Kashmiri Language and its Dialects
Prof. Omkar N. Koul
1.1 Area and speakers
The Kashmiri language, variously spelled as Kaschemiri,
Kacmiri, Kashmiri, Cashmiri, and Cashmeeree by
European scholars, is called Ka:shur or ka:shir zaba:n by
its native speakers. It is primarily spoken in the Kashmir valley of the state
of Jammu and Kashmir in India, and also parts of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan.
Kashmiri is also spoken in other parts of India, and in many other parts of the
world by Kashmiri immigrants. The speech of the valley is divided into three
groups, traditionally known as mara:z, spoken in the southern and
southeastern region; kamra:z, spoken in the northern and northwestern
region; and yamra:z, the dialect of Srinagar and its neighboring areas in
the center. The variations in Kashmiri spoken in these areas are minor. Two
other regional dialects of Kashmiri Kashtawari/Kishtawari and Poguli are spoken
outside the valley. Siraji and Rambani, often listed as dialects of Kashmiri and
also spoken outside the valley, are more akin to Dogri than Kashmiri (Koul and
Schmidt 1984). The language spoken in the Srinagar area is regarded as standard
and holds a prestigious position. It is widely used in literature and mass
media. It is, however, neither the official language nor the medium of
instruction in the state, except at the elementary level.
The state of Jammu and Kashmir is the northern most state of India. It is
bordered by Pakistan in the west, China in the north, and Tibet in the east. It
is divided into three provinces, namely, Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, each with
its own distinct geographic, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries. The Kashmir
valley, popularly known as Vale of Kashmir, is separated from Ladakh in the
northeast by the Zojila pass in the Himalayan ranges. Most of the Ladakhi people
speak Ladakhi, which is of Tibetan origin. Jammu is situated in the south beyond
the Pir Panjal range of the Himalayas. The major language of this region is
Dogri, an Indo-Aryan language. Kashtawari is spoken in the Kashtawar valley of
the Doda district, which borders on the southeast of Kashmir province. Poguli is
spoken in Pogul and the Paristan valley, west of Kashtwar. The extreme northwest
territory of the state, known as Gilgit, and a small area in the west are under
dispute at present. The three main languages of the northwest territory are
Shina which is closely related to Kashmiri; Balti, related to Tibetan and spoken
in Baltistan; and Burushaski, which is spoken in Hunza in the northeast of
Baltistan.
According to the 1981 census of India, the total number of Kashmiri speakers
in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is 3,174,684, with the main concentration in
the Kashmir valley.
1.2 Linguistic affinity
The linguistic affinity of Kashmiri with the Indo-Aryan (IA) family has not
been easy to establish within the framework of traditional comparative method.
This is not surprising in view of its several unique features, which differ from
other IA languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, and Hindi. These features encompass
several aspects of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology,
pronominal system syntax, and prosody, as first documented in detail in Grierson
(1915). In Kashmiri, for example, one finds several features such as insertion
of epethetic vowels, aspiration of the final unvoiced stops, absence of voiced
aspirates and gemination, presence of an indefinite article ah three-way
distinction in the pronominal system and also in the past tenses, which are
unlike other IA languages. It is worth noting here that in spite of these
differences the great bulk of Kashmiri vocabulary is of the IA/Sanskritic stock,
regardless of the heavy borrowing from Persian. In his elaborate article
"The Linguistic Classification of Kashmiri", Grierson concludes that :
"Kashmiri is a mixed language, having at its basis a language of the
Dard group of the Pis'acha family allied to Shina. It has been powerfully
influenced by Indian culture and literature and the greater part of the
vocabulary is now of Indian origin and is allied to that of the Sanskritic
Indo-Aryan languages of northern India. As, however, its basis, in other words,
its phonetic system, its accidence, its syntax, its prosocy is Pis'acha, it must
be classed as such, and not as a Sanskritic form of speech. (1915)
The word Pis'acha is later replaced by Grierson with Dardic, since the former
has a derogatory connotation a cannibal demon in Indian mythology.
Grierson reiterates this classification in his Linguistic Survey of
India (1919, 8,2:2). According to him. Aryan language branched into three
distinct sister groups, with further subgroups as follows :
The three Dardic subgroups include
several languages and dialects. For example, the
Kafir group, includes Bashgali, Wai-ala, Wasi-veri
of Veron, Ashkund, and Kalasha-Pashai subgroup; the
Kho-war, also called Chitrali, group includes a few
dialects; and finally the Dard group, which includes
Shina, Kohistani, and Kashmiri. It is significant to
note that Kashmiri has been classified as a Dardic
language.
Turner (1927), Bloch (1934), and
some others have expressed their opposition to
Grierson's three way classification of Aryan.
Morgenstierne, however, was the first person to
seriously challenge this classification. After years
of research in Afghanistan and surrounding areas, he
concluded that Aryan branched into only Indo-Aryan
and Eranian. He denies the existance of Dardic as a
third sister. He places Ka:firi, presently Nuristani,
languages under Eranian, and Khowar and Dard group
under Indo-Aryan. This is clearly seen in his
article "Some Features of Khowar
Morphology."
The Dardic languages, in
contradistinction to the true Kafir group, are of
pure IA origin and go back to a form of speech
closely resembling Vedic. This state of affairs
cannot be altered by the fact that Dardic has
preserved many archaisms lost in latter IA
languages, by the widespread loss of aspiration.
(1947:6)
In "Dardic and Kafir
Languages," Morgenstierne, reiterates his views
:
"[Dardic] ... contain
absolutely no features which cannot be derived from
old IA. They have simply retained a number of
striking archaisms, which had already disappeared in
most Prakrit dialects. Thus for example the
distinction between three sibilant phonemes (s, s' (sh),
s), or the retention, in the western dialects, of
ancient st, st. The loss of aspiration of voiced
stops in some Dardic dialects is late, and in most
of them at least some trace of aspiration has been
preserved. There is not a single common feature
distinguishing Dardic as a whole, from the rest of
the IA languages, and the Dardic area itself is
intersected by a network of isoglosses, often of
historical interest as indicating ancient lines of
communication as well as barriers.
Dardic is simply a convenient term
to denote a bundle of aberrant IA hill languages,
which in their relative isolation, accented by the
invasion of Pathan tribes, have been in varying
degrees sheltered against the expanding influences
of IA Midland (Madhyadesh) innovations, being left
free to develop on their own. (1961:138) [emphasis
added]"
Morgenstierne's Dardic/IA hill group
consists of six subgroups, which are listed here
with our own simplified numbering and a few
"remarks": (1) Kalasa, Khowar; (2) Dameli,
Gawar-Bati, remnants of dialects similar to
Gawar-Bati (however, see Kachru 1973:16; also
1981:4-5, fn. 8. Morgenstierne has reclassified this
language with the Kafir group); (3) Pashai; (4)
Bashkarik (Garwi/Gawri), Torwali, Maiya (Kohistani),
Tirahi, etc.; (5) Sina, Phalura, Dumaki; and (6)
Kashmiri, with Kashtawari as a true dialect and
other dialects strongly influenced by Dogri.
This classification of Morgenstierne,
which clearly identifies his Dardic group consisting
of IA hill languages including Kashmiri as being a
direct descendant of IA, has been taken as a
departure point by Fussman (1972), Strand (1973),
and some others with certain reservations and
further clarifications. Fussman, for example, also
warns that Dardic and Kafir languages are
geographic, not linguistic, expressions :
"... c'est une statement
geographique, non linguistique. Prise au pied de la
lettre, elle laisserait croire que font partie des
langues dardes toutes les langues parlees au
Dardistan. Or le Bur. [Burshaski], du Hunza, N'ayant
d'I-A que quelques rares mot empruntes au Sh. [Shina],
n'est pas une langue darde. Inversement stricto
sensu la denomination langue darde ne devrait
pas s'appliquer au K. [Kashmiri] (1972: 2,
11)."
Strand (1973) agrees with
Morgenstierne but has suggested a slightly revised
classification. His work is mostly confined to
Kafiri/Nuristani languages.
Returning to Kashmiri, though
Morgenstierne has classified it as an IA language,
the position of Suniti Kumar Chatterji, the famous
Indian philologist, seems ambivalent :
"As a language, Kashmiri, at
least in its basic stratum, belongs to the Dardic
section of Aryan or Indo-Iranian. Possibly one
section of the Aryans who came to India before 1000
B.C. and who spoke dialects very much like the
languages of the Rig-Veda but with certain special
characteristics (which later gave rise to the Dardic
branch of Aryan) became established in the valley of
Kashmir, and in the surrounding mountainous tracts;
and very early, possibly from after the Vedic age,
Brahminical Aryans with their Indo-Aryan
"spoken" Sanskrit (and subsequently with
the Prakrits) came and settled in Kashmir and other
Himalayan areas .... In this way, Kashmir, in spite
of a Dardic substratum in its people and its speech,
became a part of the Sanskrit culture-world of
India. The Indo-Aryan Prakrits and Apabhramsha from
the Midland and from Northern Panjab profoundly
modified the Dardic bases of Kashmiri, so that one
might say that Kashmiri language is a result of a
very large over laying of a Dardic base with
Indo-Aryan elements. (Chatterji 1963 : 256)"
Schmidt (1981), and Koul and Schmidt
(1984), represent the most recent work on Kashmiri,
Shina, and their dialects. Their analyses are based
on the comparison of phonology, morphology, syntax
and vocabulary count, which previous scholars have
used to define the so-called Dard group. Their
findings confirm that both Shina and Kashmiri posses
phonological and morphological features that
characterize the so-called Dard group, (i.e., IA
languages of the Dard area), though there are
certain differences between the two. Shina, for
exampe, has developed a tone system and has
preserved a three-way contrast among sibilants.
Kashmiri, in contrast, has developed a system of
palatalized consonants. The most striking
difference, according to these authors, is the
occurence of verb-second order, which is peculiar
only to Kashmiri and its dialect Kashtwari/Kishtwari.
The Poguli dialect shows both verb-second and
verb-final order in the root clause. Word-order
facts about Poguli are also confirmed in Hook
(1987).
It is worth nothing here that
Zakharyin (1984), working within a quantitative
typological framework, which is different from the
comparative method, also concludes that Kashmiri
belongs to the IA family. We will not go into the
details of his analysis except to quote his remarks
on the ergativity in Kashmiri and other IA
languages:
"Among the Indo-European
languages of the West India, Kashmiri is the one
that concentrates to the greatest degree the
characteristics of ergativoidness. Thus it is a kind
of prototype for all ergativoid languages of the
area. The Indo-European languages of the West
demonstrate the mixed phrase of ergativoidness.
Detailed analysis of each language allows to
determine the degree of "verbalness" or
"nominalness" in them. In this respect in
Kashmiri the verbal features of ergativoidness are
found to the maximum extent. Hindi and its dialects,
specially those bordering Western Pahari (Bangaru,
for example), represent the opposite prototype of a
system with the greatest concentration of nominal
features. While moving along the line of Kashmiri,
Lahnda, Sindhi, Western Rajastani, Gujarati,
Marathi, Western Hindi, and Eastern Punjabi
dialects, we can easily observe the decrease of
verbal features within the mixed type of
ergativoidness and the increase of its nominal
features. (1984 :43)"
In this connection, his earlier
remarks in the same article are also worth noting :
".... the more we learn about
the Dardic languages ... the more evident it becomes
that G.A. Grierson might have been wrong to separate
Kashmiri from the Indo-Aryan language stock, and
that perhaps J. Block (1934) was right in stating
that Kashmiri only primordially had been Dardic and
later underwent a very heavy "Indo-Ayanization."
(1984:29)"
At present, then, there is a clear
consensus that Kashmiri belongs to the IA hill
language family. What should be noted here first is
that Kashmiri and the related hill languages are
listed as Dardic in most linguistic literature even
today, giving an impression that they form some sort
of a separate branch from Indo-Aryan. Second,
Kashmiri is the only language that has a rich
literary tradition dating from the thirteenth
century onward (see Kachru 1981 for details) and a
great bulk of Sanskrit vocabulary that has yet to be
explained. The problem in our judgment clearly
borders on ethnolinguistics rather than pure
linguistics.
1.3 Kashmiri grammars
Edgeworth (1841) and Leech (1844)
represent the earliest attempts at recording the
grammars and vocabulary of Kashmiri. Pandit Icvara
Kaula's Kashmirashabdamrtam (A Kashmiri
Grammar), written in Paninian style in Sanskrit in
1879 A.D. and published in 1898, is probably the
first complete descriptive grammar of Kashmiri
written by any scholar. The book contains chapters
on the rules of sandhi, declension of nouns,
pronouns, substantive and adjective, varieties of
the vocative case, concordance and composition of
nouns, formation of derived nouns, and adjectives,
verbs, and their conjugation. The book was
translated into English by Grierson in the form of
essays in the pages of the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal for the years 1896-98. At that
time, Grierson also wrote an elaborate article on
the Kashmiri vowel system and laid down the
foundations for his transcription. These essays and
articles form a valuable reference source for
Kashmiri even today. In 1911, Grierson wrote the Standard
Manual of the Kashmiri Language, which comprised
grammar, a phrase book, and vocabulary. It was
mostly meant for tourists wanting to learn Kashmiri.
A brief description of the Kashmiri language is also
found in his Linguistic Survey of India (vol.
8, part 2). Later Grierson compiled a four volume
Kashmiri-English dictionary (1932) based on the
material left by Icvara Kaula. Kachru (1969b) and
Bhat (1980) represent more recent works on Kashmiri.
1.4 The contribution of the
present grammar
Most of the studies on Kashmiri have
concentrated on phonology and morphology.
Unfortunately, the syntax of the language has
received very little attention. For example, until
recently, Kashmiri word order was supposed to be
similar to English (see Grierson 1911). In reality,
however, Kashmiri word order is more like Germanic
and other verb-second languages. In the root clause,
the finite verb may be preceded not only by the
subject, as in English, but also by other clause
constituents, as is the case in the verb-second
languages, such as German, Dutch, and Icelandic, to
name a few. Interestingly, the word order in
Kashmiri differs even from these languages. For
example, unlike German, Dutch and Icelandic, to name
a few. Interestingly, the word order in Kashmiri
differs even from these languages. For example,
unlike German, Dutch and Icelandic, in Kashmiri, the
clause constituents generally precede the wh-question
words, shifting the verb to the third position. The
constituents may also precede the verb in yes-no
questions. In addition, the finite subordinate
clauses show a remarkable symmetry with the root
clause in all types of constructions. In this book,
we have made every attempt to note the word-order
variations in all aspects of the language root
structures, question-word questions, imperatives,
relative clauses, adverbials, and comparatives thus
making extensive data available for the first time
to scholars interested in comparative studies. We
have also described in detail the distribution of
pronominal suffixes/citics, the role of the
reflexive possessive as the subject antecedent of
the object self's mother loves John double
case-marking in the possessive, extensive layering
of causatives, and many other interesting and
significant features of Kashmiri. Our book thus
fills an important gap in Kashmiri grammar.
This work is primarily based on the
standard dialect spoken in the Srinagar district of
the Kashmir valley, where coauthor Omkar Nath Koul
was a resident for many years. The data conform to
the speech of many informants we know and have
talked to. The vocabulary is a mixture of both
Persianized and Sanskritized Kashmiri. No particular
attempt is made to focus on these social
differences.
1.5 Kashmiri script and
transcription
Kashmiri is most commonly written in
Perso-Arabic script with added diacritical marks to
represent special Kashmiri sounds. It has been
recognized as the official script by the Jammu and
Kashmir Government. The old Sharada script,
developed around tenth century, is mostly used for
religious purposes by Kashmiri Pandits. The
Devanagari script, with additional diacritics, is
mostly used by Kashmiri Hindus for writing Kashmiri
literature. The transcription scheme used in this
volume is based on the one employed by Kachru
(1974), Koul (1977, 1987), and Bhat (1987), and Bhat
(1987) and is elaborated on in the chapter on
phonology.
Finally, we must add that though at
present Kashmir is in great political turmoil, we
hope the turmoil will be over soon so that the
scholars can once again visit Kashmir and pursue
various aspects of this unique and fascinating
language.
This is an excerpt from,
"A Cognitive descriptive Grammar" by Kashi
Wali and Omkar N. Koul, 1997. pgs. xiii xix
[Mailing Address : The author
is Director : Central Institute of Indian Languages,
Manas Gangotri, Mysore 700065]
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