The area around
Delhi has long been the center of power in
northern India, and naturally, the
Khari Boli dialect came to be regarded as urbane and of a higher standard than the other surrounding languages. This view gradually gained ground over the 19th century; before that period, other languages such as
Awadhi,
Braj Bhasha, and
Sadhukaddi were preferred by littérateurs. Standard Hindustani first developed with the migration of Persian Khari Boli speakers from Delhi to the
Awadh region—most notably
Amir Khusro, mixing the 'roughness' of Khari Boli with the relative 'softness' of Awadhi to form a new language which became called "Hindavi." This also became referred to as Hindustani, which was adopted as Hindi and Urdu by India and Pakistan after partition. Although as a dialect, Khari Boli belongs to the Upper Doab, "Hindavi" developed in the cultural spheres of
Allahabad and
Varanasi.
Rise as the basis for Standard Hindustani The earliest examples of Khariboli can be seen in the compositions of
Amir Khusro (1253–1325). Before the rise of Khariboli, the languages adopted by the
Bhakti saints:
Braj Bhasha (
Krishna devotees),
Awadhi (adopted by the
Rama devotees) and
Maithili (
Vaishnavites of Bihar). Khariboli, on the other hand, was spoken in the urban area surrounding the Mughal courts, where Persian was the official language. The Persian-influenced Khariboli thus gradually came to be regarded as a prestige dialect, although hardly any literary works had been written in Khariboli before the British period in India.
Nasiketopakhyan by Sadal Mishra;
Sukhsagar by Sadasukh Lal of Delhi and
Rani Ketaki Ki Kahani by
Inshallah Khan. More developed forms of Khariboli can also be seen in some mediocre literature produced in the early 18th century. Examples are
Chand Chhand Varnan Ki Mahima by Ganga Bhatt,
Yogavashishtha by Ram Prasad Niranjani,
Gora Badal Ki Katha by Jatmal,
Mandovar Ka Varnan by Anonymous, a translation of Ravishenacharya's
Jain Padmapuran by Daulat Ram (dated 1761). With government patronage and literary popularity, the Khariboli flourished, even as the use of previously more literary tongues such as Awadhi, Braj, and Maithili declined in the literary vehicles. The literary works in Khariboli gained momentum from the second half of the 19th century onwards. Urdu, the heavily Persianised version of Khariboli, replaced Persian as the official language of local administration in North India in the early 19th century. However, the association of the Persian script with Muslims prompted Hindus to develop their own
Sanskritised version of the dialect, leading to the formation of Hindi. After India became independent in 1947, the Khariboli-based dialect was officially recognised as the
Hindi language, which was declared as one of the
official languages for central government functioning. ==See also==