻ  s a:   (sujaan) that means ‘a person who can hear/listen’ (an then know). The word “sujaan” in Sindhi is given to one who knows or is careful and not to any one who has good knowledge; that is someone who becomes alert at the slightest of sounds is called سڄاڻ (sujaan). This root ‘su’ has a very close root in the form of سُو (soo) or سئو ٻڌو s o- dʱo  (suo bbudho). Here the question arises as to why do I claim that this is a purely Sindhi root and has not come from Sanskrit. Since this is an entirely new point that I am presenting, it should be elaborated in more detail.

Languages are a collection of sounds and in my view the most appropriate theory about the evolution of language is that the earliest languages are those where the roots for the words are similar to the sounds present in nature. There are many sounds in natural elements: earth, air and water- these were the initial elements that man came across. Fire was something that was manmade, although it can not be called an invention as the humans must have thought about fire after experiences of jungle fires, sunlight or the fires starting from lightning and they must have learnt to ignite fires from nature. With these three basic elements i.e. air, water and earth were related different sounds. Furthermore there were birds and animals making different sounds around him. He must have been aware of “sound” from the sounds occurring in different elements of nature. It is hard to say exactly where life started but there is no evidence against life starting at more than one place. Many proofs about the presence of man have been found in Sindh in the Stone Age and there is no reason not to think that life would have started in Sindh too. If we establish this hypothesis; it is natural to assume that a language too would have evolved there. And the Sindhi man learning from the blessings and cruelties of nature must also have learnt how to speak.

I have deliberately taken the example of سُـ (su) root, as its meaning supports my theory. The Sindhi man produced this root from the element of ‘air’. He felt the sound of ‘soo soo’ in the sound of wind and since he could not see air, gradually for all unseen and natural things the concept of “soo soo” must have taken hold in his mind. The meaning that he understood from “soo soo” was that of “sound”. This concept prevails in our minds even today and one can see that all the Sindhi words concerned with sounds coming from unseen things do contain that “su” or “soo” root—eg “sooñ sooñ”, soosat, soosaat, surraat, seesraat, seeñ seeñ, sus pus, sur sur etc.  And the “su” or “soo” root makes it clear that it is a natural Sindhi root. One can also note that the words emanating from this root have a natural style. If someone working on a dictionary thinks that these words came from the roots of Arabic or some other language, it would be absolutely wrong. The Sindhi roots originated from the sounds in nature, proving that Sindhi is a basic natural language as mentioned above. Newer words are formed by addition of syllables to the roots. Keeping this theory in mind we can find still more words where this root “su” or “soo” appears prominently, e.g. سُڻڻ  sunan, (s L ) suan,  سُئڻ(s L )  سُڄڻsujjan, (s L )  سُڻسَsunsa, (s sL)  saaran,  سارڻ(sa:rL ) سارsaara  ساگرsaagar, (sa:gLr) سانت  saant, (sa:ñt) سانگ saang, (sa:ñg) سائر saer, (sa:ir) سُر  sur,  سيٽي seety, (si:ti:) سينڍَ seendha (si:ñdhL) etc. (meaning: hear, whistle, whisper, sea, silence etc). All these words are formed by addition of some syllables to this root ‘su’. Attempts to detail the history of these words will be beyond the scope of this book. Here I will discuss the words ‘saagar’, (sa:gLr) ‘saang’ (sa:ñg) and ‘sooar’ (su:Lr) because only these three words have the obvious sound and its root “soo” and the meaning is not so clear while the rest of the words have a clear meaning.

The other sound that attracted the human ear was “gur (g ɽ) gur (g ɽ)” of water i.e. the sound of water falling with force. This sound is quite heavy on the ears and must have been terrifying for the early human. From this sound came another root with “g” or gur (g ɽ), that created a sense of “ a heavy sound related to water”, from which the intelligent human mind started forming the words of his interest e.g. گوڙ، گڙ گڙ گڙڻ، گاج، گجڻ، گجگوڙ، گڙ (goɽ,g ɽ g ɽ, gΛɽΛɳ, gΛ goɽ, gΛ Λɳ, ga: Λ, gΛ Λ)  (“gaja”- meaning the roar of the elephants that was equivalent to terrifying at the same time similar to the sound of thunder)  گونجڻ، گرڙي، گرج، گارو(ga: ɼo, gΛɼ Λ, g ɼɼi:, gu:ñ Λɳ) (meaning: echo, thunder, gargle etc).

 In all these words the original root is present in three different forms which are related to heavy voices and sounds related to water. This root گر، گڙ (g ɼ,g ɽ) “gur or gar” is present in saagar. The سا saa sound was already known, gur was also related to sound but that came from water and was terrifying, so the poor human started calling anything that produced the sound of gur gur or gar gar as saagar! This word has progressed to become saaer in Sindhi. Shah Karim has used it in this way:

سائر ڏيئي لت، اوچي نيچي ٻوڙيئي

Saer dayee lata, oochi neechi bboyaee

 (Meaning- flood water in its wrath, has engulfed lower and higher ground)

 سوئرsooar—Our dictionary writers believe that this word has come from the root شو shoo= sound.(12). ‘shoo’ is the Sanskrit form of Sindhi ‘soo’.

سوانگ سانگ suɣaang saang. In this word  وانگvaang is clearly the abbreviated form of the Sindhi wordوانگر  vaangur suvaang/ saang =su + vaang= ‘like sound’ or to mimic something that is related to sound.

Man also observed the sound of flowing water that was not terrifying, in fact it was a very mild sound of flowing water so that he related it to the sound: جرجر/ جهر جهر jar jar or jhar jhar and this caused another root جر/ جهر jhar or jar to come about, which means water or a very mild sound of flowing water; from which many words came about in the language egجِهم، جهانءِ، جهرڻو جهڙ، جهٻڻ، جر. (ɟʱ lɼɳo, ɟʱa:ñl, ɟʱ lm, Λɼ , ɟʱΛ Λɳ; ɟʱ ɽ )

On a similar principle, relating to the third element i.e. earth or land, man invented new words in language.  The direct encounter man had with land was when he saw its usage by animals for the purpose of digging for food or hunting for their prey. Perhaps he saw some animal digging a hole in the ground, which got to his ears a new sound of khar khar. This sound was related to earth, and from it he got the idea of digging it. If observed carefully, one can see that in Sindhi all the words pertaining to earth containک –kh or کر– khar sound (it must be pointed out here that at the end  ر – r or _ڙ ɽ is just a phonetic sign and sometimes the root exists without this sign). The dried courgette used for cleaning and rubbing horse skin is still called   کرکرو --kharkharo in Sindhi. کيڙڻ، کرڙڻ، کوٻو، کڏو، کُڏ، کيٽ، کاٽي، کاٽ ، کوٽڻ، کوڙڻ، کنهڻ، کيتي، کورو، کوهه (kʰ ɣɽΛɳ, kʰɛɽΛɳ, kʰoɽΛɳ, kʰotΛɳ, kʰa: ʈ , kʰa:ʈ , kʰa: ʈi:, kʰɛʈ , kʰΛ ɗΛ, kʰΛɗo, kʰu: o, kʰu:h , kʰu: ɼo, kʰɛʈi:, kʰΛɳΛɳ, kʰɛɳʰu:ñ (i.e ball of earth) [meaning: to scrape up, to plough, to embed, to dig, to dig (wall for burglary)(, excavation, farm (land) a pit, a deep hole, a small hole a well, furnace, a field (crop), to scratch (all related to the ground / earth)] and many other words with the root ک (kh) which relate to land/ soil very prominently. One also notes that the phonetic ending like ر (r) is common in گرگر، gur gur کر، khar khar سر سر  sur sur etc so the actual main roots that remain are  گـ، کـ، سـ  (s,kh,g) that are related to sound , soil and water respectively. The prominently common roots such as these in so many words cannot be a chance occurrence. It involves the imaginative and intelligent efforts of the primitive Sindhi mind that wanted to invent a method of communicating their thoughts and experiences with each other.

Though this discussion has become very lengthy but I am sure if research is conducted about the origin of Sindhi language, keeping this theory in mind, a lot more can be discovered regarding the basic roots of language used during the natural evolution of man. In addition to their independent and solitary positions, these roots, by means of combining with other roots, produce a wide range of Sindhi words. Every syllable in the evolving languages had a distinct meaning, Chinese language being a living example of this; and these syllables in fact have the status of roots. Therefore in all ancient languages, syllables whether individually or joint with other syllables, produce words with newer meanings. Whenever a syllable joins another syllable or root, unless the latter already has a meaning of its own, newer words cannot be formed. Languages are not formed by accidents; they come about naturally after observations and thought process of thousands of years. No syllable is useless or meaningless. However it is a fact that the history of languages is so old that, sometimes it is difficult to find the meanings of words. Despite this, linguists try to find new meaning by studying the syllables and the root endings; a few examples of this would suffice.

In Sanskrit, in order to make an adjective, the ending -تيه ‘tia’ (suffix) is added to a noun eg تيه-+ دڪشڻ= دڪشڻتيه (dakshinh+ tia = daakshintia which is ڏاکڻو daakhnhoo in Sindhi (meaning southern), آپتيه =آپ+ تيه  (aap+tia =aaptia) paniatho in Sindhi (meaning Aquatic, watery). The suffix ‘tia’ is a demonstrative pronoun sis  àsiaàtiadà tia- (meaning this , that, here) etc. Similarly when making an adjective, the above words would mean  (here south or that south,water here or that water) which means that the suffix added to the noun itself carries its own meaning (13). Likewise in Sindhi ڏاکڻو daakhnhoo (i.e. southern), اُتريون uterioon (i.e. northern), ٻاهريون bbahirioon (i.e. outer), اندريون andrioon (i.e. inner) etc have these suffixes like ‘ioon’, ‘oon’, ‘oo’.

The above examples clearly explain my theory, but I will submit here that this position of Sindhi language is even older than the times of Mohen jo  Daro. In the civilized and cultured era of Mohen-jo-Darothe language had grown into an almost completely mature form. This complete language then travelled due to mass movements of tribes to different areas and wherever it reached, it mixed with the local dialects in such a way that at places its structure absorbed the local dialects and colloquial forms while at others the local languages dominated the structure of Sindhi language. And at certan places it was merged in such a way that Sindhi words are found very infrequently there.  Sindhi had a very obvious influence on the majority of the languages of Northern India. Reciprocally these newly formed languages seem to have again influenced Sindhi. The cause of this may have been political control, or trading and commercial communication. The reciprocal influence of Sanskrit on Sindhi is therefore there. But this effect doesn’t deserve the importance it has been given, because Sindhi had acquired a complete shape long before Sanskrit. The only effect that Sanskrit and other related languages had on Sindhi was that newer words were absorbed in Sindhi. Most of these words were originally from Sindhi anyway but entered Sindhi in their newer forms, e.g.جل_ جر  jal-jar )meaning water), هنيون_ هردو hioon-hrdo (meaning heart), آگ_ اگني aag-agni (meaning fire), سج_ سورج sij-sooraj (meaning the sun). تارا_ ستارا tara-sitara (meaning stars) etc.

This is how our Sindhi language was enriched. Addition of syllables shaped newer words, newer meanings and syntactical forms. Many words were borrowed by other languages that gave them their own flavour and returned them to Sindhi. Both forms of such words are found in Sindhi. Some of these borrowed words are such that they can be recognized instantly to have originated from Sindhi.

As already mentioned, from the phonetic point of view, the pronunciation of words of our language is original. I can prove this point. If one were to ask a resident of any part of India or for that matter from anywhere in the world to pronounce ڳ  ڱ  ڃ  ڄ  ڏ (ɗ, ʄ, ɳ, ŋ, ) they will pronounce  وڃwΛɳ as  ونجwΛn (wanj) (to go), سڱ sΛŋ as سنگ sΛng, ڳالهه a:lh as گالهه (gaalh) (something that is said), ڄڃ ʄΛ as  جنج janj (wedding procession) and ڏ ڌ ɗ dh as ڋ ڌ ɖ dh etc. (Arabic is poorer in the  phonetic sense; even people speaking a phonetically rich language will not be able to pronounce these sounds).

Now the question arises as to why is it said that Sindhis changed نگ ng to ŋ and نج nj to  ڃ ? It is because of a lack  of capability to compare Sindhi and other languages, otherwise the present day experiences are totally against this theory. In fact because the words that contain these sounds later got absorbed into Sanskrit whereby its  ڱ ŋ changed toنگ  ng, and ڃ  changed to نج nj etc, very similar to how our Indian immigrant Urdu speaking brothern do in their speech. Whenever a sound in a particular language of a region is lacking, the sound closest to this foreign sound usually becomes standard in usage. I have already quoted the example of Balochi where, since they had difficulty pronouncing خ (kh), they call it هه (h). Just like that the typical sounds of Sindhi entered Sanskrit in their nearest form and Pannini formed the syntactical forms of these sounds.  Pannini had stated the names of 64 grammarians that compiled their grammars before him. It is a pity that those 64 grammars have not been found as yet; otherwise it may have been possible to find signs about such occurrences.

In addition to this, another Sindhi sound و ‘w’, because of being misunderstood by the Sanskrit speakers, or because of similar written form, was mixed up with  ب (b), therefore at times they accepted same words with the sound of و ‘w’ and at other times with ب (b). To elaborate this we shall take the example of present day Bengali, a language that is very closely related to Sanskrit, which had grown in that region. If a Bengali is asked to pronounce a word starting with و  (w) he will do it with a ب (b) sound even though their script contains both  و(w) and ب (b) and both are written in the same way. Sometimes this produces very interesting situation. They pronounce ‘water’ and ‘butter’, both English words, as ‘baatter’. Similar would have been the scenario with early Sanskrit, that the sounds with و (w) were accepted with a ب (b) but later both the sounds came into the language during its growth, and same words were being pronounced with و (w) too, while words with its ب (b) also persisted. The Sindhi word ورُ wΛɼ (waru) is present in both forms asور  wΛɼ (waru) and  برbaɼ (bar), in Sanskrit. In the Prakrits of Sanskrit it existed as ‘bar’ because this was the form that had come into the early Sanskrit. There are numerous such examples where this phenomenon can be observed.

Another impressive proof of the antiquity of Sindhi can be found from its numbers. These numbers show that they are the oldest forms as compared to the most ancient Indo- Aryan languages. The Sindhi ‘hik’ (meaning one) is also used as ‘aiko’. Both these are found in many other languages too. Sanskrit ‘ik’, Hittite ‘aik’ and haik, (Avestan: aiwa. Greek: eeas, Latin: oonis, Gothic: enis). Further example of Sindhi ‘hik’ is found in ‘haikar’ (once) which resembles Avestan haikrat.

Sindhiٻه   Λ (bba) (meaning two) is not present in other Indo-Aryan languages directly but its presence in the compound forms of numerous languages clearly shows the Sindhi number. This ‘bba’ in Sanskrit becomes ‘duwa’, in Greek ‘doo’ and in Latin ‘duo’. Let us now take the example of a compound form. For Sindhi word ٻه پيرو ipɛɼo (bbi pairo) meaning ‘having two feet’, the Latin word is ‘bi+pees=bipes. This ‘b’ or ‘bi’ is commonly used in English for two as in ‘both’ ‘bi-lingual, bi-weekly, bi-monthly etc. Another example is Sindhi ٻيو io (bio) (meaning second) and ٻٽو  i o (bito) (double), in Sanskrit it is ‘ubh’ or ubha’, in Greek, ‘ampo’, Latin ‘ambo’, Gothic ‘bee’, Lithuanian ‘ab’, old Slavic ‘ub’, English ‘both’ etc; in all of these forms the Sindhi rootٻه   Λ (ba) is expressed clearly. European scholars who were not familiar with Sindhi ٻه Λ (ba) had nothing else to say except that it was beyond them (14).

Number 3 ٽي_ ɛ ( ay=three) appears in Sanskrit as ‘tray’. Most of the Indo-European languages have been changing Sindhi ‘ ’’ to ‘tr’. The claim that Sanskrit ‘tr’ has been changed in Sindhi to ‘ ’ is absolutely incorrect, because the syllable ‘tr’ is already present in Sindhi and has been there for so long and we do not exchange it to ‘ ’ by taking it from Sanskrit. The principles of linguistics are quite rigid and if such a principle existed in Sindhi whereby ‘tr’ could be changed to ‘ ’ then we would be pronouncing every such word i.e. ‘tr’ with ‘ ’. Sindhi ‘r’ sound is a consonant and most of the consonants of Sindhi are pro-active sonants and so the question of absorption into any other sound whether to ‘tr’ or ‘t’ does not arise. In other languages ‘r’ is merged in a consonant, only when ‘r’ is silent or used as a vowel or semi-sonant. Even where ‘r’ is slightly silent in Sindhi, the change of ‘tr’ to ‘ ’ is not seen. The word تُرت t rt (turt) meaning quick) is quite an old word but we do not ever call it ‘ it’. Again ‘r’ is silent in the word ترس tΛɣs (tars) (meaning wait) but we don’t call it ( uss) and these are not exceptional examples. Therefore we are compelled to reverse the European theory. We think that Sindhi  was changed by other languages to ‘tr’.

There has not been much change in the word for number 4  چارca:ɼ (chaar) and 5 پنجَ pΛnjΛ (panj) Number 6 ڇهه chΛhΛ (chhaha) was changed in Sanskrit to ‘shat’(shatush) which in Indo-European is called ‘suchus’ or ‘six’. In other languages like Welsh it is ‘chuhooch’, in Greek ’kheest’ and ‘khusoos’ in Avestan etc.

7 ست sΛtΛ (sata) took the form of ‘sapt’ in Sanskrit and ‘sat’ in Hittite. Talking of Hittite, the European scholars have this to say: ‘from whatever little matter has been found, it can only be said that the changes in Hittite, that appear even before Sanskrit, must have been due to local influences’ e.g. change of ‘ch’ to ‘z’ (panch to panz), ‘v’ to ‘b’ like in (vair-beria) and (pt) to - (tt) etc.

In this regard I have already mentioned that when the language of Mohen-jo-Daroreached other regions, there were some changes brought about due to the local regional influences. In Hittite the ‘ch’ of ‘panch’ has not changed to ‘z’ but in other languages the ‘j’ of Sindhi has changed to ‘z’. I have already elaborated with examples the change of ‘v’ (w) sound to ‘b’. Here I must say, that the change of  ‘v’ (w) sound to ‘b’ had occurred in Hittite long before Vedic Sanskrit, but change of ‘pt’ to ‘t’ seems wrong, because this change did not happen in Hittite, ‘sat’ appears similar in Hittite just like in Sindhi. The brief presence of ‘p’ in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages could be attributed to local influences.

Number 8 اٺ ΛthΛ (atha) is very interesting and it provides a clue to a very ancient counting system of Sindhi civilization. Mohen-jo-Daroand chahoon-jo-Daro had two distinct systems of ‘small’ and ‘bigger’ counts. The unit for the small count was ‘four’ i.e. cattle or things were counted in fours, eg 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc and the measures and scales were based on this system. The measures found from Chahoon-jo-Daro are according to this system. (15). Marshall too is of this opinion (see Marshall Vol II pp 589). This system of counting in 4s, 8s, 16s, and 32s continued for a long time; it has also been a mark of numerous religious things. Among the stories known to contain information regarding Buddha, one of them shows Buddha saying the following lines while explaining to some one the difference between vice and virtue:

‘From four to eight, to sixteen thence so,

To thirty-two, insatiable greed doth go,

-------still pressing on till satiety,

Doth win the cirlet’s grinding misery.’  (16)

There is a clear indication of the count based on 4, 8, 16 and 32 in these verses.

It is said that the arrangement of sixteen annas etc of the Indian Rupee is reminiscent of such a counting system that was in vogue in Chahoon-jo-Daro and carries special importance. The larger count was in 20s i.e.ٻه ويهون (two 20s), ٽي ويهون (three 20s) etc. This system is still in vogue in the rural areas of Sindh. The first system of 4s is evident from the number 8. According to Professor Burrow,

“In ‘Astan’ (Greek,-octiv, Latin-octo, Gothic-ahtau, etc), there appears the termination of the dual. The meaning of the stem ‘okto’—of which this is the dual, may be inferred from a related I—stem, ‘Asti’ which is found in ‘Avestan’. This is a measure of length meaning ‘Width of four fingers’ from which it may be inferred that the dual ‘octo (U) meant originally two groups of four fingers’. (T. Burrow, ‘The Sanskrit Language’ p 259)”

It is quite clear that this number has been taken from Sindhi because the counting system that is in the background is originally Sindhi, the signs of which have been found from Chahoon-jo-Daro.

Number 9 is ɳΛwΛ (nava), which appears in Sanskrit as it is. For number 10, Sindhi word is ΛhΛ (ddaha). This typical Sindhi sound (ɗ) usually was changed to ڊ = (d) and س (s) to هه (h) sound in ancient Vedic and Avestan languages (eg Sindhu to Hindu etc).

Since Sindhi number wi:hΛ (weeha) (i.e. 20) was a unit of its old count, so it appears in most of the languages in the beginning. e.g. Sanskrit weemasti, Avista ‘weesti’, Greek, ‘weekosee’, Latin ‘noweejanti’ etc.

Sindhi sΛo (sao) (i.e. 100) is present in Sanskrit with the noun ending “tum” (Sanskrit ‘sutum’, Latin ”suntum”, Avista “seetum”). You will find this “sao” root in many other languages. For example in  Marvioon “sado”, Seremus- “sudo” Zirian “so” “Witik “soo”, “Woogle “saot”, Avistic “Saut” etc. These languages are from Fino-Ugrian group of languages that are now considered related to Indo-European languages.

From the above facts it is quite clear that Sindhi is a very ancient language and many Sindhi words are the source of Indo-European languages. In addition some old grammatical peculiarities vouch for the antiquity of Sindhi language. The gender forms of nouns and words, in contrast to Semitic languages where there are two genders i.e. masculine and feminine, the ancient form of Indo-European languages had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. This neuter gender does not exist in all the Prakrits of India, but they are still found in Sindhi. Infact masculine and the neuter gender were originally the same i.e. the neuter gender that was used as masculine. The proof of it is that the feminine of such words can not be formed according to any principle of grammar and secondly the signs that appear only in feminine words are also found in masculine forms. مُڙُسُ m ɽs (murs) i.e. husband, رِڇُ (richhu) (i.e. bear), کنڀ kʰΛñbʰ (khanbu) (i.e. feather) etc have a short vowel ‘ ’ ( denoting u sound), which is the sign of the masculine form, but this sign is also found in feminine words e.g. ڪسُ kΛs (kasu) (i.e rust) mΛs (masu) (i.e. ink), and kΛt (katu) (i.e. corrosion) etc. Similarly the short vowel i or long vowel (ee) is usually used in feminine words but at certain places it is also found in masculine words. In addition to this, there are numerous words whose gender has not been fixed. From ancient times, these words are non-gender or common gender words.  ماڻهو ma:ɳhu: (manhoon) (i.e. person) is a word that is in usage for both a man and a woman like زال ماڻهو za:lΛ ma:ɳhu “zaala manhoon” (i.e. female person) and مرد ماڻهو mΛɼd ma:ɳhu “mardu manhoon” (i.e. male person). Similarly words like پکي pakhi: )pakhi( (i.e. bird), پسون piśu:ñ (pisoon) (i.e. germ), جيتُ i:t “jeetu” (i.e. insect), سوار s wa:ɼ “swaar” (i.e. rider) have no specific gender.

In order to understand a language properly, it is prudent to keep in mind the cultural background of words, because this provides the signs of the style, antiquity and treasure of a language. Even very trivial things can prove to be historically very important, and sometimes very un-important words are in fact a treasure from a cultural stand-point. In Sindh there is a childrens’ game “itti-ddakar” (ie gili-danda in Urdu/Hindi) in which the small piece of wood with pointed edges called “itti” is struck with a larger stick “ddakar” in such a way that it flies and falls at a distance, which is measured with the length of the larger stick ie “ddakar” and the units of this measure are “viket”, “lan”, “moon”, “naar”, “aarr”, “waiee”, yug; whatever was the original form of these words but one gets an impression that these numbers are of a Dravidian origin. Amongst them “moon”, or “mun” meaning “three” is still found in Tamil and Malayalam etc. Either we have learnt this game from Dravidian people, or this is a cultural sign of the Dravidian tribes that lived in this region in ancient times.

Take another example: in Sindhi there is a sarcastic phrase “shaman gudo” or “shaman gudi” (gudo/ gudi means a doll) usually used for teasing someone who looks unnatural and artificial. This actually points to a person trying to act and pose like a puppet walking with great difficulty. This word is from an era when Buddhism was at its peak in Sindh. The Buddist monks or chief priests called “shaman”, on festive occasions, used to apply make up and wear beautiful costumes; and walked just like puppets and came out in processions with apparently difficult gait. On the following day, they again used to confine themselves to the monasteries, for reading and religious preaching. “shaman guda” (puppets) is a reminiscent sign of the cultural life of that era. (17) There is a famous nursery rhyme in Sindhi:

“irchik mirchik, dhaana dhirchik,

aag patolan, naangan jogan,

kaara kuttaa, bbuttaa, chhuttaa”.

Now there is a mantra in the Vedas, which I would like to copy here. Look at the similarity of the meters and rythem in them.

 “asadraajaa, nilonaamaa

veersaranyaa, sutobali,

apapaanu, ganerashti,

oopavanaa, assokoyedhaa!!

One can certainly say that the style of these mantras and the meter and structure is such that the cultural background and the ancientness are very obvious.

An even better example of this cultural glimpse is present in the Sindhi words used for relations. The following words are commonly used for relations:

“peeu”, “abo”, “babo” (words for father).

“mau”, “amarr”, “amaan”, “jeejal”, “ayal” (words for mother.)

“bhaau”, “bhaaoo”, “ado”, “adal” (words for brother.)

“bhen”, “adee” (words for sister.)

“dheea”, “niaani”, “neengari”, “neengree” (words for daughter.)

“putu”, “neengaru” (words for son.)

sasu (i.e. mother-in-law), suhro (i.e. father-in-law), mamo and mami (for maternal uncle and aunt), puphee (i.e. paternal aunt), chacho (i.e. paternal uncle), chachi (paternal uncle’s wife) etc.

Our scholars have tried hard to find the roots of these words. At times they try to search them in Arabic and at other times in Sanskrit. Regarding “abo” (i.e. father) and “amaan” (i.e. mother) they say that they have come from Arabic “ab” and “um”. For the rest they say that they have come from Sanskrit, while there are some words whose roots cannot be found or traced. The idea behind these attempts is the old-fashioned thinking that Sindhi came into being in the 11^th or 12^th century, and that it did not have its own vowels. And that Sindhi culture was either borrowed from Sanskrit, or from Arabic. Here I will reiterate that finding a similar spelling in another language does not necessarily mean that futile attempts be made to attribute wrong sources of the words of Sindhi language. For such a claim provision of a linguistic proof is a must. How does a language change the words it borrows, has to be kept in mind as well. If the source of the word “amaan” was attributed to Arabic, it was necessary that a reason for this, and the linguistic change that occurred, must be elaborated. In Arabic, a mother is called “um”. Whereas in Sindhi it is ‘amaan’. The question arises as to why was the vowel (u) changed  to (a)? What was the linguistic reason or basis of this change? We also have the vowel (u), so why didnot we just call it “umaan”? Or why does “umaan” with its meaning being mother, not appear in any historical record? If Arabic “um” is the source of the word “amaan” then why is it not called the source of words like “mau” or amarr? Why are the two latter words dragged towards Sanskrit? In lexicography, linguistics and anthropology, consistency of thought is very important, and guess-work has hardly any place. The words that are thought to have an Arabic source, leaving a few, mostly have been guessed.

In fact these words for relations vouch for our most ancient culture. These words are from that era when Sindh had a matriarchal society, the signs of which are found in the culture of Mohen jo  Daro. The most ancient of human cultures were matriarchal, where a woman was the head of a family or tribe. This was because agriculture was the invention of woman. The tribes were named after their mothers. When agriculture progressed, patriarchal system replaced the matriarchal society. This is an accepted fact of sociology and anthropology for all the civilizations of the world.

The invention of cutting tools resulted in hunting to become a man’s duty and women got busy in collecting food items as always. Such a division of work on the basis of sex is a known fact in hunting tribes; and the reason for this was that the women could not go out during pregnancy and while nursing their infants. Hunting later led to farming of animals! Man, instead of killing the animals, raised them to his benefit. This is why cattle farming has usually been a man’s work everywhere. On the other hand, while collecting food woman invented growing of seeds and cultivation of land. When the cattle were used for ploughing the lands, agriculture became the domain of man. In certain parts of Africa, where the use of plough has started recently, there too the agricultural work has changed hands from woman to man and this has been observed in recent times.

“The changes in the methods of growing with resultant change in the work of men and women were the cause of evolution of a patriarchal society. This change started from hunting; cattle farming sped it up, but in the initial period this was reverse.” (18)

The above quoted reference clearly shows that in the beginning all the ancient civilizations were matriarchal, which gradually became patriarchal. A reference from an article by another scholar is as follows:

“In various parts of the world, we have definite proofs that the matriarchal system changed into either a patriarchal one or to such a societal system where social relationships were attributed to both father and mother. There is evidence of the presence of a matriarchal system in Europe. Evidence from the historic period has been found from Sudan, where about 500 years ago, people of a tribe called “Baige” who are now named after their fathers, originally used to maintain their family trees after the names of their mothers and wives. And they used to leave their properties and assets to their sisters or the sons of their daughters. Numerous evidences have been found in Malaysia that prove this societal change from matriarchal to patriarchal. In fact this phenomenon still occurs in some parts of the world. On the other hand no such evidence has been found from any part of the world that shows that reverse was the case”. (19)

The purpose behind quoting these scholars is to prove that in the most ancient human culture, the position of a mother or a woman was one of the chief of the tribe. The system of male chiefs came much later. During excavations of Mohen jo  Daro, from different periods, there are finds from one era that prove such a turn of events. The excavations done by Sir John Marshall clearly indicate that long before “Aryans”, Sindhi society was matriarchal (20). His actual words are quoted here:

“that like the Mother goddesses of Western Asia, they originated in a matriarchal state of society, is a highly reasonable supposition” (21).

While writing about the female figurines found from Mohen-jo-Daro, Marshall had drawn the above mentioned conclusion.

The reason for quoting these references is to show that matriarchal state of society has been proven to exist in Sindh in the most ancient times, and patriarchal system came quite late. A solid proof of this fact is also found in the words of Sindhi language used for mother and father. And it is also clear that these words belong to that very ancient period.

Just as the women of rural areas do not call their husbands by their names, similarly people of ancient times did not directly call their chiefs, mothers and fathers by their names. No one mentioned anything about their mother usually; if he did he would use such a word that did not contain ‘mother’ or any such word relating to her. Similarly in a patriarchal state of society, mentioning the name or any other word that stands for father was prohibited. This tradition prevails to date in un-educated and un-civilized tribes.

At places they do not call the name of their chief, at others they do not take the names of father or mother and at some other places this applies to the in-laws as well. In our society women usually do not call their husbands by name, the background for this is that ancient tradition and taboo. Numerous such examples can be found in the books like “The Mothers” by Briffault and “The Golden Bough” by J.G Frazer. The most interesting part of Frazer’s book is where he says:

“To make the confusion worse confounded, the names of the persons are often the names of common things such as moon, barley, cobra, leopard; so that when any of man’s father-in-laws and mother-in-laws are called by such names, these common words may not pass his lips.”(21)

Just suppose someone’s father-in-law’s name is ‘Waseeng’ (meaning cobra); this person on seeing one near him would still not utter this word, because naming it would mean naming his father-in-law—which is not permissible!

Let us now concentrate on the words “mau” (i.e. mother) and “peeu (i.e. father) in Sindhi language. A very unusual thing is found in these two words. The Sindhi language adds pronominal suffixes to possessive pronouns, which is a very ancient peculiarity of the language. This is not found in Arabic or any other language. These signs are as follows:

• Genitive Pronominal Suffix for first person pronoun is “m” eg putu+’m’ = “putum” (my son)
• Genitive Pronominal Suffix for second person pronoun is “ee” putu+”i” or “ee”= “putai” or “putaee” (meaning your son)
• Genitive Pronominal Suffix for third person pronoun is “s” e.g. putu+ “s” = “putus” (his son)

Now these signs i.e. ”m”, “ee” and “s” have been used for a long time in Sindhi to show possession of a noun. But for all the words used for mother and father, the sign “m” is never adjoined—e.g.:

“mau”+“m” = “maum” (for ‘my mother’)

“peeu”+“m” = “peeum” or “pinhum” (for ‘my father’)

“amarr”+ “m” = “amarrum” (for ‘my mother’)

“amaan”+ “m” = “amaanm” (for my mother)

“jeejali”+”m”= “jeejalim” (for ‘my mother’)

“ayali”+ “m” = “ayalim” (for ‘my mother’)

“babo”+ “m”= “babom” (for ‘my father)

“abo”+ “m” = “abom” (for ‘my father)

(Instead they are called “amaan” and abo/ baba)

One can observe that in all of the above mentioned words, the addition of pronominal suffix “m” does not fit in and neither is it used by any one, because this was prohibited in the ancient Sindhi culture. The pronominal signs fit in for  other  words  for  relatives whether in the first, second or third person forms, e.g. “manis” (i.e. his mother). “pinis” (i.e. his father). “dheenum” (i.e. my daughter), “babus” (i.e. his father), “bhanum” (i.e my brother), “sasunum” (i.e. my mother-in-law) etc.

Why is it so? The only wise justification is that the person speaking was not used to utter the name or title of his mother or father. Firstly due to this pecularity they had to form new words and secondly the addition of suffixes gave them secondary words. This finding was not just accidental and there are solid proofs that all these words are ancient Sindhi words from that cultural era, and that it is not the influence of any other language.

There is another interesting aspect of this cultural pattern; the ancient Sindhi man used to call the close relatives with respectful words that are not found now, but one syllable of that word has persisted as a remnant. This is a novel idea that has not been considered by most scholars. Whenever a genetive pronoun is added to the words used for relatives, one sound  ڻ(ɳ) or ڻهه (ɳʰ) automatically appears, the example of which is not found when experimented with other nouns. These words are as under:

“mau” (i.e. mother)+pronominal suffix “s”= “maanis” or “manhis” (ma:ɳls/ ma:ɳʰls) (i.e his mother) “manhain” (ma:ɳʰɛñ) (i.e. your mother).

“peeu” (i.e. father)+ pron.suffix “s”= “þinis” or “pinhis” (plɳls/þlɳhls) (i.e. his father), “pinhain” (þlɳhɛñ) (i.e. your father).

“bhau” (i.e. brother)+ pron. suffix = “bhanhis” (bʰa:ɳis) (i.e his brother), “bhanhain” (bʰa:ɳɛñ) (i.e. your brother). “bhanhum” (i.e. my brother).

“dhea” (i.e daughter)+s= “dheeńis” (dʰi:ɳis) (i.e. his daughter), “dheenhain” (dʰi:ɳʰɛñ) (i.e. your daughter), “dheenum” (dʰi:ɳʰñ m) (i.e my daughter).

 “sasu” (i.e. mother-in-law)+pron. suffix = “sasnus” (sΛsɳ s) (i.e. his mother-in-law), “sasunhain” (sΛsɳʰɛɳ) (i.e. Your mother-in-law), “sasnhum” (i.e. my mother-in-law)

We can see that before the addition of pronominal suffix, (ɳ or ɳh) appears. What is this sign for? And why does it not come up in the possessive forms of other words. In my opinion, in a matriarchal society, some typical respectful words for mother, daughter and mother-in-law were used, and in a patriarchal society, similar words of respect were added to the words for father and mother that have now been lost. But whenever a possessive pronoun is formed, these lost words come up in the form of one syllable. This also indicated the ancientness of the language. I have tried to decipher three lines written on an amulet found from Mohen-jo-Daro⁽¹⁾. I think at the end of the last line of that amulet, a word “اڻسي“(Λɳsi:) or “اڻس“ (Λɳs ) is there, that appears to be the name of a goddess or god, and has been used as a symbol for some relationship. It is my hunch that the ڻهه (ɳ) and  ڻ(ɳh) came from this ansee اُڻسي (Λɳsi:) whose س (s) changed in some later period into  هه (h).

(1) I have no misconception about my efforts being in right direction to decipher and solve the script of Mohenjo Daro. It is quite possible that this is not correct but since such attempts to solve and decipher these ancient scripts are all a kind of an experiment, and I too have tried my utmost for five years and I have no hesitation to present my experiment to you. Only those scholars who master the Linguistic science will be able to assess its correctness and worth. In the background of my efforts is an un-measurable love for Sindh and the stature of Sindhi language. If my attempts are only slightly correct, I shall consider myself fortunate; and if it is proven incorrect, I would not regret, because this is my labour of love.

This argument about the origin and antiquily of language has become very lengthy and I do not wish to prolong it any further. I have been able to prove that Sindhi language is an original basic language and not a dialect of any other language; and that it is directly related to other Indo-European languages. But the evolution of the language is not as thought by European scholars, who merely based their work on minor indications of HemChander and Markandia, and drew conclusions that suited them. Indeed the actual evolution is exactly opposite to this theory. Recently some of the Sindhi scholars have opined that Sindhi has derived everything from Arabic and that before the advent of Arabs Sindhi people only had consonants; since such opinions are absolutely un-scientific and deliberate guess-work, writing more about this would be futile. I would like to wind up this discussion by presenting my thoughts about a few words. I have already written about these words in Quarterly Mehran (1959). Here I want to refer briefly to words like ٿوم “thoom” (i.e. garlic), پوتي “potee” (i.e. scarf) , ڪاسائي “kaasaaee” (i.e butcher) and ڪاتي “kaatee” (i.e butcher’s knife), which have been considered as Arabic words.

1- “thooma” (i.e garlic).

Garlic is found in North-Western parts of India. Its Indo-European name is Satovium. This word has come from Sindhi ‘thoom’, because Sindhi ٿ “th” is equivalent to Indo-European ‘st’. For example Sindhi ٿنڀ “thunb”= stunb (ie pillar). ٿاڪ “thaak=istaak”. ٿاڻ “thaan” is “staan” (meaning place there). So it is an originally Sindhi word and amongst Indo-European languages it appears as “Satovium” in Latin. Trying to connect its origin to Arabic فوم (foom) would be ridiculous in the linguistic sense, because nowhere ف (f) is seen to change to ٿ (th). An extract from an article from Encyclopedia Brittanica regarding garlic is very interesting:

“Allium-Sativam—a bulbous perennial plant of family liliacease (lilly family) used for flavouring; it is native to middle Asia, west of Himalayas (Vol 10, page 27).”

2- “potee” (ie ‘scarf’).

This is also a purely Sindhi word. “potee”, “potio” and “potrro” (i.e piece of caloth) are syntactical forms of the same word. The Sanskrit words ‘potak’, ‘pot’, Prakrit ‘puti’ are again forms of this word. Trying to link this word to Arabic فوطم‘fotum’ is obviously ridiculous!

3- “kaasaaee”  (i.e butcher):

 “kuhanh”ڪهڻ (k hΛɳ) (i.e to slaughter) is an infinitive in Sindhi, from which the noun is ڪوس “kos” (meaning slaughter) and from this comes the verbal noun ڪاسائي “kaasaaee” (ka:sa:i:) (meaning butcher), very much like باغائي “baghaaee” (i.e gardener) from  باغ“bagh” (i.e garden). This word is present as “kahnzi” or ‘ghahanzi’ in Hittite (meaning ‘he slaughters’), for which a Sanskrit roof ‘kushan’ is given as an evidence. Deriving ‘kaasaaee’ from قصاب “qassab” (i.e. Arabic word for butcher) is also obviously ridiculous. It resembles to the attempts to relate “shall” to “inshallah” and “mariro” to allahyar”.

4- “kaati” (i.e. knife):

In Sindhi language, words like  ڪٽڻ“katan” (cutting) ڪترڻ “katran” ڪپڻ ڪاٽڻ ڪرٽڻ “kapan” (slicing) “kaatan” -all related to cutting, have a Sindhi root i.e  ڪ(ka) or      ڪر “ker” and its Sanskrit form is ‘krt’ meaning ‘to cut’. The word ڪاتي ‘kaatee’ (knife) like “katir”, “kap” or “kaat” is a purely Sindhi word formed according to similar rules and it has nothing to do with “qate” (قاطع) of Arabic. In fact this Arabic word ‘qate’ has never been used by Arabs for ‘cutting’ or ‘to cut’.

These few words have been brought under discussion as examples. The purpose of this whole exercise was to point out that some of our scholars, instead of serving the cause of language, are attributing mis- leading conclusions about Arabic as well as Sindhi language, thereby propounding wrong theories about both languages. It is important to mention at this juncture that there are numerous Arabic words in usage in the Sindhi language that have, without any doubt, an Arabic origin. This is because different languages do have influence on each other and the words have been inter-changed between them for centuries. Even Arabic contains words from Indo-European and Aryan languages. The word دين “deen” (meaning ‘religion’) that is considered in the Muslim world as an Arabic word, is in fact an Aryan word (23). Arabs owe much to the Iranian culture that had a lot of influence on Arab culture, because at the time when Arabs invaded Iran, the latter had a better, flourishing and rich culture (24). The Arabic language contains countless words of other languages and for this Moussieu Renan has given clear proofs (25). Indeed Arabic is the language of our religion (Islam) and therefore it is always welcome here. But if someone wanted us to deny the cultural richness and origin of Sindhi language, it will be an unjust attempt of imposing the superiority of something foreign, in the name of religion.

I have briefly summarized all the qualities of Sindhi language that provide strong evidence that Sindhi language took its complete shape in very ancient times. In addition to this the changes that occur in the verbs and nouns due to number, gender and verbal form are not found in any other language. Such a complete and comprehensive system of syntax can only be present in an original language. And the changes, inflexions and declensions in languages, that originate from others, can be traced in only the original language. The rules for present, future and other tenses, participles and past tense that exist in Sindhi grammar are of a unique type which show that Sindhi language is not indebted to any other language for them.

It is also assumed that since the pronomical suffixes, especially the dual ones, do not exist in Sanskrit, therefore these must have come form Arabic. I have already discussed the ancientness of these suffixes and have proved that these signs represent the times of patriarchal and matriarchal status of society. Since that system was already in place, the question of Arabic influence does not even arise. In fact the system of dual suffixes existed in most of the old languages of the Indo-European group; some languages still possess this system while others seem to have lost it. Persian is an Indo-European language in which this dual suffix system still exists. For example گويمت “goyemat” (meaning “I say to you”) etc have the dual suffix and Persian acquired this system from Pehlvi and Avista; the latter is an ancient Indo-European language.

Take this sentence from the days of Dara found in the ‘cunieform script’:

نيَ آويڪَهه اهم، نيَ دروغنه اَهم، نيَ زورگر اَهم،

نيَ  اَدمَ،  نيَ  مَئي  تَو ما اُپاري اَدشتام اوپري ايم

“nai aaveekaha ahm, nai daroghna ahm, nai zorgar ahm, nai adam, nai maee tao maa ooparee adashtaam oparee aim” (meaning: neither am enemy, nor a liar, nor am aggressor- no not me or my family, I am follower of truth”)

Modern Persian:

نہ دشمن کام ہستم، نہ دروغگو ہستم، نہ زور کن، نہ خود نہ خاندانم، از پی راستی رفتم (پیروی کردم) (26)

Na dushman kaam hastam, na darogh go hastam, na zorkum, na khud na khaandaanum, az pee raastee raftam (pervee, kardam)

The Persian version of the last part “oparee aim” of Avastan language is از پی اش ام (رفتم)  (az pee ash im) (raftam) which means “I am follower”. In this sentence the اي (ee) of ‘oparee’ and the suffix of first person pronoun  ايم/ م“aim-im” (meaning ‘I’) is present. This proves that the dual pronominal system existed even in that ancient period in Indo-European languages. Therefore it can be said with certainty that since Sindhi too is one of those ancient languages, so from that point of view, it also possessed the dual pronomical system from the very beginning. Sanskrit, in addition to the pronomical suffixes, also contains adverbal suffixes that change with number, gender and in verbal forms. Kashmiri language also contains the system of dual pronominal affixes like Sindhi. In this language, three instead of two pronomical affixes have to be added to the verbal forms of words, one in front (prefix) and two at the end (suffixes) eg “loe” means ‘to hit” and from it is formed “maloi” i.e. “I hit”. In this sentence, ‘m’ is added as a prefix to denote first person. For “I hit him’ it will be “maloitmas” in which ‘m’ as a sign of first person appears as a prefix and also a suffix in addition to ‘s’ as the sign of third person (i.e. ‘him’) added right at the end. So its break up would be m+loi+tm+s. Kashmiri is also an Indo-European language, although it is greatly influenced by Dardic; even then none of the scholars could say that Kashmiri language has borrowed these signs from Arabic. Since Sindhi has qualities of agglutinating languages therefore these dual suffixes are a result of that  quality and no other language including Arabic has anything to do with it.

Some of our scholars in their obsession and favouritism for Arabic go to extents that are laughable. One such scholar has said that “Sindhi took the last letter ‘l’ (in a word) from the structure of Arabic derivative of مفعول ‘mafool’ (object) to make their own derivatives (27). They probably forget that this ‘l’ is present not only in ‘mafool’ (مفعول), but words like فعل، فاعل، فعيل، مفاعيل (fail, faail, faeel, mufaeel etc) Even in Arabic, the “l” of mafool, is used only in those derivatives where the infinitive has ‘l’ as the last letter e.g. فعل، عقل، عمل (fail, aqul amal) The derivative of قرض “qarz” (i.e. loan) is مقروض “maqrooz” (i.e. one who has taken a loan) which does not contain ‘l’ at its end. When this ‘l’ is not present qualitatively in Arabic, then how would Sindhi take it from Arabic?! It would have been better if they had claimed that the letter  ‘l’ was taken from Arabic, and all the words  ending with a ‘l’ would have been of an Arabic origin!! At least there would have been some sense in that argument!!

Now I shall give a few examples of some words that have obviously been taken from Sindhi language by other languages, because certain typical Sindhi signs are found in them; and these languages commonly use these signs when they take a word from any foreign language. And secondly they contain typical Sindhi sounds with slightly changed pronunciations with slight variations. Moreover, in some languages there are numerous words whose meanings are exactly opposite to that of Sindhi words. Mistakes of writing and reading in historic times might account for this phenomenon. For example, ڏئيت، دئيت “ddaeeat”, “daeet”,  “dev” etc carry a negative  meaning of “ghost” “spirit” or ‘genie’ in Sindhi but in Sanskrit and Avasta etc the word ‘dev’ is used for a ‘deity’ or a ‘saint’.

Another interesting example is that of سائو_ ڏائو saao, ddaao i.e. of right hand or side and left. We use ڏائو ddaao for left and سائو saao or ساڄو saajjo for right. Like English word ‘right’, saao also has a positive meaning. In Sanskrit and some other Indo-European languages these words are used for exactly the opposite meanings.

The Sindhi has saao and saajo (meaning ‘right’ as well as correct) whereas in Sanskrit savyo, Avasta, hoya, Old Slavic siji, they all mean ‘left’.

The Sindhi ddaao (or khaabo) means ‘left’ whereas in Sanskrit ’daiya’, Hindi ardh, or ‘dayaan’ or daahna mean ‘right’.

Opposite meaning of exactly the same words is definitely due to mistake in reading and writing. The script of Mohen-jo-Darowas written from right to left; and when Brahmic and Devnagri were evolved from it, they started writing it from left to right. It is possible that due to a reverse way of writing they assumed them to be of opposite meanings.

There is a lot of difference in Sindhi words ڏڌ ddudh (i.e. diluted yogurt or buttermilk) and کير kheer (i.e. milk). But in other Indo-European languages ‘ddudh’ became dhud doodh (meaning milk). (Sanskrit: dudh, Avista: dudn, Hindi: dudh etc) The names for other forms of milk have been mentioned in my discussion of Dravidian languages. The milk given post-partum cow or buffalo is boiled in Sindh to form a sort of a pudding called پسُ pissu and ٻَرهي  bbarahee. The word ‘pissu; started being used in other languages with the meaning of milk [Sanskrit: peus, Avasta: paina, Old Lithuanian: peenas etc.] Numerous Sindhi words have been taken by other languages with slight changes. Examples are:

• Sindhi: اڱر، اڱارangar-angaar (Λn Λr-Λn a:r) (meaning coal or red hot coal) Sanskrit: angaal-ungaar, Old Slavic: ogly, Russian: aagol etc
• Sindhi: داڻا daana (da:ɳa:) )meaning grains)- Sanskrit: dhana. Avasta: dana, Lithuanian: duna (bread)
• Sindhi: ساڳ sagg (sa: ) (meaning leafy vegitable) = Sanskrit: saak, Lithuanian: seekaas.
• Sindhi: شڪرو shikro (i.e. falcon)= Sanskrit: shakun, Avasta: shikna, Old Slavic: sirkol
• Sindhi: آر (crochet) aar =Sanskrit: ara, Homeric Greek: aal, Finnish: aora, Mardioon: aoro, Hungarian: aar.
• Sindhi: سون soan (ie gold) = Sanskrit: hernia, Avista: zernia, Woggle: soran, Mardioon: sarni, zarni, Hungarian: arni.
• Sindhi: بگهڙ bagharu (bΛgʰΛɽ) (i.e wolf)= Sanskrit: varka, Avasta: vaharka, Mardioon: vargus, Zarian: voerkus.
• Sindhi infinitive: ڪُهڻ kuhan (k hΛɳ) (i.e. to kill )= Sanskrit: hun, ghun, Hittite: kon, kahan,gaon.
• Sindhi: گوڏو goddo (goɗo) (i.e. knee)- Sanskrit: korper(?), Hittite: ganu, Latin: ganu.
• Sindhi infinitive: نيئڻ neean (ni:Λɳ) (i.e to take away)= Sanskrit: naeantee, Hittite: neeanstee. (infinitive: neen)
• Sindhi: وار vaar (wa:ɣ ) (i.e. hair)= Sanskrit: vaal-baal, Avasta: vaaresa, Old Slavic: vilaas, Russian: volas, English: hair, Dutch, German and Danish: haar.
• Sindhi: سامهون saamhoon (i.e. in front)- Avasta: ham, Pali: sama, Old Slavic: saamo.
• Sindhi: شهپرَ shahpara = (ie big moustache) Sanskrit: shepra
• Sindhi: پر par (as in par saal meaning last year)= Sanskrit: purt, Greek: parosi
• Sindhi: لونگ loung (i.e clove) = Sanskrit: lavang (this word appears to have come from an Indonesian word “lavanh” because it is originally from that region and we seem to have taken it from them)
• Sindhi: ڀرون bhiroon (i.e. brow)= Sanskrit: bhroo, Greek: ofrans, Old Slavic: brooe
• Sindhi: ڦار pharr-phaar (i.e slice) = Sanskrit: phaal, Pehalvi: spaar

The conjunctions of Sindhi ته  ta (i.e. then, that),  نهna (i.e. no) and  سوso are present in Hittite in the same form, and are used with similar meaning as in Sindhi (28).

The discussion regarding language has become quite lengthy, and if one were to respond to the allegations on the indigenous status of Sindhi language one by one, then this book will never come to an end. So in order to prove the original position Sindhi, this discussion is enough. Let us now study the Culture of Sindh.

References:

1. M.Katre---“Prakrit Languages” pp 43-63
2. Crammer Noah, Dr. reported in Dawn Karachi December 1960
3. Peterson and H.de terra—“Ice Age in India and Associated Human Culture” (1935) and Cuthbirh King in an article “Rock Drawings on the Indus” in “Man” Volume IX (1940)
4. Burrow—“The Sanskrit Language” pp 82-83
5. M.Katre---“Prakrit Languages” pp 25
6. Cousins Henry —“Antiquities of Sindh, pp 10 “The Arabs destroyed but did not build”.
7. Colbrook—“Miscellaneous essays” ii pp 504
8. Reinaud—“Memoirs Sur la Inde”.( This reference of M.Reinaud’s appears to have been taken from “Tareekhul Hukmae”.
9. Sirajul Haque—“ A Discussion on Short History of Sindhi Language" published in Quarterly Mehran Vol IV 1959 pp 212-213
10. Baloch, Nabi Bux, Dr. Chairman Department of Education, Sindh University—“Short History of Sindhi Language” (1962). “the formation of words -------before the Arab influence, Sindhi words were compounds made of consonants” pp 22.
11. Burrow—“The Sanskrit Language” pp 288-289. “When allowance is made for these, there remain some eight hundred roots, which for the basis, not only of a verbal system but also the larger part of the inherited nominal stem of the language.” Please also see for further details (b) E.Benroniste—“Origines de la formation Des Nouns en Indo-European” Volume I, Paris 1935 pp 53-54
12. Sandeelo, Abdul Karim, Dr. —“Theqeeq Lughaat Sindhi” pp 239
13. Maxmuller—“Collected Works” p 146
14. Burrow—“The Sanskrit Language” pp 257-258 “Besides the numeral proper, there is a stem “ubha”, (both) which inflects in the same way. The exact nature of its relation to Greek—“Auw”, Latin-“ambo”, Old Slavic- “oba”, Lithuanian-:ab’u, Gothic- “bai”, English-“both” is not altogether clear”.
15. Mackay—“Chanhu-Daro Excavations” p 241. “ It is of course well known today that the sequence of 4, 8, 16, 32 may be traced to the pre-historic culture of Indus Valley.”
16. B.Cobwell: The Jatakas or stories of the Buddha’s former births” vol I p 246
17. A. Gills—“The Travels of Fa Hsien” pp XX
18. Thompson, G—“Studies in Ancient Greek Society” Vol I (London 1949) pp 42-43
19. Rivers-in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics-(Editor: J. Hastings) Edinburgh—viii pp 858
20. Ehrenfeb O.P—“Mother-right in India-(Hyderabad-1941) pp1
21. Marshall J.—“Mohen-jo-Daroand the Indus Civilization” (London) 1931 pp (i) 51.
22. Frazer—“the Golden Bough” (Abridged Edition) Volume I pp 320, 324-328. 331-345
23. Maxmuller—“Collected Works” pp 82
24. Ibid
25. Renan: “Historic des langues semitique” pp 292, 378-380
26. Aqae Dr. Raza Zada Shafaq; “Tareekh Adabiaat Iran (Persian- Tehran) pp 18-19
27. Baloch, Nabi Bux, Dr. Chairman Department of Education, Sindh University—“Short History of Sindhi Language”. PP54
28. Adelaide Haan –“Language” Chapter 12, footnote see page108

 

* Nominative to Oblique or Genetive case etc.

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