#时事热点头条说#
Every few years, a bunch of Western media pop up and preach that India is the next China. Before, we didn't believe it very much. But now, under the leadership of Modi, India's GDP has surpassed that of the United Kingdom, ranking fifth in the world, and its economic growth rate has been above 7% all year round. At the current growth rate, India has surpassed Germany and Japan to become the third largest country in the global economy, which is already the trend of the times. The rise of India is becoming an indisputable fact. However, India, which is on the verge of becoming the world's third-largest economy, has yet to achieve language uniformity. Although China has a vast territory, the dialects of different places are different. However, since 1956, when Beijing dialect was established as Mandarin, it quickly became the national lingua franca. From children aged two or three to old men and ladies in their eighties and nineties, they can all understand Mandarin.
The unity of language is the cultural carrier that a country and a nation have been able to continue for thousands of years. Why has India not been able to promote a single type of Mandarin after 3,000 years? How did India's linguistic split come about? Today, Yilin would like to talk to you about how India rejected Mandarin in bulk?
As early as the period of the Great Qin Empire, the first emperor Yingzheng issued an edict, "the car is on the same track, the book is the same text", so far the Chinese script has been unified. The square and upright official script has become the common Chinese character of generations of Chinese readers. The biggest feature of Chinese characters is that they are stable and can be inherited. The official book of 2000 years ago has been passed down to this day, and there is basically no great deformation, and we can still recognize it.
During this period, India was invaded by the Aryans and entered the dark "Vaishyas Age". The Aryans practiced a caste system in India and imposed slavery on India. However, the Aryans did not complete the unification of the Indian subcontinent. The Aryans only occupied the rich northern regions, and the indigenous Darobitas of India moved to the south of India. There are two main reasons why the Aryans didn't fight them:
First, in the era of agricultural civilization, southern India was dominated by mountainous plateaus, with a humid and hot climate and poor soil, while the Ganges and Indus valleys in the north were much richer.
The second is that the Darobitans who migrated south were unwilling to accept Aryan rule, and they preferred to go to the mountains and fight the wilderness rather than submit to the Aryans. Separated by mountains, India was divided into two parts, north and south, with the Aryans in the north and the Robids in the south.
This geographical isolation and political antagonism divided the Indian language. The Aryans of the north speak an Indo-European language family with a predominantly Sanskrit script, while the southern Darobida speak a separate native indigenous language. From this moment on, the language systems of the north and south of India parted ways, and the two sides existed in isolation from each other for thousands of years.
During these millennia, the Aryans in the north continued to divide and enter the era of princely kingdoms, establishing many city-states. Each of these city-states developed their own languages, and the Darobitas in the south formed a number of tribal races, each with their own set of language skills. The originally dualistic Indian language system split into more sub-languages, with one village speaking different languages from another.
Can the pronunciation be unified? The answer is no. Our Chinese characters are square characters, and every stroke is clear and clear. But India uses alphabet script, which is easily deformed. When we look at the alphabet of 2,000 years ago today, it's no different from looking at alien tadpole writing.
After the wars of the nations, the Aryans finally established the first unified empire in India: the Mauryan Empire. However, the territory of the Mauryan Empire was still limited to northern India, and expanded to the south, but the Deccan Plateau could not be defeated.
This Mauryan dynasty was an empire founded by a minority, and members of the royal family spoke a niche language called Magadha. It's a tribal language, and when you leave the lower reaches of the Ganges, no one understands it. As a large empire built by a minority group, it does not have the motivation to unify the script and language, and it cannot be realized. The Mauryan Empire was within the administrative system, implementing the two official languages of Sanskrit and Magadha, and it didn't matter what language the common people used.
At this time, India was still divided into two parts, one was North India and the other was South India, and the Darobitas retreated on the Deccan Plateau and continued to develop independently. After the fall of the Mauryan Empire, the Gupta dynasty rose from the Ganges valley to unify North India again. Geographically, the Gupta Dynasty was smaller than the Mauryan Empire, and the Darobitas in the south expanded northward and established a number of indigenous regimes.
As soon as the Gupta dynasty came up, the original Sanskrit was abolished and Gupta was designated as the official language of India. This time, it's even more chaotic. Guptana, Sanskrit, Magadha, and various other dialects were mutually exclusive, and the Indian language entered an era of chaos. Far from unifying the Indian language, the Gupta dynasty exacerbated the division of India's major language families.
However, at this time, China entered the Sui and Tang dynasties, and Chinese characters began to internationalize, entering Korea, Vietnam, Japan and other countries, reshaping the East Asian cultural circle. During the Gupta Dynasty, India was ordered by the king to leave the capital, and the magistrates could not understand what the emperor said. After the fall of the Gupta dynasty, India ushered in a third unified empire: the Empire of the Ringing Sun.
The empire was very small, only 1.4 million square kilometers, and it occupied only the Ganges valley and the northeastern region, and most of the land in the Indus valley and south of the Ganges valley in the north was not included. The Jieri Empire only maintained one generation of monarchs, and by the time of the second generation of monarchs, Wang Xuance led the Tubo army and destroyed the country. Such a small and short-lived dynasty would have made it even more impossible to unify the Indian language.
After the fall of the Empire, India fell into a state of division. The Arab Empire to the west quickly occupied the area west of the Indus River, mainly in present-day Pakistan. The Arabs brought not only Islam to India, but also the Arabic script to India. Under the influence of the Arabic language, the Urdu language developed in India. To this day, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan. We can see that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have very good relations, Saudi Arabia will send money to Pakistan if it has nothing to do, and Pakistan is also willing to send troops to help Saudi Arabia fight.
However, the entry of Arabic has added another layer of language barrier to various parts of India. Muslims in India mainly speak Urdu, while Hindus speak Hindi. Later, the Persians, Turks, and Mongols conquered India, all of which brought new languages to India. In the first wave, the official language was changed, and these foreign languages were mixed with the native languages of India, and more branch languages were derived.
Moreover, for 2,000 years, South India has remained independent and has not been in league with the North. It was only in southern India that the real, unyielding natives lived, until the British came in from the sea. All other peoples invaded from the north, but the British invaded from the south. After the British occupation of southern India, maritime trade developed. The indigenous Indians living in the south suddenly turned over, and the Dharobita indigenous people, who had been poor for 2,000 years, became rich. They learn English, speak the local dialect, do import and export trade, and make a lot of money. In the eyes of these southern Indians, Hindi is the native language spoken by the peasants of the north, and the high-end South Indians either speak English or indigenous dialects such as Tamil.
Initially, the UK had no intention of promoting English in India. After all, India is a cash cow, and the British only want to milk cows from Indians. Later, after the British incorporated India into the territory of the empire on which the sun never sets, they promoted English in India and built many English schools. But it was too late, and India's nationalism woke up. As soon as World War II ended, the British were driven out, and India forced "Hindi".
However, with the change of history and the change of dynasties, India has never had a unified language, so why do Indians speak "Hindi"? Especially in southern India, the Tamils resolutely resist Hindi. The Indian government had no choice but to compromise and come up with a "multilingual" plan. There are two central official languages in India, one is Hindi and the other is English, but there are 15 state official languages in each state.
This is equivalent to different provinces, or speak different words and write different words. But underneath each state, there are different dialects, and they all represent different groups of interests. These people gathered together and demanded the establishment of an independent "linguistic state" based on language. One language, one state. In 1966, India once again compromised and established 11 "linguistic states" in the face of surging public opinion.
One state speaks one language, which makes the promotion of Hindi even more impossible. Modi is the first prime minister in India's history to lead all cabinet ministers and take the oath of office in Hindi. In order to gradually unify India in bulk, Modi has used only Hindi in almost all major diplomatic occasions. But this is just a gesture, and it cannot be achieved overnight if it is to be implemented. In many regional states of India, the prevalence of Hindi is not even 20 per cent.
Why is it said that Qin Shi Huang is the first emperor of the ages? Without a unified written language, there would be no unified Chinese civilization. The unification of the written language alone is enough to immortalize the history of Qin Shi Huang.