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Historic language formation in the region.
Szczepanski, Kallie. "The Persian Immortals." ThoughtCo, Aug. 22, 2019, thoughtco.com/the-persian-immortals-195537.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/thoughtco/
Furthermore, according to the following source, similar languages in close-by regions that had naturally diversified away from mutually intelligible Steppe languages were then gradually replaced by Persian in the general populace after it was officiated by ruling governments.
Yoshida, Y., 2018. 8. The Family Tree Model and “Dead Dialects”: Eastern Middle Iranian Languages. Senri Ethnological Studies, 98, pp.123-152
The above provides some insight into the diversification and formation of similar languages in the region, and how these could change within the general populace over time following the official implementation of potentially separate but still relatively similar languages.
Finally, the following language manual created by the British in 1916 shows that the basis of Punjabi is believed to be distinct from that of Hindi/Urdu, and that a language from the east had at some point spread west and encompassed the old language of the Punjab region (assumed to be Lahnda), and this effect only neutralises as you move to the furthest western regions of Punjab.
Note that at that time Punjabi was officially classified as falling in the same group as central Indian languages, but this has since been changed to north-western in the case of the Punjabi spoken in modern day India.
Linguistic survey of India / [compiled and edited] by George Abraham Grierson.
Calcutta : Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1903-1928
As far as Punjabi is concerned, I assume the integration of eastern lands and populations after the Delhi takeover in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries likely had a sizeable and potentially direct impact. Furthermore, given the still evident similarity to more western languages, the current form Punjabi language may in fact not have formed at all.
Instead, the indigenous language (Lahnda?) could potentially have taken a turn entirely towards the official language, as with Sogdiana (Tajikistan).
The third Achaemenid emperor, Darius the Great, likewise deployed the Immortals in his conquests of Sindh and parts of the Punjab (now in Pakistan). This expansion gave the Persians access to the rich trading routes through India, as well as the gold and other wealth of that land. At that time, the Iranian and Indian languages were probably still similar enough to be mutually intelligible, and the Persians took advantage of this to employ Indian troops in their fights against the Greeks.
Szczepanski, Kallie. "The Persian Immortals." ThoughtCo, Aug. 22, 2019, thoughtco.com/the-persian-immortals-195537.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/thoughtco/
Furthermore, according to the following source, similar languages in close-by regions that had naturally diversified away from mutually intelligible Steppe languages were then gradually replaced by Persian in the general populace after it was officiated by ruling governments.
Talking about “mutual intelligibility,” there is an interesting case which implies that Iranian languages were probably regarded as not so different from Indian languages. An Iranian form of the verb śavati ‘he goes’ is quoted in the Nirukta about 300 BC by its author Yāska, an Indian grammarian.
śavatir gati-karmā kambojeṣv eva bhāṣyate ‘the word śavati as a verb of motion is spoken only among the Kambojas.’ (Bailey 1971: 64)
The name Kamboja seems to refer to a place somewhere on the Iranian side of the border area between India and Iran, which is known as Afghanistan today. The form śavati cited in the Nirukta is an old form of šawad ‘he goes’, a word used in Modern Persian. Although it is not possible to pronounce on the mutual intelligibility between the Iranian and Indian languages spoken in this area based only on this fact, the wording gives an impression that this Indian grammarian recognized that Old Indian and Old Iranian were not completely different.
In the 7th century, about eight hundred years after Zhang Qian’s visit to Iranian speaking areas, a Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (三藏法師玄奘) visited India via Sogdiana. He states:
... the land is called Su-li (= Sogdiana), and the people are called by the same name. The literature (written characters) and the spoken language are likewise so called. (Beal 1906: 26)
A hundred years after Xuanzang’s visit, Hyecho (慧超), a Buddhist monk from Silla in the Korean Peninsula, traveled through Central Asia. Regarding the languages spoken in the area, he comments that “The [Sogdian] languages are different from those of other countries” (Yang et al. 1984: 54). This could be interpreted as, by then, mutual intelligibility between the languages had been completely lost.
Three hundred years later, there is another report about languages in Sogdiana after Islamization by Al-Muqaddasi. According to his report, the languages had been replaced by Persian. He says that in Bukhara, an oasis city on the Silk Road located in the west of Samarkand, the language spoken there was also Persian. However, in its outskirts, it was not Persian that was spoken but something similar to the one spoken in al-Sughd, the area located between Samarkand and Bukhara. Al-Muqaddasi’s report in the 10th century states:
The language of al-Sughd is unique to it and is approximated by the languages of the rural districts of Bukhārā, which are quite varied, but understood among them. (Collins 1994: 273)
Based on this, in the 10th century, more and more Persian was used in city areas while in the countryside, varieties of Sogdian were still spoken.
Yoshida, Y., 2018. 8. The Family Tree Model and “Dead Dialects”: Eastern Middle Iranian Languages. Senri Ethnological Studies, 98, pp.123-152
The above provides some insight into the diversification and formation of similar languages in the region, and how these could change within the general populace over time following the official implementation of potentially separate but still relatively similar languages.
Finally, the following language manual created by the British in 1916 shows that the basis of Punjabi is believed to be distinct from that of Hindi/Urdu, and that a language from the east had at some point spread west and encompassed the old language of the Punjab region (assumed to be Lahnda), and this effect only neutralises as you move to the furthest western regions of Punjab.
Note that at that time Punjabi was officially classified as falling in the same group as central Indian languages, but this has since been changed to north-western in the case of the Punjabi spoken in modern day India.
Linguistic survey of India / [compiled and edited] by George Abraham Grierson.
Calcutta : Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1903-1928
As far as Punjabi is concerned, I assume the integration of eastern lands and populations after the Delhi takeover in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries likely had a sizeable and potentially direct impact. Furthermore, given the still evident similarity to more western languages, the current form Punjabi language may in fact not have formed at all.
Instead, the indigenous language (Lahnda?) could potentially have taken a turn entirely towards the official language, as with Sogdiana (Tajikistan).
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