FlyeDie, presumably not one of BB’s handles, has left an excellent high-signal comment on the Hindification of East India. It posits Prakrit as a Latin analogue that spurred the development of the various Indic languages, and reads modern Hindi as walking the same path.
A wider blog admin note. We have been encouraging the Saint and the Shah to litigate their ongoing duel through the mechanism of high-signal posts, and this is the spirit in which we offer FlyeDie’s theory.
As an aside, there is also a very good comment by Calvin on the segregated political nature of the Indian Muslim community, which we may return to separately.
Brown Pundits exists to advance the bounds of niche knowledge on the Subcontinent. Our specific role is to stimulate excellent conversations, or guftugū as nos ancêtres les Mughalois would have punned it, and the comment below is one such endeavour, the more valuable because so much of our past has been lost or distorted. We reproduce it unedited.
Okay, I think I am going on a weird comment streak and losing my mind. So, I have a weird tin foil theory; it is going to be long, and it is going to sound like bullshit, but please bear with me. Here is my tin foil hat theory: Hindi is the Prakrit of the modern age, and it is destined to follow the same path as Prakrit. To explain what I am trying to say, I am going to talk about my favorite book about Prakrit: “Language of the Snakes Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India” by Andrew Olett.
Continue reading The “Prakrisation” of Hindi
