Bilaspuri ( Takri: ), or Kahluri ( Takri:) is a language spoken in northern

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, predominantly in the Bilaspur district of

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 peak ...

. It is associated with the people of the former princely state of Bilaspur in the Panjab Hills. Bilaspuri is classified as one of the varieties of the

Western Pahari The Western Pahari languages are a group of Northern Indo-Aryan languages that are spoken in the state of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Uttarakhand and Punjab Languages The following lists the languages cla ...

language group. However, Bilaspuri is listed as Punjabi in the census. According to the 2011 Census, the speakers of Bilaspuri/Kahluri are 295,805. The dialect of the hilly part of

Hoshiarpur district Hoshiarpur district is a district of Punjab state in northern India. Hoshiarpur, one of the oldest districts of Punjab, is located in the North-east part of the Punjab state and shares common boundaries with Gurdaspur district in the north-west, ...

is also known as ''Pahāṛī'' ( Takri: ).

Dialects

Following are the five dialects of Bilaspuri: # North-east Bilaspuri (north-east of Kumar Hati); resemblance with Mandeali. # North Bilaspuri (north of Kumar Hati); resemblance with Mandeali. # West Bilaspuri: has the maximum Punjabi words of all Kahluri dialects. # Central Bilaspuri: Bilaspur (historic) town and surrounding area; shares resemblance to Punjabi. # Davin or Daur: east and south-east of Bilaspur (historic) town. The dialects of Kahluri are so closely allied that one might call them one dialect Kahluri or Bilaspuri.

Writing system

The native script of the language is

Takri script 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 scri ...

Proverbs

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari or Himachali. Before independence there were certain institutions which enjoyed states patronage to publish in Kahluri. All of these institutions today lie in ruins since independence to favour Hindi. With no institute that imparts teaching for this language, the language/dialect is endangered due to dominance of other recognised languages like Standard Punjabi or Hindi. The demand for the inclusion of 'Pahari (Himachali)' under the Eight Schedule of the Constitution, which is supposed to represent multiple Pahari languages of Himachal Pradesh, had been made in the year 2010 by the state's Vidhan Sabha. There has been no positive progress on this matter since then even when small organisations are striving to save the language. Due to political interest, the language is currently recorded as a dialect of Punjabi, which was done on the basis of the conclusion made by G.A. Grierson who said Kahluri to be a 'rude' version of Punjabi. Since then linguists have changed this conclusion and have established it to be much more closer to others dialects of

References

External links

* Singh, Amitjit.
The Language Divide in Punjab.
''Sagar'', Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1997. Indo-Aryan languages Northern Indo-Aryan languages Languages of Himachal Pradesh Bilaspur district, Himachal Pradesh Rupnagar district Endangered languages of India {{IndoAryan-lang-stub