Bundeli language

Bundeli (Devanagari: बुन्देली or बुंदेली; or Bundelkhandi), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Bundelkhand region of central India. It belongs to the Central Indo-Ayran languages and is part of the Western Hindi subgroup.

Bundeli
बुन्देली
Native toIndia
RegionBundelkhand
Native speakers
5.6 million (2011)[1]
Census results conflate some speakers with Hindi.
Indo-European
Devanagari
Official status
Official language in
India (Madhya Pradesh and parts of Uttar Pradesh)
Language codes
ISO 639-3bns
Glottologbund1253[2]

Classification

A descendant of the Sauraseni Apabhramsha language, Bundeli was classified under Western Hindi by George Abraham Grierson in his Linguistic Survey of India.[3] Bundeli is also closely related to Braj Bhasha, which was the foremost literary language in central India until the nineteenth century.

Like many other Indo-Aryan languages, Bundeli has often been subject to a designation as a dialect, instead of a language. Furthermore, as is the case with other Hindi languages, Bundeli speakers have been conflated with those of Standard Hindi in censuses.

Grierson divided Bundeli into four dialect groups:[4]

  • Standard Bundeli
  • Northeast Bundeli (closely related to Bagheli)
  • Northwest Bundeli (similar to Braj Bhasha)
  • South Bundeli

Geographical distribution

The Bundelkhand region comprises regions of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Bundeli is spoken in the Banda, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Chitrakoot, Mahoba, Datia, Chhatarpur, Panna, Tikamgarh, Gwalior, Vidisha, Jabalpur, Sagar, Damoh districts.

History

In the past Bundeli was used in government correspondences, messages, invoices, gazette and friendship treaties. Early examples of Bundelkhandi literature are the verses of Bhaddari as well as versions of the Alha-Khand epic. It is still preserved by bards in the Banaphari region. The epic is about heroes who lived in the 12th century AD. The poet Chand Bardai, wrote this epic based on King Prithiviraj's wars with state of Mahoba. Many literary works in Bundeli were produced during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Notable figures are the poet Kesab Das of the 16th century, while Padmakar Bhatt and Prajnes wrote several works during the 19th century. Prannath and Lal Kabi, produced many works in Bundheli language at the court of Chhatrasal of Panna.[5]

gollark: What's wrong with vengeance?
gollark: > I theorise that many of the things that slow human brains down are actually required for humanlike reasoningWhat do you mean "humanlike"?
gollark: RUST REWRITE TIME!
gollark: Although current AI stuff seems to be "blindly generated" more than "programmed".
gollark: Just don't program those in.

References
  1. "Scheduled Languages in descending order of speaker's strength - 2011" (PDF). Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India. 29 June 2018.
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Bundeli". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/lsi.php?volume=9-1&pages=843#page/103/mode/1up
  4. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India. Volume IX: . Indo-Aryan family. Central group. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
  5. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/lsi.php?volume=9-1&pages=843#page/110/mode/1up

Bibliography
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