Kishtwari or Kashtwari is a northern Indo-Aryan language closely related to the

Kashmiri language Kashmiri () or Koshur (, /kəːʃur/) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 7 million Kashmiris of the Kashmir region, primarily in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2020, the Parliament of India passed a bill to mak ...

, with strong influences from neighboring Western Pahari varieties, spoken in Kishtwar district in

Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...

, India. Kishtwari has historically been classified as a dialect of Kashmiri by scholars such as

George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

, and is partially intelligible with Kashmiri, but Kishtwari speakers maintain a separate identity from Kashmiri people, culturally identifying more closely with neighboring Pahari populations of Paddar, Doda-Bhadarwah and the rest of the Chenab Valley. Also Kishtwari speakers are of different ethnicities – mostly migrated from

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predo ...

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...

and

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...

during 11th century to 17th century.For those that consider Kishtwari as a divergent dialect of Kashmiri (discounting speaker sensibilities), it is one of the two Kashmiri varieties are spoken outside of the

Kashmir Valley The Kashmir Valley, also known as the ''Vale of Kashmir'', is an intermontane valley concentrated in the Kashmir Division of the Indian-union territory of Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir. The valley is bounded on the so ...

(the other being

Poguli Pogali or Pugali, more recently known, together with neighboring languages, as Panchali or Khah, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Its area encompasses the Pogal and Paristan valleys, and c ...

, which is even more distinct and not intelligible with either Kashmiri or Kishtwari). Kishtwari is also tonal, like neighbouring languages such as

Dogri Dogri ( Name Dogra Akkhar: ; Devanagari: डोगरी; Nastaliq: ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India, with smaller groups of speakers in adjoining regions of western Himachal Pra ...

and

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

. For those who consider Kishtwari as intermediate, linguists like Siddheshwar Varma have argued Kishtwari as Kashmir dialect and called kishtwari an intermediate between Western Pahari and Kashmiri.

Overview

Grierson, in his

Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguist w ...

, classified Kishtwari as a highly divergent variety of Kashmiri that had been profoundly influenced by neighbouring Punjabi and Western Pahari languages. Grierson noted that Kishtwari is more conservative in certain aspects than other Kashmiri dialects, as evidenced by the retention of subject pronoun thu, in addition to the

present participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

an, features that have disappeared in Standard Kashmiri. A wordlist and preliminary grammatical sketch of Kishtwari were compiled in ''The Languages of the Northern Himalayas''. The 1911 Census of India recorded 7,464 speakers of Kishtwari.

Script

Grierson remarks that an idiosyncratic variant of

Takri The Tākri script (Takri ( Chamba): ; Takri (Jammu/Dogra): ; sometimes called Tankri ) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is derived from the Sharada script formerly employed for Kashmiri. It is the sister scrip ...

is used to write the Kishtwari language; as well as observing that there does not appear to be standard spelling nor a consistent orthography. Kashtwari

References

{{Indo-Aryan languages Kashmiri language Kishtwar district