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The nature of the Persian Language written and spoken in India during the 13th and 14th Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

M. J. Borah
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Extract

It has often been said that the Persian language written and spoken in India does not possess that flavour which is generally found in the writings of the Iranian authors. There is an element of truth in the foregoing charge so far as the literature produced in India during the later period of Muslim rule is concerned. But the Persian literature produced in India from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century may be favourably compared with the writings of many an indigenous Iranian scholar. The works of Amīr Khusrau and Hasan of Dihli and Badr-i-Chāch, who flourished during this period, are highly esteemed by Iranian scholars and are placed next to Sa'dī and Jalāl ul-Dīn Rūmī. The early immigrants who made India their permanent home retained the purity of their tongue in a much larger measure than their successors. But with the growing influence of the Hindu scholars who began to study Persian to qualify themselves for the service of the State, the difference in the style of India and Persia proper became more marked.

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1934 , pp. 325 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1934

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References

page 325 note 1 Firishta, vol. i, p. 344.

page 325 note 2 British Museum MS. Add. 21, 104 f., 155.

page 326 note 1 The word Tājīk or Tāzīk is used by different writers in different senses. The early Armenian writers applied it to the Arabs, modern Armenians have imposed it on the Turks and the Turkish Empire and even on Muslims in general. Professor Noldeke has suggested that Tājīk (better Tāehīk) and Tāzī are the same word, the former being merely the older form. Chik means “belonging to” and in this case “belonging to the trile of Tai”. In modern Persian Chik becomes Zī. D'Ohsson says: “The Mongols gave the name of Tājīk, or Tāzīk to the Muhammadans, and in the historical works of this period it will be found that they employed this word in opposition to that of ‘Turk’. The first served to designate the Muhammadan inhabitants of towns and cultivated lands, whether they were of Turki, Persian, or Arab origin mattered not.” (Vide Ross and Elias's Introduction to Ta'rīkh-i-Raihīdī, pp. 85, 87, 90–1). I think Khusrau has used this term m the sense of Persian-speaking Turkestānī.