HINDOSTANI LANGUAGE (properly Hindustani, of or belonging to Hindostan), the name given by Europeans to an Indo-Aryan dialect (whose home is in the upper Gangetic Doab and near the city of Delhi), which, owing to political causes, has become the great lingua franca of modern India. The name is not employed by Indians, except as an imitation of the English no menclature. Hindostani is not a mongrel "pidgin" form of speech made up of contributions from the various languages which met in the Delhi bazaars, but an actual living dialect of Western Hindi, and the direct descendant of Sauraseni Prakrit. It represents Western Hindi merging into Punjabi (Braj Bhasha being admit tedly the standard of the language). It was the natural language of the people in the neighbourhood of Delhi, who formed the bulk of those who resorted to the bazaar, and hence it became the bazaar language. From here it became the lingua franca of the Mogul camp and was carried everywhere in India by the lieutenants of the empire. It has several recognized varieties, Dakhini, Urdu, Rekhta and Hindi. Dakhini or "southern," is the form current in the south of India, and was the first to be employed for litera ture. It contains many archaic expressions now extinct in the standard dialect. Urdu, or Urdu zaban "the language of the camp," is the name usually employed for Hindostani by natives, and is now the standard form of speech used by Muslims. All the early Hindostani literature was in poetry, and this literary form of speech was named "Rekhta" or "scattered," from the way in which the words borrowed from Persian were "scattered" through it. The name is now reserved for the dialect used in poetry, Urdu being the dialect of prose and of conversation. The introduction of these borrowed words, which has been carried to even a greater extent in Urdu, was facilitated by the fact that Persian was the rfficial language of the Mogul court. In this way Persian (and, with Persian, Arabic) words came into current use, and, though the language remained Indo-Aryan in its grammar and essential characteristics, it soon became unintelligible to anyone who had not at least a moderate acquaintance with the vocabulary of Iran. This extreme Persianization of Urdu was due rather to Hindu than to Persian influence. Although Urdu literature was Muslim in its origin, the Persian element was first introduced in excess by the pliant Hindu officials employed in the Mogul adminis tration, and acquainted with Persian, rather than by Persians and Persianized Moguls, who for many centuries used only their own languages for literary purposes. Prose Urdu literature took its origin in the English occupation of India and the need for text books for the college of Fort William. It has had a prosperous career since the commencement of the 19th century, but some writers, especially those of Lucknow, have so overloaded it with Persian and Arabic that little of the original Indo-Aryan character remains, except, perhaps, an occasional pronoun or auxiliary verb. The Hindi form of Hindostani was invented simultaneously with Urdu prose by the teachers at Fort William. It was intended to be a Hindostani for the use of Hindus, and was derived from Urdu by ejecting all words of Persian or Arabic birth, and sub stituting for them words either borrowed from Sanskrit (tat samas) or derived from the old primary Prakrit (tadbjiavas) (see INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES) . Owing to the popularity of the first book written in it, and to its supplying the need for a lingua franca which could be used by the most patriotic Hindus without offend ing their religious prejudices, it became widely adopted, and is now the recognized vehicle for writing prose by those inhabitants of northern India who do not employ Urdu. At the present day, Hindi is beginning to be used for poetry but for this the indigen ous dialects (usually Awadhi or Braj Bhasha) are still preferred by Hindus. Urdu, on the other hand, having had a natural growth has a vigorous poetical literature. Modern Hindi prose is often disfigured by the free borrowing of Sanskrit words and is rapidly becoming a Hindu counterpart of the Persianized Urdu, neither of which is intelligible except to persons of high education.
Urdu has adopted a Persian vocabulary and a few peculiarities of Persian construction, and these, perhaps, combined with the use of high-flown and pedantic Persian and Arabic words in place of common and yet chaste Indian words, and the general use of the Persian instead of the Nagari character, have induced some to regard Hindostani or Urdu as a language distinct from Hindi. We must define Urdu as the Persianized Hindostani of educated Muslims, while Hindi is the Sanskritized Hindostani of educated Hindus. Urdu, from the number of Persian words which it con tains, can only be written conveniently in the Persian character, while Hindi, for a parallel reason, can only be written in the Nagari or one of its related alphabets (see SANSKRIT). On the other hand, "Hindustani" implies the great lingua franca of India, capable of being written in either character, and, without purism, avoiding the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. It is easy to write this Hin dostani, for it has an opulent vocabulary of tadbhava words understood everywhere by both Muslims and Hindus. While "Hindostani," "Urdu," and "Hindi" are thus names of dialects, the terms "Western Hindi" and "Eastern Hindi" connote, not dialects, but languages.
The epoch of Akhar was the period of the formation of the lan guage. But its final consolidation did not take place till the reign of Shah Jahan. Changes are comparatively immaterial until we come to the time when European sources began to mingle with those of the East. Like the greater part of those from Arabic and Persian, the contributions from these sources are chiefly nouns, and are casual excrescences rather than ingredients duly incorpor ated in the speech. In the case of the Persian and Arabic ele ment, indeed, we find instances in which nouns have been furnished with a Hindi termination; but the European element cannot be said to have at all woven itself into the grammar of the language. It consists solely of nouns, principally substantive nouns, which on their admission into the language are spelt phonetically, or ac cording to the corrupt pronunciation they receive in the mouths of the natives, and are declined like the indigenous nouns by means of the usual postpositions or case-affixes. Portuguese, the first in order of seniority, contributes a few words. Of French and Dutch influence scarcely a trace exists. English has contrib uted a number of words, some of which have even found a place in the literature of the language. Some borrowed words are dis torted into the shape of genuine Hindustani words familiar to the speakers; e.g., the English railway term "signal" has become sikandar, the Indian name for Alexander the Great, and "signal man" is sikandar-man, or "the pride of Alexander." The free use of Anglicisms of late years has greatly increased in the language of the educated, especially in the case of technical terms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See C. J. Lyall, A Sketch of the Hindostani LanBibliography.--See C. J. Lyall, A Sketch of the Hindostani Lan- guage (188o) ; J. T. Platts, A Grammar of the Hindustani or Urdu Language (1874) ; Linguistic Survey of India, vol. ix. (1914), where an extensive bibliography will be found and a detailed sketch of the grammar.