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Friday, March 29, 2024

A Short Background to the Nepali Language

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[This article is part of a special package by The Gorkha Times on the pioneering Nepali poet Bhanubhakta Acharya]

By Govinda Raj Bhattarai, PhD

This section on literary legends will appear in The Gorkha Times with one write up on one legendary Nepali author every month. With the purpose of giving an introduction to the history of Nepali literature gradually, this will present some selected authors touching upon their contribution with the background of the age in which they lived.

Before embarking on this long project, I would like to present a brief overview of the language in which Nepali literature has been created. The portal will present everything in English either original creation /writing or in translation. However, most of the writers being Nepali people,  what they write or translate will bring the imprint of Nepali geography, glimpses of its history, and culture that  have shaped these socio-physical realities. Whatever the society thinks of is contained in its language.  Considering this element (of language) very essential, I would like to present in passing a glimpse of the Nepali language  first of all.

  Linguistically speaking, 123 languages coexist within a narrow strip of the sovereign nation called Nepal which lies between India and China, covering 147,181 square kilometers of land. It has a very long history of an independent nation, however, for the last two decades it is recognized worldwide, after a political change, as The Federal Republic of Nepal which had joined the United Nations on 14 December 1955.

Some outstanding features of Nepal are its multi-ethnicity, multi-cultuarality, and multi-linguisticity displayed and preserved within the enchanting landscape made up of high mountains in the north followed by beautiful hills, and green forests, gorging rivers, and captivating plain lands bordering India in the south. One is awed by the diversity of nature and calls Nepal truly an incomparable laboratory of vividness she has reserved.  Since the last few decades, man is trying to destroy this gradually, however.

        Nepali is called the national language and other languages are designated as the languages of the nation. Nepal’s languages are legacies of four families– Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian, and Astro-Asiatic.  Nepali descended from the Indo-Aryan family under which there are languages like Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, etc. Each of these languages is spoken in the Indian continent and each has a considerable degree of speakers and volumes of creative writings. Nepali is one of them spoken originally in the mainland of Nepal but now it has also been recognized as one of 22 languages in the constitution of India. It is the language of connectivity for a large number of Nepali diaspora       (about five million people) distributed throughout the world.

 Nepal has some remarkable identity markers, such as the land of the eight highest mountains including Mount Everest in the world, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, and the land of brave warriors that is, the Gurkhas, who displayed their unmatched bravery, especially during the World Wars.  But such features alone will not introduce the heart of a nation. It is inscribed in its language and preserved through its art,   that is,   literature and culture.  There are other physical features or indicators like per capita income, fertility and mortality rates, literacy rates, health conditions, annual income or GDP and many more. We are not going to present them in a brief, introductory article of this type.

We are quite eager to let the world know something about Nepali literature. With this purpose in mind, we have started this portal The Gorkha Times recently.

Nepali literature is written mostly in the Nepali language (in Devanagari script). There are other languages too that are used in creating Nepali literature, however, their coverage is limited. So in recent years, it is being translated profusely. A recent record shows about 700 translators have contributed so far towards the rendering of literary texts from and into the Nepali language. Many translators are eager in the task of English-Nepali translation, especially.  The role of the translation may be a point of discussion here because translation had been the only means of developing the old and medieval Nepali literature.  

Nepali has borrowed 80 percent of its total vocabulary stock from Sanskrit, the rest from languages of Perso-Arabic families, Hindi, indigenous languages of the country, and English. With the growing pace of globalization, different languages of the world are in a fluid state. Their words are transported by music and sports,  games and medicines, the fast pace of technology, social media, and food cultures. 

 Translation can be a separate study while discussing Nepali literature because its foundation was based on translated works of Sanskrit—books from areas of moral teachings to religion, traditional medicine, astrology, astronomy, and largely a body of ancient literature. Equally powerful is the role of the Pali in which rich Buddhist texts had been inscribed. There an extensive exchange between the nation’s rich languages like Newari, Maithili, Tharu, Limbu, Bhojpuri, etc. Most of them are spoken contiguously between Nepal and India. 

The Nepali language  is claimed to have  originated Jumla,  an ancient bed of Khasa civilization (now in the western part of Nepal). Archaeologists have claimed their records dating back to the 11th century. From its place of origin, the west,   it gradually moved towards the east, crossed the nation’s border with the border crossing Nepali migrants. They moved to neighboring India for learning or religion, for earning or some occupation. They moved far away to Bhutan and Burma and beyond. Nepali’s migration scattered the language far and wide. 

But since history subjugated freedom of the people since time immemorial for long, Nepalese people could not exercise freedom of expression until the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, literary development remained just a dream in a country which abounded in illiterate mass, where the regime imposed hard censorship.   One language, one culture, one political system remained a slogan of the regime until late. So many languages and cultures could not develop properly, not even Nepali.

 Nepal Academy was established in 1957 and the first national University (Tribhuvan University) was established in 1959. The all-round development of the nation is a corollary to freedom. Centuries of hardships, political and geographic, forced Nepali people to migrate from Nepal to Tibet, to India, Bhutan, and Burma and of late to the distant geographies of the world. Today Nepali population is spread to various nations like Hong Kong, the U K, USA, Canada, and Australia as well as many European countries. They are residing there permanently forming new Nepali Diasporas.    Presently they are making efforts to reform an association of Global Nepali Diaspora that will bring all into solidarity. 

The population of Nepal is estimated to be around 30 million whereas some five million live within various Diasporas spread over 60 countries of the world. It is a wandering race, adventuresome which is trained by nature to be which requires to be courageous.  

Famous Lexicographer Ralph Lilley Turner has presented the vocabulary level comparison of all Indo-Aryan languages in his magnum opus A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language (1931).

Nepali belongs to the eastern Pahari dialect of the Indo-Aryan language family. Two other varieties – Central and Western Pahari are spoken in the northwestern regions, that is, Punjab, the  Himalayas, Garhwal and Kumaon of India. The term Pahadi was meant to refer generally to the mountaineers’ language. 

The extant document of Sanskrit support the point with ample evidence that like other cognate languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali Gujrati, Maithili, Oria spoken in India,  Nepali also descended from the old Indo-Aryan speech. In course of evolution, it passed the frontiers of Old and Middle Indo-Aryan languages and descended to the new Indo-Aryan stage somewhere around the 1000 A D. The Old Indo-Aryan covers the period of the classical Sanskrit, and the Middle Indo-Aryan includes Prakrit and Apavramsha. 

Despite many changes of the intervening evolutionary periods, Rig Vedic Sanskrit is the proto-type of Nepali and her sister languages. In his Dictionary, Turner has made it clear “the proof that Nepali has descended from Sanskrit rests upon the fact that many details of its grammatical structures find their explanation only in the corresponding forms of the earlier language, and that much of its vocabulary allowing for regular correspondence of sounds between the two languages is identical with that of Sanskrit. 

Today Nepali language and literature both have been classified into three phases namely,

(i)     Old Nepali: 11th to 16th century,

(ii)     Medieval Nepali: 16th to 19thcentury, and 

(iii)    Modern Nepali: 20th century onwards.

Nepali literature also runs parallel with the periods of its language development. 

Up to the modern period, Nepali took different names. The first evidence of Nepali (then called Khas Kura) is the epigraph of c. 1250. One hundred years later Geoffrey Chaucer had started writing English epic. By the time Sanskrit was in its climax. Italian, English French and German literature had reached their middle ages, while Nepal was just beginning. 

In the medieval period, the present Nepali language or literature had three different names—khaskura (the language spoken by the people of the Khasa kingdom, the western part of Nepal), Parbatekura (the speech of those who ruled Parbat or the hills and thirdly Gorkhali, the speech of the rulers of Gorkha, now a district in the central hill of Nepal.

In 1970, Prithvi Narayan Shah,  a brave warrior king of a small territory in the central hills of Nepal called Gurkha Rajya (the Gurkha Kingdom) conquered many principalities and annexed them into a single kingdom that is modern Nepal. Then the Gorkhali  King shifted his capital from Gorkha to the newly conquered valley of Kathmandu, the seat of an ancient civilization, known as Nepal Valley and since then the kingdom came to be known as Nepal  and its language also Nepali. Thus the nomenclature of the Nepali language is relatively young, although the language itself is very old dating back to the ancient Sanskrit roots. 

Up to the first decade of the 19th century, the term Gorkhali was used exclusively to refer to both people and their tongue. Therefore there is nothing to be surprised when one notices that the first Nepali newspaper was called the Gorkhapatra which started as a weekly a century ago (in 1901) and now a daily publication. The literary institution of Nepal was called Gorkha Bhasha Prakashini Samiti(Gorkha Language Publication Committee) established in 1913. Many other institutions named with the epithet Gorkha include Gorka Bhasha Anuvaad Parishad (Gorkha Language Translation Council), The Gorkha League, Gorkha Dukha Nivaarak Sangh of Darjeeling, GorkhaPustakBhandarVaranasi, and the title of early Indian magazines such as Gorkhali (1916),Gorkha Mitra (1924) Gorkha Sansar (1924).GorkhaS evak (1935) and Gurkha (1945)demonstrate the continuing prevalence of the name which is discussed in details in Michael Hutt’s The Himalayan Voices (1988). 

The term Gurkha bears some cultural values, some ethnic undertones and gradually it began to symbolize a whole of nationality—the people of Nepal origin. It is older than Nepal however it is extensively used in India as an alternative to Nepali, in the UK to refer to the warrior race of Nepal especially the Gurungs, Magars, Rais, and Limbu youth of the Nepal hills. So the term Gurkha of the thegorkhatimes.com bears a special symbolic meaning as a pair of eyes of Lord Buddha do. As a relic of very high value, as a reminder of antiquity, we do love the word Gorkha, the Western tongue uses it Gurkha as in the Gurkha Regiment or the Gurkha Rifles, etc. 

The government of Nepal officially declared Nepali its national language just sixty years ago, that is, in January 1959 and since then Gorkha has become a word of relic value. Although people are still known as Gurkha or Gorkha or Garhwali in India and abroad- Burma, Hong Kong, the U K, and beyond they have performed their unmatched valor during the great days of war and after, they are now known also as the Nepalese people in general. 

The evolution of the Nepali language does not follow the track of political border that has kept on changing until late. Nepali moved from the western hills gradually towards the east in course of centuries a spread over different parts of the Indian subcontinent. 

Today Nepali s the medium of public education, legal proceedings, mass communications, and governance. More than fifty percent of the population speak it as a mother tongue. The remaining population also speaks it as a second language and for the total mass Nepali serves the purpose of Language of Wider Communication.

It is in 1993 that Nepali got recognition as one of  

18 constitutional languages (now 24) of India however Sahitya Academy had recognized Nepali as “as an independent modern literary language of India” according to RP Lama 1995. 

The foundation of the Royal Nepal Academy, and Tribhuvan University in Nepal and  Nepali Sahitya Sammelan in Darjeeling mark the beginning of the modern era in Nepali language and literature. These mother institutions  with the sting up of prestigious prizes and awards like the Sahitya Akademy Award, Bhanubhakta Purashkar, Madan Purashkar. Prithvipragya Puraskar, Madan Puraskar, Jagadamba Puraskar, Sajha Puraskar, etc. have promoted the standardization of Nepali language and literature. 

        Today Nepali is the medium of instruction in seven universities of Nepal and an equal number of them in India. The history and development of Nepal can be traced to different centers of Nepal and India. Important among them are Kathmandu, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Dehradun, Benares, Manipur Assam, and Shilling. 

At present Nepali language centers are spread globally. We have recently compiled a huge compendium called Jagadamba Nepali Sahityako Vrihat Itihas meaning, an  Encyclopedic Study on the Nepali Language and its  literature. One of the five volumes consists of Nepali outside Nepal that is Diasporic Nepali language and literature. A thousand-page compendium will show how Nepali literature is growing from different centers and diasporas like India, Bhutan, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Qatar, Israel, Japan,  Russia, Belgium, Austria, Australia the UK, and the USA. The Bhutanese refugees of  Nepali origin also joined the Nepali diaspora and global Nepalis are strengthening their solidarity and their love for mother language, literature and common cultures as signs of identity. 

Nepali has a treasure of dictionaries, grammar, creative writings, critical literature, historical and linguistic studies, and above all a huge stock of creative writings. In  Madan Library of Kathmandu, the only library of only Nepali books,  there is a collection of 45 thousand titles creative works. If we include those that are yet to be registered with the library, or all books that and published outside Nepal, the number of titles of creative works will be around 80 thousand or more..

This stock invites scholars to classify them according to genres, according to prize-winning titles, according to the region of the author, etc. A bibliometric analysis is a different task awaiting the digitalization. Based on this brief introduction we will select authors and introduce them here chronologically.

(I have excerpted some information from the   Himalayan Voices edited by Prof. Michael Hutt. Details will be furnished when all write ups take a book form.)

 [Prof Govinda Raj Bhattarai, PhD (b. 1953) is a poet, novelist and critic of high repute. Professor of English at Tribhuvan University, he retired from his job a few years ago, and has since then devoted himself fully to literary works. He made his debut in writing quite early. His seminar works of repute include novels MuglanSocrates Footsteps and Socrate’s Diary, theoretical non-fictions like  Kavyik Andolanko Parichaya (Introduction to Poetic Revolutions), Aakhyanako Uttaradhunik Paryawalokan (Postmodern Study of Fiction), Paschimi Balesika Bachhita (Drops of Western Eaves),   Uttaradhunik Aina (Postmodern Mirror), Uttaradhunik Bimarsha (Postmodern Discourses) and Samayabodh ra Uttaradhunikta (Time Consciousness and Postmodernism). He is also among Nepal’s pioneering translators and essayists.  He can be reached at tu.govinda@gmail.com]

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