Sindhi Language

Sindhi language, Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 23 million people in Pakistan, mostly living in the southeastern province of Sindh, where it has official status, and in the adjacent Las Bela district of Balochistan. In India, where Sindhi is one of the languages recognized by the constitution, there are some 2.5 million speakers, including both speakers of the Kachchhi dialect living in Kachchh, on the Pakistan frontier, and communities descended from Sindhi-speaking immigrants who had left Pakistan in 1947–48 and who are mostly settled in Gujarat and Maharashtra states. There are also smaller overseas groups in North America, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

History

Sindhi has passed through Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and Middle Indo-Aryan stages of growth, and it entered the New Indo-Aryan stage around the 10th century. Sindhi became a popular literary language between the 14th and 18th centuries. There are five different opinions about the origin and ancestry of the Sindhi language. The first believes that Sindhi is derived from Sanskrit through Varchada Apabhransha. Dr. Ernest Trumpp was the pioneer of this theory, although he seemed to be doubtful later. He states: “Sindhi has remained steady in the first stage of decomposition after the old Prakrit, where as all other cognate dialects have sunk some degrees deeper. The rules which the Prakrit grammarian Kramdishvara has laid down in reference to the Apahransha are still recognizable in present Sindhi, which by no means can be stated of the other dialects. Sindhi has thus become an independent language, which, though sharing a common origin with its sister tongues is materially very different from them.”Dr.Trump’s theory was first challenged by Dr. N.A. Baloch and then by Mr. Sirajul Haque Memon. Dr. Baloch states:”Sindhi is ancient Indo-Aryan language, probably having its origin in a pre- Sanskrit Indo-Aryan Indus-Valley language. The Lahnda and Kashmiri appear to be its cognate sister with a common Dardic element in them all”. Mr. Sirajul Haque Memon does not agree either with Dr. Trumpp or with Dr. N.A.Baloch. “Sindhi is one of the Dravidian language, and has its roots in the civilization of Mohen-jo-Daro.” The excavations of Mohen-jo-Daro have opened a new chapter for the study of the origin and ancestry of Sindhi language. It has been agreed upon by all the scholars, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists that Indus Valley was occupied by a Non-Aryan (Dravidian) people before the Aryan settlement in the Indus Valley.

Sindhi Over The World

Sindh has the 2nd highest Human Development Index out of all of Pakistan's provinces. The 1998 Census of Pakistan indicated a population of 30.4 million. Just under half of the population are urban dwellers, mainly found in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah District, Umerkot and Larkana. Sindhi is the sole official language of Sindh since the 19th century. A significant number of Hindu Sindhis can be also found in India, they emigrated to Republic of India following religious violence during independence. After the partition of India, numerous Sindhi Hindus migrated from Sindh and settled in Central, Western and Northern parts of India. Sindhi is not only spoken in the Indo-Pakistan sub- continent but is also spoken by approximately 4,00,000 peoples, as  their first language, in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, South Africa, Madagascar, East Africa & in U.K. U.S.A., and Canada by those who have migrated to U.K., U.S.A., and Canada from Uganda and other countries of the world. It is also spoken in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Srilanka, and in some other countries in the Far-East and South-East-Asia by some traders who settled there in the first quarter of the nineteenth century or even earlier.

The Scripts

Sindhi is now written in Arabic Naskh Script, formally adopted by the British in 1853. Sindhi is also written in Devanagari script in some parts in India. Before the adoption of the present script, Sindhi was written in a number of different but cognate scripts derived from Devanagari. Historically the first written from of any language in Sindhi is off course the Indus Script, presently being deciphered by different scholars all over the world. In the Arab period, we hear from Ibn Nadeem and Alberuni, that Sindhi was written in ‘many’ scripts. The earliest evidence of the proto-Devanagari script has been excavated from Bhambhore and Brahmanabad. Only a few Sindhi words are extant on pieces of broken pottery found in these mounds. Later we are told by Sir Grierson in his “Linguistic Survey of India” Vol: VIII, that Sindhi was at a more recent time written in more than eight different scripts namely Thatta, Khudavadi, Luhanki, Khojki, Devanagari, Gurmukhi and Hattai etc. Sir Grierson has given specimens of all such scripts. To achieve universality in writing for spreading education and in view of the majority of the population being Muslims having an acquaintance with it the Arabic Naskh script was adopted with slight modifications of letters to suit typical Sindhi sounds, not found in most other languages of the world.