BhashaIndia :: Punjabi

Punjabi – From the Land of Five Rivers

Perhaps one of India's most recognizable languages thanks to the Bhangra-based influences on the burgeoning Indian pop music scene, the origins of Punjabi as a language is a unique example of India's multihued history. This article traces the history of this world-spanning language, with its 90 million adherents all over the world.

Punjabi shares a point of resemblance with Telugu, over its ambiguous origins. The John Brodie method of estimation has postulated that Punjabi emerged as a unique language in a period between 750 AD and 1400 AD. Hence, it is deducible that Punjabi has had a considerably extensive history.

Punjabi is written in the Gurumukhi script, a word that literally means "from the mouth of the Guru". This script was standardized by Guru Angad Dev in the 16th century and is descended from the "devashesha" stage of the Later Sharada script, a member of the Brahmic script family which predates the Devanagari script to the 8th century AD, and the Gupta script a system that flourished between the 4th and 8th century AD.

Gurmukhi has 35 letters and nine vowel modifiers. In addition, there are five special sound modifiers symbols. A vertical bar is used to indicate the end of a sentence. Two vertical bars indicate pauses between sentences or paragraphs. Stylistically, Gurmukhi derives its letter shapes from "Landa", a trading argot derived from various sources by the mercantile community in the Punjab, but the Nagari script's influence is evident from the top horizontal bar present in most letters. The Punjabi language employs three tones. However, they are not represented in the writing system except for the sporadic use of the "ha" letter (reduced to a subscript) to indicate a high tone.

Punjabi can also be written in a system known as the Perso-Arabic script, which is used to write Urdu. This system is referred to as "Shahmukhi". Many people also employ the Hindi script to write in Punjabi.

Punjabi literature, due to the centuries-spanning strife from invasions and attacks from foreign, blossomed only in the later parts of the 16th century after a degree of political stability was established in the region. The fifth Guru of the Sikhs, Arjun Dev, led the establishment of a Punjabi literary tradition in its formal sense by compiling the Sikh scripture, the "Adi Grantha" or "Grantha Sahib". However, the ongoing development process of Punjabi as a language was evident in the inconstant usage of Punjabi in the manuscript. Guru Govind Singh, the tenth and last Guru, wrote a number of religious works but, again, most of these works employed Old Hindi extensively with the exception of "Candi-di-Var", which was written entirely in Punjabi.

The period between 1600 and 1850 covers the most significant portion in Punjabi linguistic history, with many writers employing Punjabi in varying degrees of intensity. The best-known Punjabi scholar and Persian poet of the 17th century was Chandar Bhan, a resident of Lahore. Another significant work in this period was the "Bara Anva" (literally "Twelve Topics"), an innovative thesis on Islam written entirely in Punjabi, by the poet Abdullah. During this age many Sufi poets gained ascendance to the forefront and their compositions, entirely Punjabi in spirit and content, form an integral part of Punjabi literature. Baba Bulle Shah ws one of the greatest Sufi poets in Punjab's history whose"Kafis" or short poems attained enormous popularity. Ali Haidar, a contemporary of Bulle Shah's, wrote a large number of poems generically titled "Si-harfis", each of approximately 30 stanzas in length,with each stanza beginning with a letter of the Persian alphabet. In this same era Jasoda Nandan wrote a poem of 88 stanzas based on an episode from the Ramayana. Another poet, Guru Das wrote 40 stories in poetic form, called "Vras", as an offering to Guru Granth with the intention of conveying moral instructions.

Ballads with inspirations from famous romances form an indelible part of Punjabi literature. The tragic love story of Heer and Ranjha inspired several epic poems by poets, with Waris Shah's 1766 poetic rendition considered to be the finest example of romantic poetry.

Poetry and stories with its roots in the lives of historical figures formed the essence of the 18th century with Hamid's epic "Jang Nama" being a notable example. The works of latter-day poets like Arur, Rai, Isar Das, Kisan Singh Arif, Hidayatullah and Muhammad Buta crafted poetry around issues like love, morality and Sufi mysticism.

The British annexation of the Punjab saw a considerable stemming of the literary flow of the Punjab. However, Punjabi literature did witness a transformation in concordance with modernity. Modern Punjabi literature is widely believed to have begun with the works of Bhai Vir Singh, whose extraordinary poem "Rana Surat Singh", written in 1905, heralded the dawn of the new age in Punjabi literature. Puran Singh was another prominent poet of the modern age and was popularly referred to as the ‘Tagore of Punjab'. Puran Singh's contemporaries also created milestones in Punjabi literature Kirpa Singh's "Lakshmi Devi" and Dhani Ram Chatrik's works, "Himala", "Ganga", and "Raat" are also considered classics. Other noteworthy poets in Punjabi are Pritam Singh Safir and Amrita Pritam.

Several other forms of writing also found scope for evolution in the modern age of Punjabi literature. Nanak Singh emerged as a famous novelist and short story writer in Punjabi while Gurbakhsh Singh and I C Nanda established themselves as popular dramatists.

Alongside Hindi and Urdu, Bengali also played a vital role in the enrichment of the language, with Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore playing a key role in the process. Several Bengali classics, like the works of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyaya and Tara Shankar Bannerji were translated into Punjabi to achieve tremendous popularity.

Today, Punjabi is a language of considerable significance, with Punjabi reportedly being the fifth-most spoken language in Canada and Britain. With millions of immigrant societies spread across the world and over 800,000 users across the world communicating almost exclusively in Punjabi on the Internet, Punjabi has become a language of the Modern Age.