Lord Jhulelal: An Analytical Study
by Thakkar Harish Gopalji | 2018 | 62,623 words
This thesis studies Lord Jhulelal, the most important deity revered by Sindhis in India and beyond. Traditional views hold Lord Jhulelal as an incarnation of Vedic Deity Varuna (the river God). Historically, Jhulelal is a binding force for the Sindhi community who had to leave Sindh during the partition of India in order to settle at distant places...
Part 19 - Sindhi Language
The natives of the Sindh province speak the Sindhi language irrespective of whether they are Hindus or Muslims. Gazetteer of Sind Province by E.H.
Aitken has quoted Sir Richard F. Burton, an authoritity on the subject in his time about Sindhi language as saying:
“The Sindhi dialect is a language perfectly distinct from any spoken in India. It is spoken, with many varieties from the northern boundary of Kattywar as far north as Bhawulpoor and extends from the hills to the west to the Desert which separates Sindh from the eastern portion of the Indian peninsula. These limits will agree with the Moslem accounts of the extent of empire belonging to the Rae or Hindoo rulers of Sindh. Its grammatical structure is heterogeneous, the noun and its branches belonging to the Sanskrit, whereas the verb and adverb are formed apparently upon the Persian model. The dialect abounds in Arabic words. Dr. Ernest Trump, a greater authority, describes Sindhi as “A pure Sanskritical language, more free from foreign elements than any other of the North Indian Vernaculars,� and “much more closely related to the old Prakrit than the Marathi, Hindi, Panjabi or Bengali of our days.� (Aitken 1907: 188189)
Sindhi can be written using two scripts, these are Devanagari and Arabic. It is believed that the original script of Sindhi is Devanagari and it is only after Arab invasion and occupation of Sindh the Arabic script came into use. (Hardwani 2013: 45). There are many Sindhi Scholars who advocate the use of Devanagari as a script for Sindhi.
In 1948 a modern version of Devanagari script was introduced by the Govt. of India. In India, a person may write a Sindhi language paper for a Civil Service examination in either Devanagari or Arabic script.