When it comes to Urdu’s origin, there is a myriad of theories. For instance, Hafiz Mahmood Sherani, said that Urdu had its roots in the old Punjabi. Syed Sulaiman Nadvi thought Sindh was its birthplace while Mir Amman and some other writers erroneously believed that Urdu was a camp-language, or ‘lashkari zaban’, born when the speakers of different languages such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hindi interacted in the Indo-Pak sub-continent. Muhammad Hussain Azad said that Urdu was an offshoot of Brij bhasha, a dialect spoken in and around Agra during the Mughal reign.

Another theory was put forward by Naseeruddin Hashmi, who believed that Urdu was born in Deccan when Arabic words intermingled with the local Deccan dialects, but he later amended his views. His theory was not accepted at large because Deccan’s local dialects and the languages of South India, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam or Telugu, for instance, all have their roots in Dravidian languages. On the other hand, Urdu is commonly believed to be an Aryan language hence it could possibly have not been born in a region where there were no real roots of the Indo-Aryan family of languages.

Masood Hussain Khan suggested Urdu was born in and around Delhi when local dialects such as Khari boli, Brij bhasha and Haryanvi began absorbing Arabic, Persian and Turkish words.

Also, according to linguists, two languages cannot give birth to a third, new language by intermingling. Hence, keeping this in mind, out of all the, Masood Sahib’s theory seems to be the most plausible and based on most reliable linguistic research.

Most of the linguists writing on the origin of Urdu —whether trying to find its roots in North Indian dialects or looking for the its geographical cradle —agreed that Urdu was an Indo-Aryan language. However, a new shade was added to this linguistic sketch when in the latter half of the 20th century some linguists opined that Urdu was not an Aryan but a Dravidian language. Among them was Ain-ul-Haq Fareedkoti, who pursued this theory with detailed research. He began writing on issues concerning linguistics, languages of the Indo-Pak subcontinent and Urdu’s origin. He contributed his papers on linguistic issues to Urdu Nama, a magazine launched by the Urdu Dictionary Board and edited by the board’s then secretary Shan-ul-Haq Haqqi.

Ain-ul-Haq Fareedkoti’s real name was Fazl Elahi. According to official records, he was born on September 17, 1919, in Fareedkot, East Punjab. In his early literary career, he tried his hand at poetry and wrote under the penname of Sho’la Fareedkoti. Having joined the Royal Indian Army in 1942, he opted for Pakistan after independence and in 1974 retired from Pakistan Army Education Corps.

Fareedkoti Sahib wrote in Urdu, English and Punjabi on a variety of subjects but later devoted himself for the study of history and linguistics.

His papers on linguistics and the origin of Urdu were collected in book form and published under the title Urdu Zaban ki Qadeem Taareekh (Lahore, 1972). In English, he wrote Pre-Aryan Origin of Pakistani Languages (Lahore, 1992).

The theory that Urdu was an Aryan language was challenged by Fareedkoti Sahib. He, in his Urdu and English writings, surmised that contrary to the popular theory, Urdu did not have its roots in Sanskrit. In fact, his thesis is that not only Urdu but many sub-continental languages including Punjabi and Sindhi are Dravidian languages with influences from Manda and Indo-Chinese family of languages. To support his claim, Fareedkoti Sahib amassed a huge collection of data concerning the ancient languages, history, linguistics and their vocabularies. With a deep study of history and an interest in the ancient seals of Harappa and their scripts, he kept on looking for the roots of modern languages as he researched on ancient ones.

He finally arrived at the conclusion that languages spoken in the Indus valley some 5,000 years ago could not have vanished in thin air without leaving any trace behind and the vestiges those ancient languages could be traced in the present-day languages of Pakistan. He believed, as he wrote in his book Pre-Aryan origin of Pakistani languages, that the language “spoken in the streets of Harappa in the pre-Aryan times could not in any way be an Aryan language. It can also be safely concluded that ‘Harappan’ language might have been related to any primitive non-Aryan linguistic group. Naturally, the Dravidian and the Manda languages remained as the main contenders in this respect”.

Fareedkoti Sahib further writes that though Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and Sindhi do not have enough Dravidian and Manda elements in their vocabularies, their grammatical structures totally differ from Sanskrit, or for that matter, any other Aryan language. In his opinion, grammatically these languages have close affinities with Dravidian languages and hence, clearly defy the “long-standing claims of western scholars” that emphasise Aryan origins.

Linguistically speaking, though there are some similarities between the syntactical structures of Dravidian languages, such as Tamil and Brahvi, and Urdu and, Punjabi and Sindhi, hey do not necessarily prove that their origin is the same since many world languages of different families have syntactical similarities. Secondly, Urdu’s phonetic peculiarities point towards an Aryan origin, albeit some retroflex Dravidian speech sounds, such as ‘t’ and ‘d’, have found their way into Urdu phonology. Likewise, many Dravidian words have been absorbed in Urdu, however borrowed vocabulary is a common feature in almost all the languages of the world and it can be very misleading if taken as a proof of their roots or the origins of a language.

According to The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, typological classification of languages recognises three main linguistic types: analytic or root languages, inflecting or synthetic languages and agglutinative or agglutinating languages.

Urdu is an analytic language while Dravidian languages are agglutinative. Also, Urdu has so many common and confirmatory aspects with Aryan languages that it is almost unanimously believed by the linguists that Urdu is an Aryan language. Despite some flaws in the theory, one should not underrate the research and the hard work that had gone into Fareedkoti Sahib’s work. Studying his works reveals some very interesting aspects of a few linguistic issues and his works are packed with some rare linguistic information.

Ain-ul-Haq Fareedkoti died in Lahore on October 17, 1995.

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