I. History and Linguistic Classification
A. History
Dogri, the second prominent language of J&K State has an important place on the linguistic map of Northern India. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of Indo-European language family. It has its origin from old Indo-Aryan language i.e. language of Vedas and Laukik Sanskrit. Like other Modern Indo-Aryan languages, Dogri has also passed through Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and Middle Indo-Aryan (Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsha) stages of development and entered the Modern Indo-Aryan stage around the 10th century A.D. Hence it shows the three-fold process of development of its sound structure expressing its affinity with Shaurseni Prakrit. It preserves the characteristics of its growth from Veda’s to the present form (OIA pυtrə > MIA Pυttə > D Pυttər “son”, OIA bədhɪr > MIA bahɪr > D bola “deaf”, OIA mɔktik > MIA mottɪə > D moti “pearl”, OIA dυgdhə > MIA dυddhə >D dυ֜ddə “milk”). It has got regular phenomenon of phonetic change, which under phonological study has been termed as:
Palatalization:
OIA नृत्य / nrɪtjə/ > D नाच /nac/ “dance” OIA विद्युत /vɪdjut/ > D बिज्ज /bɪɟɟə/ “lightening”
Cerebralization:
OIA तिलक / tɪlək /> D टिक्का /ʈɪkka/ “An ornamental or religious mark on the fore head” OIA त्रसर /trəsər/ >D टस्सर /ʈəssər/ “silk”
Nasalization:
OIA मुद्रा / mudra /> D मुंदरा / mυndrã / “coin” OIA बाहु / bahυ / > D बांह् / bã֜ / “arm”
Metathesis:
OIA कृपा /krɪpa/ > D किरपा /kɪrəpa/ “kindness” OIA जातक /ɟatək/ > D जागत /ɟagət/ “boy”
Voiceless>Voiced
OIA पञ्च /pəɲcə/ > D पंज /pəɲɟə/ “five” OIA कण्टक /kəɳtək/ > D कंडा / kəɳɖa/ “thorn” OIA चञ्चु /cəɲcυ/> D चुंझ /cυ֜ɲɟə/ “beak”
Un-aspirated >aspirated
OIA पुस्तक /pυstək/ > D पोथी /pothi/ “book” OIA अस्त /əsʈə/ > D अट्ठ /əʈʈhə/ "eight” OIA लोत्र /lotrə/ > D लोथ / loth/ “dead body” etc.
As northern India has been a theatre of political turmoil, turbulence and upheavals left their deep imprints on its social and linguistic developments. The impact of the foreign languages like Persian and English can be observed on its vocabulary. The grammatical structure of Dogri is not influenced at all. The salient linguistic features of Dogri language are: (1) the presence of five supra-segmental phonemes besides ten vowel phonemes and twenty-eight consonant distinctions (Length, Stress, Nasalization, Tone and Juncture), (2) phonetically ‘ɟ’, ‘b’, and ‘r’ based language; initial ‘j’ and ‘ʋ’ sounds of other languages are pronounced ‘ɟ’ and ‘b’ respectively. Apart from retention of OIA ‘r’ the insertion of ‘r’ is also one of its peculiarities (विलाप /νɪlap/ > बरलाप /bərϩlap/ “lamentation” etc.), (3) ‘ə’ followed by nasal sound of OIA becomes ‘ɛ’ (कण्ठिका /kəɳʈhika/ > कैंठी /kϩɳʈhi/ “necklace” etc.), (4) full series of five nasal phonemes (ŋ, ɲ, ɳ, n and m), barring retroflex nasal, four nasal occur initially also, (5) three tone phonemes (level, high-falling and low-rising), (6) five voiced aspirated stops (ɡһ, ɟһ, ɖһ, dһ and bһ) and voiced aspirated retroflex flapped consonant (rһ) are absent from the phonemic structure of Dogri, 7) passive and impersonal voice are prominent (लिखेआ /likhae/ “wrote” > लखोआ /ləkhoa/ “got written”) etc.
Dogri is spoken in mountainous and sub-mountainous regions and the adjoining plains of North West India lying between Pirpanjal and Dhauladhar ranges in North and plains of Punjab in South, river Sutlej in the East and Manawar Tawi in the West. The word ɖυggər is taken as derivative of the words ‘ɖʋɪgərtə’, ‘ɖuŋgər’, ‘ɖυrgər’ etc. but in view of law of phonetic change ‘ɖυrgər’ has been taken as the most appropriate and scientific source of this word under the influence of regressive assimilation ‘ɖυrgər’ became ‘ɖυggər’ (name of a particular region), which is “a region of difficult traverse”, “invincible”, “difficult to be subdued” etc. The earlier mention of “ɖυrgər” occurs in Chamba Copper Plates of 11th Century A.D. and it refers to the community inhabiting the region between Ravi and Chenab.
The earliest reference of Dogri (ɖυggər) is found in Nuh-Siphir, a Masnavi written by Amir Khusaro in 1317 A.D. (“Sindhi O Lahori O Doggar”). Here Duggar refers to the language of ɖυggər (the country between Lahore and Kashmir). Elliot has clarified this in the Book “Elliot’s History of India”: P.P.563-564. In 1816 A.D. R.V. Carey included Dogri in the list of Indian languages for getting the missionary material translated into these languages. Later in 1867, John Beam, the founder of modern Indo Aryan Linguistics and author of “Outline of Indian Philology” acknowledged Dogri into the list of eleven languages of Aryan branch of Indo Aryan Linguistic family. In 1916, Sir George Grierson (Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part-I) made a mention of Dogri as one of the dialects of Punjabi, perhaps on the basis of inaccurate data. After this, some more linguists like Gill and Gleasson, Ujjal Singh Bahri etc. followed Grierson’s opinion regarding Dogri. Later, Dr. Siddheshwar Verma, a renowned scholar of Indian Linguistics, in his paper entitled “The place of Dogri in the languages of India” described Dogri as an independent dialect and not a dialect of any other language. He has declared it as a frontier language. He writes of the seven families (such as Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Iranian, Tibeto-Burman, etc.) “Of languages in India, the Dogri language occupies an important place philologically, for it is a frontier language and, in a way, could be classed among the frontier languages of India” (Nami Chetna, July 1953). He also has described characteristics and peculiarities of Dogri in respect of independent frontier languages. Archarya Kishori Das Vajpeyi, a famous Grammarian and Linguist have also proved Dr. Verma’s views in this article entitled “Dogri Bhasha Ki Ek Jhalak” (a glimpse of Dogri language). In his own words “Duggar region had its own Prakrit (middle Indo-Aryan language), developed form which is known as today’s Dogri”.
B. Linguistic Classification:
Genetically, Dogri belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of Indo-European language family and typologically it is an isolative (analytic inflectional) language.
Arial: Mainly, Dogri is spoken in Jammu province of J&k State and adjoining areas of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and in the borders of Sialkot & ShakarGhar tehsils presently in Pakisthan. This Dogri speaking region consisted of three main terrains (1) kəɳɖi (the sandy, stony, waterless and hard of soil area of Districts Jammu, Kathua and Udhampur of Jammu Province of J&K State), (2) pahari (mountainous region of District Kathua of J&K, Chamba and Kangra of Himachal Pradesh) and (3) Plain-cum-reverine (includes southern regions of Jammu and northern parts of Districts Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur of Punjab and Sialkot and Shakargarh regions of Pakistan). These regions differ in speech from each other in pronunciation, as the inhabitants of Pahari terrain are habitual of using syncopated grammatical forms whereas inhabitants of Kandi and plain terrains possess their own characteristics. However George Grierson has recorded dialects, namely Dogri, Kandyali, Mandyali, Chambeali, Kulhuri, Bhaderwahi, Gujari, Rampuri, Pongali, Hoshiarpuri-Pahadi and Lahanda) spoken in the region of Dogri. 60 lac people inhabiting in these three terrains speak Dogri, but according to the census of India-2001, the number of Dogri speakers is not available yet.
2. Script /scripts used for documentation of Dogri:
Dogri has its own script namely, ɖogəra əkkhər or ɖogəre (pərane ɖogəre and nəmẽ ɖogəre based on ʈakəri or ʈջkəri scripts). Dogri written in this script was official language of J&K State during the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh (1857-1885 A.D.). But now the younger generation has adopted nagəri script for Dogri, as such, almost all the modern literature has been and is being written in deʋnagəri.
Devnagri script is evolved from Brahmi script. It’s letters usually align the below line of writing. It has 47 primary symbols -10 for vowels and 37 for consonants. Apart from these, there are nine symbols for vowel matras, one for hal, an apostrophe comma for high falling tone and other symbols for extra length. Like Hindi language all consonants are written with inherit ‘∴’ vowel. Otherwise the consonant symbol mark of (~) is used below consonant symbol. A detailed list of these symbols is given below: -
vowel symbols:
अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ ै ै
consonants:
क् ख् ग् घ् ङ्
च् छ् ज् झ् ञ्
ट् ठ् ड् ढ् ण्
त् थ् द् ध् न्
प् फ् ब् भ् म्
य् र् ल् व् श्
स् ह् क्ष् त्र् ज्ञ्
Matras:
ा ी ु ू े ै ो ौ ै ै
Lenght:
।़
Tone/syncopation: * (is written above the letter)
Among these 37 consonant symbols, घ् झ् ढ् ध् भ् are purely used to indicate tonal pronunciation of language while symbol of g~ plays double role in the orthography of language. In one form it presents aspirated and voiced glottal fricative consonant like in words हाहाकार पैहा नेहा नहो हा हे ही हियां गैहराई तैहरीक etc. In other usage, it has been adopted as a major instrument for representing different tones of the language. When it is followed by long stressed vowels, it indicates less raising tone and when it is preceded by long and stressed vowels it represents low rising tone. Similar is the case with the above said symbols.
For low rising tone
हार “garland” ब्हार “season” घोड़ा “horse” “bag” “heap” “study” “wealth” “load, burden”
For high following
“outside” “cough” “common” “leprosy” “harvesting” “growth” “profit ” “read”
General characters of symbols
~) Sign of halant is used below the consonant symbol to show its vowel less or non-vocalic property, like in words with in “ groom ”, “to knock” etc. Mostly the sign of halant is very frequent with consonant symbol as this form of ____ is used to indicate high falling tone. For example words like “officer, sir etc”
*) In Dogri orthography apostrophe comma serves double purpose.
i) To express high falling tone after short vowel and to indicate high falling tone, single apostrophe comma is very frequent in the language. For example “who”, “down, below, under etc.”, “to slip” etc.
ii) To indicate syncopated forms, apostrophe is very common in Dogri too.e.g. “have /has come” (mas.), “going” etc.
•) This sign is used after long vowel to indicate their extra length, e.g. “pond”, “seed”, “sound of frying”, “rhyme”, “get filled”, “ rupees” etc.
·) This sign is used to mark abbreviation “master of arts”, “ madan lal”, “ professor” etc.
.) A dot below is used to supplement the alphabet to express additional foreign sounds etc. a a)
i) A dot above the short syllable purely indicates one of the nasals in combination with following consonants
ii) A dot above long syllable followed by word final ending syllable indicates simple nasalization of vowels (though Dogri is being written in Devnagari script but the use of chandrabindu is not prevalent in the orthography of the language.) e.g. “ a marital ritual”, “ scream, shriek, squeak etc.”, “ mouth, face”, “ cane”, “attention, heed”, “ ahead”, “ may I go”, “ lice”, “ not”, “ step”, “day after tomorrow or day before yesterday”.
iii) Barring above mentioned distributions elsewhere: the use of dot above the syllable indicates pronunciation of nasal consonant. For example:
“scissors” “pot” “bunch” “orange” etc
Copyright CIIL-India Mysore