SINDHI (sin'd6) LANGUAGE AND LIT ERATURE. The modern Indian language and literature of Sindh (q.v.). Sindhi has been de rived by some scholars from ..Sauraseni Prakrit, especially in the Abhiri vernacular. spoken in media.val times about the mouth of the Indus. Of all the Indian group of languages Sinai is in many respects the most interesting linguistical ly. While it is, generally speaking. an analytic language of the same type as English, it retains a number of Prakrit elements, which have been discarded elsewhere. There are. as in Sanskrit (q.v.). eight cases, formed chiefly by postposi tions, and the verb has three simple tenses, po tential. aorist, and future, from which the various periphrastic tenses are formed (e.g. aquirp. hoom, 'T may go;' haland4 huatri, 'I may be going:' hall() huOnz. may have gone:' halarp, 1'1/6, go;' lothqub; ainhi)tant, 'I am going;' haintuln /o;se, 'I was going;' halinse, 'I went;' halinse thr, 'I used to go;' hotio amhiyanr, have gone,; hose, 'I had gone,; halandosc, '1 shall go,: halando hunduse, 'I shall be going'; !who hondu,se, 'I shall have gone'). The past tenses of the transitive verb are lacking, and their place is supplied by the passive with the agent in the instrumental case. In its vocabu lary Sindhi, as being the first language of India to come under Mohammedan influence, has incor porated many Persian and Arabic loan-words-. On the other haml, it has borrowed a smaller number of Sanskrit words than any of the other modern In dian languages. Sindhi is divided into a number
of dialects, which shade off imperceptibly one into another. Of them the most important are Lari, in the Indus delta; Thareli, in the Sindh desert; and the one which may be called the standard, Sinai, north of Hyderabad. Among the other dialects are Jathki, Vieholi, Kachi. and Jadgali. The alphabets were formerly numerous, hut fell into two classes, the Arabic and those derived from the Sanskrit Devanagari script, and uniformity in this regard has not yet been at tained. The distinction in usage was primarily religious, Arabic letters being adopted by the Mo hammedans, while the Hindus clung to the Indian characters. Sinai literature is scanty, but there is a rich storesof popular poetry, tales, and the like which deserve to be reduced to writing.
Consult: Cust, Modern- Languages of the East Indies (London, 1878) ; Beanies, Comparatire Gratttmar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India (ib., 1872-79) ; Stack, English and Sindhi Dietimtary (Bombay, 1849) ; id.. Gram mar of the Sindhi Language (ib.. 1849) : Trump!). of the Sindhi Language (London, 1872) ; id., Sindhi Reading-Rook (ih., 1858); Gajumal, Handbook of Ac_4indhi Prorerbs English Renderings and Equivalent ,Sayings (Karachi, 1895).