Quotes on the history of Lashkari or "urdu" -Pakistan's national language

 
 Note: India the historical region needs to be distinguished from the modern country founded in 1947 of a seperate geography taking up the name.

*"The very word Urdu came into being as the original Lashkari dialect, in other words, the language of the army."

-Geography of the South Asian Subcontinent: A Critical Approach

 “The Punjab presumably felt the impact of Persian before any other part of India, starting in the Ghaznavid period. Bailey believes that “the formation of Urdu began as soon as the Ghaznavi forces settled in Lahore in 1027”

-Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order

“As we have seen , Mahmud Shirani places the origin of Urdu in the eleventh century, relating it to the Ghaznavi rule over the Panjab”

- A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi

Grahame Bailey , after analysing them , came to the conclusion that "the formation of Urdu began as soon as the Ghaznavi forces settled in Lahore , i . e . in 1027 ”

-Rise of Muslims in Indian Politics An Analysis of Developments from 1885 to 1906

“Mahmud Shirani places the origin of Urdu in the eleventh century, relating it to the Ghaznavi rule over the Punjab”.

- History of Printing and Publishing in India: Origins of printing and publishing in the Hindi heartland

“Urdu begins , as it must as a matter of commonsense have begun , as soon as the Ghaznavi armies got to Lahore in 1027 - and Lahore was nowhere near the area of Khari ( and still less that of Braj and Avadhi)”

- Central Asian Review Volume 15 1967

“The language in which these texts were written was similar to Urdu, which was to develop much later. The assertion is based on the premise that this early Urdu-like language was derived from Ghaznavid Persian”

- A Comprehensive History of Medieval India Twelfth to the Mid-eighteenth Century

“The origins of Urdu date back to the period of Ghaznavid rule in the Panjāb in the sixth / twelfth century .”

-The Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 2B, Islamic Society and Civilisation Volume 2, Part 2 1977

“its early development took place in Punjab following the Ghaznavid conquest of Punjab whence Punjabi language came to be influenced by Turko-Persian language”

- Early Urdu Historiography By Javed Ali Khan · 2005

“The origin of Urdu dates back to the period of the Ghaznavid rule in the Punjab”

- History of Islam: Classical period, 1206-1900 C.E

"It is generally agreed that the early Muslim invasions of the Punjab (from 1027) fused Persian with its heavy Arabic content with Old Punjabi"

-The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700 Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India

"The formation of Urdu began in 1027 when Mahmud ' s armies were stationed at Lahore."

- Islam and Pakistan's Identity

"The birth of Urdu language was the direct result of the synthesis between the invading armies of Mahmud of Ghazni with the civilian population of the Indian cities. The word Urdu itself means Lashkar, derived from the Turkish language meaning armies."

- The Essentials of Indian Culture by K.K.Khullar

“Those who ascribe the origin of Urdu to Delhi and its environs ignore the considerable chunk of 177 of earlier history of uninterrupted interaction of Persian and Punjabi. Their theory also fails to explain the existence of Urdu in the South in the form of Dakhani of a large number of Punjabi words and grammatical constructions. In view of this background, it seems that the late professor Mahmood Sherwani and Professor Zore were right in holding that urdu was born in Punjab. There is ample historical and literary evidence to support this view.”

-Prince, Poet, Lover, Builder, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the Founder of Hyderabad by Narendra Luther

 "In  fact  this  mixture  of locals and foreigners gave birth to the language of Urdu in Lahore that was called Lashkari Zuban (language of army) at that time."

-Lahore During the Ghaznavid Period by Khalid Kanwal

 

The Indus Valley is Genetically Distinct from the Gangetic Plain (North India)

Conventional wisdom has long held that the principal genetic divisions in South Asia are generally tied to linguistic differences. Indo-Aryan speakers (North Indians) form one broad cluster, Dravidian speakers (South Indians) form a second cluster, Iranic speakers (Western Pakistan) form a third, etc. While allowances are made for caste-differences and geography, the above formulation is more-or-less accepted by the casual observer. Its often wrong however, particularly at the margins.

One such case I want to highlight is the genetic gap between two neighboring Indo-Aryan regions; the Indus Valley (specifically Punjab and Sindh), and Gangetic North India (Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat). Below is a PCA chart constructed from Harappa ancestry samples, which will help us visualize the genetic distance between these ethnic groups.

 
As can be seen from the figure above, there is little genetic overlap between the Indus Valley and Gangetic North India. In contrast, despite both a linguistic and geographic divide, Gangetic North India does exhibit significant overlap with Dravidian South India. Indus Punjabis show a similar relationship with Iranic Pathans, however Indus Sindhis and Iranic Balochis do not seem to overlap.

Hopefully this will help caution readers against lumping all Indo-Aryan ethnic groups together. These populations not only have significant cultural differences, but from a genetic standpoint they can often diverge considerably.

Notes:
- The Dravidian sample includes individuals from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. The Gangetic sample includes individuals from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. The Punjabi sample includes both Pakistani and Indian Punjabis. The Pathan sample includes individuals from the Eastern Pashtun grouping.
- Its possible that many of these groups will demonstrate greater or lesser genetic overlap once more South Asian genetic samples become available. This post is not the last word on the topic, simply an observation.
- The phenomenon of linguistically similar Indian groups diverging significantly from a genetic standpoint (even after adjusting for caste) is also seen with Malayalis visa-vis Dravidians, and Marathis visa-vis Indo-Aryans. Time permitting, I hope to write about both of these cases.
- Data source comes from Harappa Ancestry Project, with scores from individuals being largely collated from forums like Anthrogenica. This info is publicly available, and analysis can be reproduced by anyone willing to collate the scores and run them through a PCA program. I used BioVinci, but there are free programs available as well.