There is a demand from Kashmir to honor its ancient andliterarily rich languages by conferring upon it the classical language status.However, this proposal is still pending with the Central Government, becauseerroneously the scholars have treated Kashmiri language as a descendentlanguage of Sanskrit or Iranian. This error prevents this language from gettingclassical status. Though Kashmiri language fulfils the criteria of beingclassical, the linguists those blindly believe in Indo-European Language theoryand its distribution with demographic movement of the certain stock of thepeople do not want to lose their illusory supremacist status. To understandthis, let us have an overview of the linguistic history.
Position of the Vedic and Sanskrit language
Though the Vedic language has been claimed to be the originof the Sanskrit and its descendent languages, the linguistic facts areotherwise. Language of the Rig Veda in its present form contains grammaticalcontamination from other contemporary languages, such as Iranian and IndianPrakrit languages. It is replete with borrowed vocabulary from Prakrit havingthe base of the Prakrit grammar. Also, many Prakritic forms are left untouchedin the Rig Veda. This makes Vedic language, as per J. Bloch, a hybrid language,having no originality.
According to Hargovindadasa Seth, the vocabulary andsuffixes of Prakrit have more affinity with Vedic language than Sanskrit. Had Prakrits emerged from Sanskrit, thiswouldn’t have happened
Linguist Richard Pischel states that the Prakrit languagescannot be traced back to any common source as they could not have developedfrom Sanskrit as is held by Indian scholars and Hoffar, Lassen and Jacoby.According to him, all Prakrit languages have a series of common grammatical andlexical characteristics with the Vedic language and such are significantlymissing from Sanskrit
Classical Sanskritappears only after the first century AD. It differs significantly from Vediclanguage in vocabulary, lexicon, and syntax. The classical Sanskrit language isan artificial language that was developed carefully as a means of communicationbetween the cultures and persons across the India. Classical Sanskrit is aproduct of Vedic and Prakrit languages and not vice versa, emphatically statesJ Bloch.
Instead, archeologically origin of the Prakrit languages canbe traced back to the Bogazkoy Treaty and Horse Training Manual of Kikkulybelonging to 1400 BC. In which we find the Prakrit forms of the numeric andproper names such as Indara (For Indra), Varena (for Varuna) and Eka (forEkam), Panza (For Panch) Satta (for Sapt), Tusaratta (For Dasharatha) etc. Thiswill prove that the Prakrit has more antiquity than the Vedic and Sanskritlanguages. The Sanskrit forms provided in the bracket are obviously a laterdevelopment in the process of making language.
Had Vedic language been present prior to the Prakritlanguages, no matter how short, a specimen would have emerged from somewhere inIndia or elsewhere, but this is not the case. The oral tradition has beenseriously doubted by the scholars because even if we consider that thereligious literature was preserved by the oral tradition, written records ofthe socio-political transactions would be extant somewhere to show theexistence of this language the way we find abundant inscriptional andnumismatic proofs of the several Prakrit forms. In fact Kashur, like her sisterlanguages finds her origin in very remote times when human species developedspeech, no matter how rudimentary it was in its originality.
Kashur was not only colloquial; rich traditions of the religious and nonreligious literature has been preserved orally by them. Kashur language (thename Paishachi was given by the outsiders) spoken in the Himalayan mountainrange has several dialects due to the unique geological formation. Gunadhya’sBrihatkatha was the oldest known epic written in this language. Though theoriginal Paishachi version is lost in the sands of the time, from KashmirKshemendra and Somadeva translated Brihatkatha in Sanskrit. The globalliterature has been influenced by Brihatkatha as many tales from it traveledacross the globe gaining high popularity.
Paishachi or Bhut Bhasa is the term coined by thegrammarians and other authors living in the mainland in sheer ignorance aboutthe Kashmiri people and thus they created strange stories about them in sheerimagination. They thought this land belongs to the fiends and serpents speakinga strange language.
This is why the Indian grammarians have not been able toprovide much information on the structure of this language in detail. Kashmiripeople have been calling their language “Kashur or Koshur” since antiquity andthe name has a regional reference which is natural for any language. Thetranslation of Brihatkatha could take place in Kashmir only because the localscholars knew the archaic forms of their language.
Though Kashur orKashmiri language, also known as Bhuta or Paishachi was never considered worthyof study by foreign or indigenous scholars. Sir Walter Roper Lawrence states that the vocabulary of Kashur is rich,that its phrases are direct and unambiguous and that many terms in it are fullof poetic thought.
Linguist George Abraham Grierson was wrong in his assumptionthat the Pishacha language spoken in the valley is part of Shina-Khowaar groupand occupies a position between Sanskritic language of India proper and Iranianlanguages of their west. (Linguistic Survey of India, vol. VIII, Part 2, p.2)It is obvious that his assessment was under the influence of the Indo-Europeanlanguages Theory, an evil outcome of the Aryan Invasion Theory which wasprominent in his time.
Calling Prakrit languages “Middle-Indo-European Languages”is an injustice to the linguistic science because there is not a shred ofevidence to establish the fact that the Prakrit languages, includingKashur, have been born from Sanskrit orany proto-Indo-European or Iranian language. In fact, all the availableevidence is contrary to this unscientific notion.
Incidentally, intellectuals from Maharashtra have comeforward joining the voice of Kashmir to have her own language to get Classicalstatus. Dr. Sadanand More, Sanjay Nahar of Sarhad, Milind Joshi et all areleading this movement from Maharashtra. Delaying or denying this status wouldbe severe injustice with the Kashmiri language.