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• Title: Arabic in India: A Survey and Classification of Its Uses, Compared with Persian.
• Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
• Release Date : January 01, 2007
• Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 268 KB

Description

Arabic in India carries an almost absolute Islamic identity, to the extent that even the study of pre-Islamic pagan poetry is ascribed to a spiritual impetus. This is not surprising, for it is generally acknowledged that the Arabic language has a predominantly sacred character outside the Arabic speaking Middle East. However, the functional manifestation of the language in the subcontinent has great historical significance and has not been systematically explored. (1) To this end, this paper presents a survey of the uses of Arabic in India from its arrival in the eighth century through the twentieth, under the following eight-part classification: liturgy, teaching and study, nomenclature, inscriptions, vocabulary assimilation, composition of religio-scholarly texts, composition of secular-scholarly texts, and marginal utilitarian uses. Details of the uses of Persian--the other major foreign language brought here by Muslims, which flourished side by side with Arabic for many centuries--are offered here as foil, inasmuch as they bring into sharper focus the scriptural face of Indian Arabic. The first acquaintance of the residents of the Indian subcontinent with the Arab people came about when Arab sailors first docked at Indian ports in order to acquire spices in pre-Islamic times, perhaps as far in the past as 50 C. E. This early trade contact occurred two centuries before Arab was attested as a distinct language in the Arabian Peninsula in the third century. Trade contacts persisted, and at some point in time, through Arab traders, Indians must have gained rudimentary acquaintance with the Arabic language. In the seventh century, the Arabian Peninsula witnessed the birth of Islam, and the majority of Arabs became Muslim. One century later, in 711, the Arab-Muslim Umayyad commander Muhammad b. al-Qasim al-Thaqafi invaded and conquered the western Indian province of Sind. Arab Muslims settled there, and with their colonization of Sind came India's first substantial and sustained contact with both the religion of Islam and the Arabic language. At this time, Indians began to convert to Islam. (2) The initial act required of any convert, the recitation of the Islamic creed of faith, "[la ilaha ill.sup.a] 'llah, [muhammad.sup.un] [rasul.sup.u] 'llah" (There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God), had an Arabic linguistic frame, which meant that Indian converts to Islam came into contact with Arabic through their very first religious experience. Arabic also had religious prestige as the language of Islamic scripture, believed by the majority of Muslims to be inseparable from the message; (3) moreover, familiarity with the Arabic Qur'an was deemed necessary for the correct ritual practice of Islam. (4) For these reasons, Indian exposure to the Arabic language was primarily through the medium of religion, and Arabic came to India as the language of Islam.

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