The Dying Linguistic Heritage of the Kashmiris:

the melting pot generation¹

Prof. Braj B. Kachru

Introduction

I propose to outline below several interrelated issues about the linguistic heritage of Kashmiri Pandits in the larger cultural context of the current diasporic situation of the community. I shall briefly present the major strands of the ongoing debate on the origins of the Kashmiri language; the creativity in the language; the agony of multiple systems of writing, and the gradual but perceptible indicators of the decay of the language, its comatose stage and, finally, the ultimate death of the language.

The post-1940, diaspore-bred generation of Kashmiris might find this thumbnail sociolinguistic sketch of some interest. What motivated this attempt is the excitement often muted that I witness in the diaspora Pandit community, and among some Muslim Kashmiris I met in India and in Islamabad, Lahore, and Muree in Pakistan in January, 1989, for preserving and maintaining the "beloved language." And I note this excitement in the initiatives started in India, particularly in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and in the frequent e-mails I receive from Boston, San Francisco, and Washington DC to mention just three places from the USA. Perhaps this excitement is more than just a linguistic and cultural nostalgia found in diasporic communities going through multiple processes of "melting" within a larger community in India and beyond. Kashmiri's interest in a reclamation of identity through the preservation of their language is a proactive effort whose evolution and results will be insightful to watch.

The antecedents of the linguistic heritage of the Kashmiris Hindus, Muslims, and a handful of Sikhs continues to be as hotly debated as are aspects of Kashmiri culture, the constructs of the identities of the natives of Kashmir and the future of their land.

The Kashmiri language, called Kashur by the Kashmiris, and its dialects are spoken in about a 10,000 square mile region in the bowl-shaped valley of the Kashmir Province, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In other languages (e.g., Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil) the language is called kaashmiri or kashmiri. English variant spellings include kaschemiri, cashmiri, Cashmeeree, and kacmiri. The state borders with linguistically and culturally diverse regions, not all of which have traditionally been congenial to the inhabitants of Kashmir. In the north, the state borders on Afghanistan, Tajakistan and China. In the east there is enchanting Tibet and in the west there is Pakistan, that was carved out of the subcontinent in 1947. In this northernmost state of the Republic of India live a small percentage of India's population just 0.8 percent. But that figure is misleading since Kashmir is geographically and culturally of strategic importance, and has a fascinating historical legacy and cultural pluralism that has been characterized both in literature and folklore as Kashmiriyat (Kashmiriness) an often mentioned elusive term evoking the rich, pluralistic cultural and aesthetic traditions of the Valley.

In the larger configuration of languages in India, Kashmiri is a minority language, with 3,174,684 speakers (census 1981), mainly situated in the Valley, also referred to as the "Kashmir mandala," a geographical zone, which, in liturgical terms, is a "circle." The association of this concept is with Tantric literary traditions and rituals and with artistic creativity. There is also a smaller number of Kashmiri speakers within the boundaries of the state, in the Doda district, Poonch-Rajori, Basohli and Riasi. The diaspora varieties of Kashmiri are used in other parts of India, in parts of Asia, and have in recent years been transplanted in Europe and the USA.

In diaspora, whether in India or abroad, the language is going through gradual attrition due to the impact of the languages of wider communication, mainly Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and English. The resultant language Shift acquisition of a dominant language that is more functionally relevant in the new contexts will ultimately result in the "death" of Kashmiri. We notice this shift in major metropolitan cities of India, where a significant number of Pandits have generally been forced to relocate themselves in the post-1980s and earlier.

Linguistic Affinity of Kashmiri

The origin and linguistic affinity of the language of Kashmiris has been a point of prolonged scholarly debate. In its structure and vocabulary the Kashmiri language has preserved features of extended language contact and convergence with contiguous typologically distinct languages. In the north, it is surrounded by Shina (a Dardic language), in the east by Tibeto-Burman languages (e.g., Balti, Ladakhi), in the west by Pahari and Punjabi dialects, and in the South by Dogri and Pahari dialects. The debate about the affinity of Kashmiri centers around one major issue : whether Kashmiri is affiliated to the Indo-Aryan or Dardic family of languages. The central points of this ongoing debate are outlined here.

In Grierson's now out-dated view (e.g. Grierson 1915 and 1919) Kashmiri belongs to a distinct group of languages within the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European briefly discussed below. The other members of this group are Indo-Aryan and Iranian. Grierson considers Kashmiri a "mixed language" of "a Sanskritic form of speech" that belongs to the Dard group of the Pishacha family, allied to Shina. The Dardic substratum, asserts Grierson, forms the basis of the Kashmiri sound system, word formation, grammar and prosodic systems.

He identifies several linguistic features that are "peculiar" of Pishacha and which Pishacha shares with Eranian [Iranian]. Therefore, argues Grierson, Kashmiri must be treated as related. These characteristic (or what he considers "peculiar") features of Kashmiri include : absence of voiced aspirates; consonantal epenthesis (change in a consonant under the influence of the following vowel or semi-vowel); aspiration of stops in final position; absence of vowel alteration or gemination of Prakrit borrowings; non-deletion of t in the environment V+V; presence of a (ah) as a marker of indefinitization; presence of large number of postpositions peculiar to Pishacha; the similarity of the numerical system with Pishacha a three-fold system of demonstrative pronouns; a three-term system for the past tense; and difference in the word order. And, in spite of these differences, Grierson concedes that Kashmiri has been "powefully influenced by Indian culture and literature" and that this influence is evident in its vocabulary. However, he is emphatic that some of the "commonest words", words that are seldom borrowed and retained for long periods by unrelated languages, in Kashmiri correspond to Shina words and are of Pishacha origin. Such words include earlier numerals, and kinship terms such as 'father' and 'mother'.

The Dardic languages, in Grierson's view, form a third group, a sub-family, of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European (Grierson 1919 : 1-10), the other two being Indo-Aryan and Iranian. The Pishacha languages, including the Shina Khowar group, "occupy a position intermediate between the Sanskritic languages of India proper and Eranian [Iranian] languages farther to the west." These languages, Grierson concludes, are "neither of Indian nor of Eranian origin, but form a third branch of the Aryan stock" (1906). However, Grierson agrees that the Dardic languages have many shared features with the Sanskritic languages, and other features that they share with the Iranian family of languages. The Dardic family, he observes, has thus separated from the parent stem after it branched forth from the Indian languages, "but before the Eranian [Iranian] languages had developed all their peculiar characteristics" (ibid.).

Grierson's controversial classification provides the following major groups of the Dardic languages:

1. The Kafir group (including Bashgali, Wai-ala, Wasi-veri, Ashkund, Kalasha, Gawar-bati, and Pashai);

2. The Khowar (or Chitrali) group; and

3. The Dard group (including Shina, Kashmiri, Kashtwari, Siraji, Rambani, and Kohistani). The Kohistani group also includes Garwi, Torwali, and Maiya.

This position of Grierson's has evoked essentially two types of responses. One group of scholars (e.g. Chatterji 1963) adopted the middle path. On this question Chatterji makes two observations : First, that in spite of the Dardic impact on the Kashmiri people and their language, Kashmiri "..... became a part of Sanskritic culture. The Indo-Aryan Prakrits and Apabhramsha from the Midland and from Northern Punjab profoundly modified the Dardic bases of Kashmiri ..." (1963). Secondly, he concludes that the question of the linguistic affiliation of Kashmiri still is not settled and remains an open one.

The second group of scholars rejects Grierson's hypothesis (e.g., Fussman 1972, Ganju 1991, Masica 1991, Pushp 1996, Toshakhani 1996 and Zakharyn 1984). Their research, based on extensive fieldwork and comparative textual and typological study, raises serious doubts about the linguistic validity of Grierson's conceptualization of the Dardic or Pishacha language group. Fussman (1972 : 11), says that the denomination "Dardic language" should not strictly speaking be applied to Kashmiri ("Inverssement stricto sensu la denomination langue darde ne devrait pas sappliquer au [Kashmiri]").

The terrain of the Dardic region has been much more accessible since Grierson's study, therefore more insightful fieldwork in the region has been possible. This accumulated evidence and research findings have made it possible for Masica, for example, to emphatically assert that Grierson's positions about the Dardic languages are "now definitely obsolete, and incorrect also in its details." These concerns were originally raised by Morgenstierne, among others (see also Ganju 1991, Koul and Hook [eds] 1984 and Toshakhani 1996).

In Morgenstiernes' view there is considerable evidence that the Dardic languages are purely of Indo-Aryan origin and can be traced to a form of speech that closely resembles Vedic. These languages have preserved archaisms and other features as they did not pass through the Prakrit stage : these features include three sibilants, several consonant clusters, and archaic vocabulary. According to Morgenstierne, the fact that there are archaisms present in Dardic that are lost in later Indo-Aryan, or that there is loss of aspiration in Dardic, is not at all evidence for a hypothesis that the languages are not Indo-Aryan. The Dardic languages, says Morgenstierne, "contain absolutely no features which cannot be derived from old IA [Indo-Aryan]" (1961). Morgenstierne concludes that Dardic languages (Kashmiri, Shina, Indus Kohistani, Khowar, Kalsha, Pashai, Tirahi) are Indo-Aryan languages. (See also Ganju 1991). The Kafir (Nuristani) languages (Kati, Waigali, Ashkun, and to some extent Dameli) present a different profile. These languages are in a middle position, although "very heavily overlaid by IA (Dardic) words and forms, these dialects have retained several decidedly un-Indian features" (1961:139). There is, says Morgenstierne, "not a single common feature distinguishing Dardic, as a whole, from the rest of the IA languages, and the Dardic area itself is intersected by a network of isoglosses, often of historical interest as indicating ancient lines of communication as well as barriers" (1961 : 139). However, Morgenstierne is less assertive of the Kafir (also called Nuristani) languages.

The controversy of the two major positions is summarized, among others, by Fussman 1972 and Strand 1973. There is agreement with the major position of Morgenstierne and his evidence that Kafir languages retain some archaic features of (perhaps) proto-Indo-Aryan. These languages have preserved several distinctive "non-Indian" characteristics. These include the loss of aspiration, since aspiration is not distinctive in the Iranian languages; a distinction between palatalized velar stops and IE labio-velars, a distinction that no longer exists in Vedic Sanskrit and these languages also maintain an archaic trait of the dental /s/ after /u/.

Whatever advances have been made in research on these languages, there still is a lack of reliable demographic details and extensive empirical data., and of typological and comparative studies. The earlier studies, essentially lexical lists and sketchy grammatical outlines (compiled around the 1830s) are not very insightful and often are of questionable authenticity. A majority of these languages and dialects have small numbers of users and have no literary traditions, with the exception of Kashmiri, which has a literary tradition that goes back as far as the 13th century. Survey of Kashmiri literature are available in English and other languages (e.g., Azad 1959, 1962, 1963 [3 vols. in Urdu], Kaul 1969; Kachru 1981, Toshakhani 1985 [in Hindi]).

The Agony of Scripts

In the choice of a script and in maintenance and promotion of it for writing Kashmiri, political ideology and religious identities have played an important role. The Kashmiri language has historically been written in four scripts : the Sharda, the Devanagari, the Perso-Arabic, and the Roman. The Sharda script, traced back to the Brahmi (3rd cent B.C.) was exclusively used by the Pandits of Kashmir; it closely resembles the Nagari script and is now almost extinct and is preserved mainly in manuscripts and horoscopes. The Perso-Arabic script, with several modifications, has been adopted by the state government as the official script of the language. A number of modified versions of the Devanagari and Roman scripts continue to be used in whatever little is published in Kashmiri language and it indeed is very little. The differences in various versions of each script are essentially in the use of the diacritic marks.

The Roman script was used by the Baptist missionaries of Serampore in Bengal for publishing the Kashmiri versions of the New Testament (1821) and selected parts of the Old Testament (1827, 1832). This script, in Chatterji's view (1954:77), would have been "... the most reasonable and practical thing.." for the Kashmiri language. The Perso-Arabic writing, Chatterji continues "... is not at all a satisfactory solution...." It is, however, the Perso-Arabic script that has finally prevailed.

Shift, Decay, Last Words, and the Death of Kashmiri

This obituarial lexicon of decay, last words, and death for my mother tongue is not merely a reflection on an imagined future. It indeed is a reality that we are already witnessing. The recent scholarly debate and predictions of language death in South Asia and beyond has shown that a host of culturally and linguistically diverse human languages are passing through escalating critical stages of endangerment, decay, and ultimate demise. The question is : Is our mother tongue on that critical list? The way events are unfolding, especially for the Pandits of Kashmir, it is only excessive optimism that will stop us from saying that another generation will not witness a comatose Kashmiri language, particularly as used by the Pandit community.

The Kashmiri language in diaspora is a critical candidate for one or more of the stages of decay and death. The doomsday prediction is that in the present century we will witness the last words of 50 percent of the estimated 6,000 of the world's languages. This language extinction will be proportionately shared by India's 380 languages (if that estimated figure is not too conservative). What, then, does the horoscope of the Kashmiri language show? A short answer is : Decay and death!

This Cassandra-like attitude is based on a variety of indicators as reflected in the sociolinguistic history of our language. First, consider the current status of the language in Kashmir and beyond. The Eighth Schedule of India's constitution recognizes Kashmiri as one of the national languages; however, the state has adopted Urdu as the official language, thus, constraining Kashmiri from developing any professional functional domains that would alter its status of being essentially a "home language." Whatever educational uses are made of the Kashmiri medium have hardly any official functional uses, and the attitudes toward the language have not changed during the Post-1947 period. The inclusion of the Kashmiri language in the Eighth Schedule has no numerical or functional reason, but was primarily a political decision. The ongoing militancy and its ideological, cultural and religious constructs of Kashmir and its people have further weakened the case for support and promotion of the Kashmiri language as an exponent of Kashmiriyat.

Second, reflect on how the creative writers in Kashmiri traditionally have agonized about the attitude and status of our language. It is true that the history of Kashmiri literature shows the excitement of writers when they finally settle on Kashmiri as their medium, and at last find "their tongue" for literary creativity. However, we see that a majority of important Kashmiri poets first experimented with Urdu, Persian, Hindi, and some with English. Ghulam Ahmad Mahjur (1885-1952) considered Kashmiri a "backward language²," though he played the most important role in its literary revival. Dina Nath Nadim in 1974 candidly confessed that, "My language was Kashmiri, but we were ashamed of writing in Kashmiri. We were not just ashamed; we didn't know how to write in the language³." The story of other leading Kashmiri writers is not much different and the situation has not significantly altered.

The Kashmiris have historically given the status of literary, cultivated, or elitist languages and literatures to Sanskrit or Persian and, in recent years, to English. One earlier Kashmiri Persian poet, Lachman Raina (d. 1989), expresses this attitude in an often-quoted masnavi :

Writing verse in Kashmiri
is groping in the dark.
If you would shine as a candle-flame,
write in Persian verse;
you would merely waste your talent if
you write in Kashmiri.
For you would not the jasmine hide
in a nettle bush,
nor edible oil or spices waste
on a dish of mallow wild.
But times have changed and Persian is
no longer read;
and radish and sugar-loaf is
relished alike. (See J. L. Kaul. 1969 : 175)

You are wasting time sitting at the shore,
while other nations are taking to boast eager to cross over.

"We are like a house divided against itself, and have lost our mother tongue. Whither can such men go? The wise have said that food prepared by (disagreeing) partners goes to dogs (since each thinks it is the other's duty to watch it)."(Tr. by Zinda Kaul)  Models for comparison of excellence in literary creativity provide yet another clue for expressing the attitudes toward a language in Kashmiri literary culture the model has always been an external one. The lingering legacy of Persian cultural domination is evident in such comparisons : the Kashmiri poet Mahmud Gami of Shahbad (d. 1855) was called the Nizami of Kashmir and Wahab Pare (1846-1914) was favorably called the Firdausi of Kashmir; both notable poets in Persian. The markers of literary status are thus constructed by comparison with, for example, Persian, Sanskrit, and English.

Third, in functional terms, the Kashmiri language is a prisoner of its own borders on the one side the present line of control is around Uri, and on the other side the Banihal Pass. The currency of the Kashmiri language whatever functional domains the language has acquired is within that limited territory and ceases at these borders, one artificially created and one a natural boundary. And beyond that, in India and Pakistan, Kashmiris are in diaspora both real and imagined, forced and voluntary, recent and of the past generations. In some Kashmiri homes, in the plains of India and Pakistan, the language is already in a comatose state; in a majority of diasporic families one can see gradual and visible decay and death of the Kashmiri language as shown in Bhatt's insightful study of Kashmiris in Delhi (1989). I see this happen in my own family, in my children and in the baradari we interact with in my part of the USA and in other parts. In India all one has to do is to observe the linguistic behaviour and language use of our younger generation in Jammu and in the Pamposh Colony in South Delhi.

In the USA, Britain and other countries outside India which are, linguistically, extreme diasporic contexts for the Kashmiri language, I am reminded of the situation of the transplanted Armenian language. Speakers of Armenian English in the USA are characterized the "smouldering generation", and the Armenian culture revivalists have finally recognized that "the slide of obliteration" of the culture and language cannot be checked. The Kashmiri language has become the language of yet another diasporic "smouldering generation", in both their native land, and beyond the borders of India. What I have said about the Armenian and Kashmiri languages is the fate of a significant number of other languages diasporic or non-diasporic in India, in Asia, and beyond. This has happened in the past and this doom is present now. The colonization of America and Australia is responsible for the greatest extinction of indigenous languages, and closer at home in the British Isles English caused the extinction of Cornish and Manx. I must, however, add that does not imply that in some form pockets of Kashmiri users will not survive, as do some Irish-speakers in some regions of Ireland.

It is indeed true that in diasporic contexts, by acquiring other languages, English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and so on, we Kashmiris certainly become more than we are linguistically, culturally and functionally. We encounter other traditions and acquire other identities. A major question remains : by loosing our language, culture, and traditions are we also becoming less than we are? We have yet to respond to this question in a constructive, pragmatic, organized and realistic way.

The Rescue Brigade for Kashmiri

The scenario of looming doom about the maintenance of the Kashmiri language, particularly in diaspora, as I indicated above, is indeed based on the past diasporic destinies of the worlds' many other minority languages. And in reality, the diasporic Kashmiris are not a "minority" in any significant numerical sense. We are somewhat like the Parsis (who emigrated to India in the 8^th cent. AD to avoid Muslim persecution) more visible than numerically countable. Therefore one has to consider what type of language input from other languages and interactional contexts the speakers of Kashmiri receive in melting pot situations. In contextualizing the Kashmiri language in our diasporic life and living, we must ask: What functions does Kashmiri serve? What competence in the language do we develop in our younger generation the "melting pot" generation for using the Kashmiri language as a medium to open doors to what we believe are the canonic texts of Kashmiri culture, legacy, and heritage.

By imparting some minimal knowledge in Kashmiri to our new generation who generally receive it grudgingly anyway are we providing them an effective tool to understand any cultural resources through the Kashmiri medium? Such literary resources are, for example, the mystic poet Lalla (b. around 1335); the Bhakti poets Parmananda (1719-1874), Krishna Razdan (1850-1925); Zinda Kaul "Masterji" (1884-1965); the pioneers of modernism Ghulam Ahmad Mahjur (1885-1952) and Abdul Ahad Azad (1903-1948); and a mjor initiators of the Renaissance in Kashmiri literature Dina Nath Nadim (1916-1988) and Abdul Rahman Rahi (b. 1925). We might also like to consider whether this transmission of awareness about this literary tradition oral and written has now to be done essentially through translations. The question of translations raises a string of other important questions. Perhaps one initial practical initiative is to plan one or two Kashmiri culture centers, where present and hopefully future generations can locate resources to study what we believe represents this legacy of Kashmiri culture and what we so fondly call Kashmiriyat.. I will not go into those details here.

One major center of the Pandit community is Delhi, both numerically and in terms of sociopolitical activism. However, within Delhi there is no center which in any serious sense qualifies as a repository of Kashmiri cultural resources historical, social, intellectual, and literary.

We have no organized access to valuable papers of Kashmiri Pandit thinkers, writers, and artists which reflect their perceptions of our social, political, and ideological movements. We have no coordinated archives of the sociocultural history of the past and the present of our community and of the communities that played a vital role in our lives.

Our younger generation should have access to the major studies and debates about Kashmir and Kashmiris as chronicled and represented in the published and oral sources from Srinagar before and after 1980s. These resources if these have not already been destroyed include, for example, the daily Martand, representing one articulate voice of the Pandits of the Valley; the Hamdard, edited by a provocative and often controversial political activist Prem Nath Bazaz; the weekly Desh associated with the pioneering social reformer and visionary leader Kashyap Bhandu; the weekly Vitasta edited by Amarnath Kak; and the Jyoti organ of the Kashmiri Pandit Samaj Sudhar Samiti under the dedicated leadership of Pandit Gopi Krishna who earned international reputation as a proponent of the Kundalini yoga ("path to higher consciousness"). This list is long and should include resources on major Kashmiri thinkers, creative writes, and artists.

If we agree with the Cassandra-like belief that this wave of doom is resulting in linguicide, language death, and language decay of the world's minority languages and cultures, and if we believe that our mother tongue Kashmiri is already engulfed by this wave, now is the time to pause and ask : What role can the "rescue brigades" of the Kashmiri languages and culture play?

It appears that the wave has already engulfed the Kashmiri language so far as the Kashmiri Pandit community is concerned. It is present in the refugee camps which the Indian government and media, in a semantically offensive and demeaning way, have termed camps for "migrants" from Kashmir. The doom is active in the diasporic contexts, permanent and temporary, and it is noticeable in the melting pot contexts in the USA, Britain, and in several Asian countries where Kashmiris, both Hindus and Muslims, have relocated in small-very small-numbers.

There, however, is certainly some excitement often muted about preserving the "beloved language." I see this excitement in the letters I receive requesting copies of the manual An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri (2 vols.), and in initiatives started in Boston, San Francisco, in Washington DC, in Kolkata, and (perhaps) in Delhi. I see it also in the interest shown in my website for learning spoken Kashmiri. (The credit for creating this website goes to Sunil Fotedar of Houstan, Texas, who proposed it, developed it, and is still refining it with dedication and commitment).

The doom I have discussed above is Hydra-like : It has many faces and the decay of the Kashmiri language is just one face. There is yet another more ominous face, that of the extinction of the Kashmiri Pandits as a community. We see indication and a warning of this threat in a survey report recently released by the Medical Aid, a non-governmental organization, auguring that the population of displaced Pandits is not only "declining fast," but also that the community is "sure to face extinction." This survey, submitted to the National Human Rights Commission, was conducted in one of the "migrant" camps in Jammu.⁴

In the past decade over 200,000 Pandits have been forced to leave the Valley due to increasing militancy. The survey further shows that 13,708 "migrant" Pandits have died in the camps, compared to only 4735 births. Dr Choudary tells us that "if the present death rate continues, the Pandits are sure to face extinction." These indeed are chilling words, and if this doom of the community is not controlled, our next generation may not have to worry any more about saving the Kashmiri language as used by the Pandits. We do not have to be reminded that a language does not have a life of its own, nor does a language die or decay through any natural ageing process. A language lives because it has users, and it dies or decays because its users believe that it has no vital uses for them, or its users have gradually shifted to other languages languages that provide access to, functionally and attitudinally, greener pastures. In other words, the melting pot has finally consumed them.

Notes

 ^2. Mahjur used this statement in a published letter.

 ^3. In an interview in his Jawahir Nagar home in Srinagar.

 ^4. This news item appeared in The newspapertoday.com (Indiatody News Group) under the caption "The population of Hindus declining dangerously : Survey" by Izhar Wani, Srinagar, dated February, 25, 2001.

References

Bhat, Rakesh. 1989. Language Planning and Language Conflict : The Case of Kashmiri. International Journal of Sociology of Language. 75 : 73-85.

Chatterji, Sunitikumar. 1954. Kashmiri language and literature. In Kashmir, vol. 4 no. 4, pp. 75-79. Fussman, Gerard. 1972. Atlas Linguistique des parlers Dardes et Kafirs. 2 vols. Paris : Ecole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient (vol. 86).

Ganju, Trilokinath. 1991 Kashmiri Bhasha ka Bhashashashastriya Adyayan. New Delhi : Vani Prakashan.

Grierson, George A. 1915. The Linguistic classification of Kashmiri. Indian Antiquity. 44. 257-270.

Grierson, George A. 1919. Specimens of Dardic or Pisacha languages (including Kashmiri) Linguistic Survey of India. 8.2 Calcutta. : Government of India Publications. (Reprint Delhi 1927).

Grierson, George A. 1932. A dictionary of the Kashmiri language. Compiled partly from the materials left by Pandit Ishvara Kaula. Calcutta : Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (Reprint Delhi 1985).

Kachru, Braj B. 1973. An introduction to spoken Kashmiri. A basic course and reference manual for learning and teaching Kashmiri as a second language. Urbana : Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois.

Kachru, Braj B. 1981. Kashmiri literature. Wiesbaden : Otto Harrassowitz.

Kaul, Jayalal 1969, Studies in Kashmiri. Srinagar : Kapoor Brothers.

Koul, Omkar N. and P.E. Hook (eds.) 1984. Aspects of Kashmiri Linguistics. New Delhi : Bahri Publications.

Masica, Colin P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Morgenstierne, George. 1961. Dardic and Kafir languages. The Encyclopedia of Islam. New edition. vol. 2. fasc. 25. Leiden : E.J. Brill. 138-139.

Pushp, P.N. and K. Warikoo (ed.) 1996. Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh : Linguistic Predicament. New Delhi : Har-Anand Publications.

Pushp, P.N. 1996. Kashmiri and the Linguistic predicament of the state. In Pushp and Warikoo, 1996.

Strand, Richard F. 1973. Notes on the Nuristani and Dardic Languages. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 93 .3. pp. 297-305. July 19, 1999.

Toshakhani, Shashi Shekhar. 1985. Kashmiri Sahitya ka Itihas. Jammu : Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages.

Toshakhani, Shashi Shekhar. 1996. Kashmiri language : Roots, evolution and affinity. In Pushp and Warikoo, ed. 1996.

Zakharyin, Boris, A. 1984. Kashmiri and the typology of South Asian languages. In Aspects of Kashmiri linguistics. eds. O.N. Koul and P.E. Hook. Delhi : Bahri Publications.

Braj B. Kachru is Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA, e-mail <b-kachru@uiuc.edu>

Previous Article

Index

Next Article