Gujarati Language - History

History

Gujarati (also having been variously spelled as Gujerati, Gujarathi, Guzratee, Guujaratee, Gujrathi, and Gujerathi) is a modern Indo-Aryan language evolved from Sanskrit. The traditional practice is to differentiate the IA languages on the basis of three historical stages:

1. Old IA (Vedic and Classical Sanskrit)
2. Middle IA (various Prakrits and Apabhramshas)
3. New IA (modern languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, etc..)

Another view accords successive family, tree splits, in which Gujarati is assumed to have separated from other IA languages in four stages:

1. IA languages split into Northern, Eastern, and Western divisions based on the innovate characteristics such as plosives becoming voiced in the Northern (Skt. danta "tooth" > Punj. dānd) and dental and retroflex sibilants merging with the palatal in the Eastern (Skt. sandhya "evening" > Beng. śājh).
2. Western, into Central and Southern.
3. Central, in Gujarati/Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Punjabi/Lahanda/Sindhi, on the basis of innovation of auxiliary verbs and postpositions in Gujarati/Rajasthani.
4. Gujarati/Rajasthani into Gujarati and Rajasthani through development of such characteristics as auxiliary ch- and the possessive marker -n- during the 15th century.

The principal changes from Sanskrit are the following:

• Phonological
  • Loss of phonemic length for vowels
  • Change of consonant clusters to geminate and then to single consonants (with compensatory vowel length)

• Morphological
  • Reduction in the number of compounds
  • Merger of the dual with plural
  • Replacement of case affixes by postpositions
  • Development of periphrastic tense/voice/mood constructions
• Syntax
  • Split ergativity
  • More complex agreement system

Gujarati is then customarily divided into the following three historical stages:

Old Gujarātī (જૂની ગુજરાતી; also called ગુજરાતી ભાખા Gujarātī bhākhā or ગુર્જર અપભ્રંશ Gurjar apabhraṃśa, AD 1100 — 1500), the ancestor of modern Gujarati and Rajasthani, was spoken by the Gurjars, who were residing and ruling in Punjab, Rajputana, central India and various parts of Gujarat at that time. The language was used as literary language as early as 12th century. Texts of this era display characteristic Gujarati features such as direct/oblique noun forms, postpositions, and auxiliary verbs. It had 3 genders as Gujarati does today, and by around the time of 1300 CE a fairly standardized form of this language emerged. While generally known as Old Gujarati, some scholars prefer the name of Old Western Rajasthani, based on the argument that Gujarati and Rajasthani were not yet distinct at the time. Also factoring into this preference was the belief that modern Rajasthani sporadically expressed a neuter gender, based on the incorrect conclusion that the that came to be pronounced in some areas for masculine after a nasal consonant was analogous to Gujarati's neuter . A formal grammar of the precursor to this language was written by Jain monk and eminent scholar Hemachandra Suri in the reign of Solanki king Siddharaj Jayasinh of Anhilwara (Patan).

Major works were written in various genres, for the most part in verse form, such as:

• rāsa, predominantly didactic narrative, of which the earliest known is Śālibhadrasūri's Bhārateśvarabāhubali (1185).
• phāgu, in which spring time is celebrated, of which the earliest is Jinapadmasūri's Sirithūlibadda (ca. 1335). The most famous is the Vasantavilāsa, of unknown scholarship, which is undeterminedly dated to somewhere in 14th or 15th century, or possibly earlier.
• bārmāsī, describing natural beauty during each of the twelve months.
• ākhyāna, in which different sections are each in a single metre.

Narsinh Mehta (c. 1414 — 1480) is traditionally viewed as the father of modern Gujarati poetry. By virtue of its early age and good editing, an important prose work is the 14th-century commentary of Taruṇaprabha, the Ṣaḍāvaśyakabālabodhavr̥tti.

Middle Gujarati (AD 1500 — 1800), split off from Rajasthani, and developed the phonemes ɛ and ɔ, the auxiliary stem ch-, and the possessive marker -n-. Major phonological changes characteristic of the transition between Old and Middle Gujarati are:

• i, u develop to ə in open syllables
• diphthongs əi, əu change to ɛ and ɔ in initial syllables and to e and o elsewhere
• əũ develops to ɔ̃ in initial syllables and to ű in final syllables

These developments would have grammatical consequences. For example, Old Gujarati's instrumental-locative singular in -i was leveled and eliminated, having become the same as Old Gujarati's nominative/accusative singular in -ə.

Modern Gujarati (AD 1800 — ). A major phonological change was the deletion of final ə's, such that the modern language has consonant-final words. Grammatically, a new plural marker of -o developed. In literature, the third quarter of the 19th century saw a series of milestones for Gujarati, which previously had had verse as its dominant mode of literary composition.

• 1840s, personal diary composition; Nityanondh, Durgaram Mahetaji.
• 1851, first essay; Maniaḷī Maḷvāthi thātā Lābh, Narmadashankar Lalshankar Dave.
• 1866, first novel; Karaṇ Ghelo, Nandashankar Mehta.
• 1866, first autobiography; Mārī Hakīkat, Narmadashankar Lalshankar Dave.