Anne Murphy

15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular

Millennium

Abstract. This exploratory essay considers in preliminary terms some of the regis-
ters of vernacular literary production in Punjab, and to suggest what the writing of a
history of Punjabi language literary production might look like with a broader view
to both vernacular and cosmopolitan literary production in the region. Punjabi’s
emergence must be understood in dynamic relation to the presence of Sadhukarrī,
Braj, and emergent Hindustani in the region, as well as the formative presence of
Persian. The multiplicity of its articulation points largely outside of the convention-
al centres associated with vernacular literary production—the court and the formal
religious institution—provide Punjabi with a distinctive location, although it simul-
taneously maintained enduring and important ties to such centres. It is suggested
that this may account for some of the particular valences of Punjabi language use;
more work is required, however, to fully characterize this, and to explicate fully the
interconnection between Punjabi cultural production and that in other languages.

Keywords. Punjabi, Vernacular, Cosmopolitan, Punjab, Braj.

Punjabi cultural production in the early modern period sits uneasily within the
understanding of the ‘vernacular millennium,’ described so well by Sheldon Pol-
lock, where new language choices emerged in relation to newly defined cultural
zones linked to the emergence of ‘vernacular polities’ in contradistinction to, but
reliant upon, a prior cosmopolitan idiom that was supralocal.*1 The goal of this
*  This essay is based on a paper first delivered at the 12th International Conference on
Early Modern Literatures of North India (ICEMLNI) at the University of Lausanne, Swit-
zerland, 15–19 July 2015; a later version was delivered at the Congrès Asie et Pacifique in
Paris, France, 9–11 September 2015. Thanks to all at these two venues for discussion, and
in particular to Julie Vig for research assistance and feedback, and Purnima Dhavan and
Heidi Pauwels (both of the University of Washington) for detailed responses. Participation
in these conferences was enabled by an Insight Development grant from the Social Sci-
ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would like to state here why I prefer
‘Punjabi’ over ‘Panjabi,’ the latter of which appears closer to the correct transliteration of
the word paṅjābī. The word can be mispronounced by English speakers in both spellings.
Since there is an English word ‘pun’ that is far closer to the correct pronunciation of the first
syllable of the word than the English word ‘pan,’ I utilize ‘Punjabi’ when writing in English.
It seems the closest to the correct pronunciation, based on the English language analogues
that invariably influence pronunciation in English by non-Punjabi speakers.
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 Anne Murphy

exploratory essay is to consider in preliminary terms some of the registers of ver-

nacular literary production in Punjab in relation to these ideas, and to suggest what
the writing of a history of Punjabi language literary production might look like in
such terms. The paper is thus broadly conceptual, laying out an approach and a
trajectory that shapes ongoing research, in keeping with the spirit of this volume,
and is meant as a beginning point, rather than a conclusion.
Sheldon Pollock’s characterization of the emergence of the vernacular features
attributes that make it less useful for understanding Punjabi cultural production
in the early modern period (although I will return to and affirm some of his key
insights at the close of this essay). This is true for North India in broad terms, as
Francesca Orsini has noted,2 where we must define ‘multilingual history’ with
respect to a range of both cosmopolitan and vernacular languages and texts in a
period when languages often ‘ran into each other.’3 Shantanu Phukan’s ground-
breaking work leads the way here; as he has argued: ‘To do justice to . . . [the]
complex and adamantly heteroglot literary community [of Mughal India] one must
. . . redirect one’s gaze at the blurred peripheries of literary canons, for it is there
that we glimpse the intricate inter-dependencies and rivalries—in a word the ecol-
ogy—of literary communities.’4 The same is true specifically for Punjabi literary
production. If we seek a ‘superordinate, usually cosmopolitan, literary culture’5 to
influence Punjabi, we must resort to not one, but two languages: Braj (the means
through which connection to Sanskritic cultural production was maintained, a
‘cosmopolitan surrogate,’ in Pollock’s terms)6 and Persian, which had a powerful

1  Vernacularization is, as Pollock describes it, ‘the historical process of choosing to create
a written language, along with its complement, a political discourse, in local languages
according to models supplied by a superordinate, usually cosmopolitan, literary culture’
(Pollock (2006), p. 23). Vernacularization should not be subsumed within political devel-
opments; in this (as I argue below) I am in full agreement (see Pollock (1998), p. 32 and
related discussion in Pollock (2006), pp. 27–34). On the vernacular polity, see Pollock
(2006), pp. 28, 413–ff.
2  Orsini (2012), p. 238; Orsini and Shaikh (2014), pp. 13–ff.
3  Orsini and Shaikh (2014), p. 2; see discussion pp. 6–ff. This entails a ‘comparative per-
spective that takes in both cosmopolitan and vernacular languages, both written archives
and oral performances, and texts and genres that circulated in the same place and at the
same time although they were transmitted in separate traditions.’ Orsini (2012), p. 227. For
Pollock’s view on possible reasons that northern languages operate differently from those in
the South with respect to vernacularization, see Pollock (2006), pp. 391–393.
4  Phukan (2000a), p. 7. See also Phukan (2001), p. 37. Phukan’s observations concern texts
that are internally multiglossic, but can be extended also to a more broadly heteroglossic
environment as expressed in multiple texts; in his broader work, he also discusses ‘thematic
hybridity’ (Phukan (2000b), ch. 4–5). Multilingual texts are taken up in Orsini and Shaikh
(2014), pp. 403–436.
5  Pollock (2006), p. 23.
6  Ibid., p. 400.
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 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

influence on cultural production in Punjab through the late medieval and early
modern periods. This reflects the ‘multiple diglossias’ Orsini describes as charac-
teristic of North India, or what we may also call ‘multiglossia’ or ‘heteroglossia.’7
We know something about all of this in Punjab, but there is much more to learn.
Christopher Shackle has done foundational work (as cited throughout this essay)
on the literary and linguistic expression of Punjab; Louis Fenech has explored
the influence of Persianate idioms of power in the Sikh context in detail.8 Braj
emerges in deep conversation with the Sanskrit cosmopolis, as Allison Busch has
detailed, but operates in Punjab as a superordinate, cosmopolitan force, reflecting
its own ‘cosmopolitization’ process.9
We can see this as a second vernacular revolution, but my suggestion along
these lines differs slightly from that suggested by Pollock. To review his position:
in order to account for the problem of the North in his comprehensive account,
Pollock argues that for ‘some parts of India,’ there were ‘two vernacular revolu-
tions: one that was cosmopolitan in its register and divorced from religion, and
another that might best be termed regional, both for its anti-Sanskritic, desī idiom
and for its close linkages with religious communities that developed distinctively
regionalized characters. The second revolution is unthinkable without the first,
and might well be seen as a kind of counterrevolution.’10 This allows for the set-
ting aside of religious forces in vernacularization as secondary and parochial, and
maintains the centrality of the court such that ‘the greater portion of the literature
. . . created was produced not at the monastery but at the court.’11 This is why re-
ligion was, according to Pollock, ‘irrelevant’ to the primary vernacular revolution
‘because vernacularization was a courtly project, and the court itself, as a func-
tioning political institution, was largely unconcerned with religious differences.’12
He calls the ‘new vernacularism,’ in contrast, ‘noncosmopolitan, regional, desī in
outlook’ and it is perhaps in its limited nature that he understands its religiousness,
as a form of a narrower regionalization.13 Christian Novetzke’s recent contribution
to this debate argues for a close relationship between the emergence of the vernac-
ular (construing the vernacular, however, in broad extralinguistic terms) and the
religious, reiterating an earlier representation of bhakti as a demotic and inclusive
social force and therefore directly linked to linguistic vernacularization, a position
which Pollock counters, and linking the vernacularization process with the effort

7  Orsini (2012), pp. 229, 231.

8  Pollock (2006), p. 23; Fenech (2008). See also Persianization as discussed by Phukan
(2000b), pp. 169–ff.
9  Busch (2011), p. 196; see discussion overall pp. 193–ff.
10  Pollock (2006), p. 432.
11  Ibid., p. 29.
12  Ibid., p. 430.
13  Ibid., p. 436.
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to reach diverse audiences.14 Pollock’s characterization of this second vernacular

revolution, however, can still apply to Novetzke’s formulation of Marathi’s emer-
gence as deeply local, non-cosmopolitan, and religious.15
Pollock’s account of religious vernacularization, however, goes against current
understandings of the rise of Vaishnava bhakti in the early modern period as part
of a broader adoption of a supralocal and less tantric/yogic form of religious life
and a Vaishnava–Mughal cosmopolitan synthesis, as described in a wide range of
recent work, where Vaishnavism was, as Kumkum Chatterjee describes it early in
the discussion, a ‘trans-regional phenomenon that developed, matured and grew
stronger during the period of the later Delhi sultanate as well as the Mughal em-
pire.’16 This did not rely only on centralizing imperial formations; as Heidi Pauwels
has asserted, the rise of Vaishnava bhakti (as well as discourses around Kshatriya
identity) in the Braj region was tied to the interests of local warlords and ‘military
power brokers,’ such as the Bundelās, who may have seen it as a ‘socially and po-
litically upward’ option.17 A religiously marked position, expressed in a vernacular
idiom, thus acted as a supralocal force at the same time that it was locally articulat-
ed, towards the production of a particular kind of religious ecumene that was tied,
but not identical to, a courtly one. Recognition of this suggests the need for further
exploration of the interface between religious modes of expression and the rise of
vernacular literary forms. The second vernacular revolution I imagine in Punjab
however reflects not so much a content difference (more regional, more religious),
as Pollock suggests, but represents a difference in what it is formed in relation to,
in relation to the cosmopolitan nature of the ‘vernacular’ Braj, which both did and
(it seems to me) did not make much room for Punjabi. (In this way the case is quite
different from that which Novetzke explores, where we do see early courtly use of
the vernacular and where Sanskrit is the main language of interaction that shapes
the development of the vernacular, along lines sketched out by Pollock.) As we
know from Pollock’s formulation, the cosmopolitan and vernacular exist only in
dynamic relation, and Punjabi particularly in Sikh contexts emerges in relation to
Braj in just this kind of contrary embrace. Such an understanding can help us also
to bring a new analytical purchase on Vaishnava elements visible in texts associat-

14  Novetzke (2016), pp. 213, 219, and overall. Novetzke’s account provides some recog-
nition of the limitations of this demotic force and construes the debate that ensues as a form
of public sphere, invoking modern formulations of the same.
15  Pollock (2006), pp. 381–382, discusses the Marathi case.
16  Chatterjee (2009), p. 151; Chatterjee finds that ‘the cosmopolitanisms actively sought
out by the Malla kings’ that interest her ‘resulted from the use of Vaishnava elements cer-
tainly, but Vaishnava elements which were conjoined to Mughal and Rajput elements as
well.’ See also Pinch (2006); Pauwels (2009a); Horstmann (2011); Burchett (2012), pp. 40,
318; Hawley (2015), pp. 75, 225.
17  Pauwels (2009a), pp. 199, 209, 211 for latter quote, 190 for former.
308
 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

ed with the Sikh tradition in the eighteenth century, particularly within the Dasam
Graṅth.18 Julie Vig’s emerging doctoral work on Braj cultural production in the
Sikh Gurbilās literature follows this line of investigation; to explore the multiple
resonances of Vaishnava imagery and themes within Sikh contexts.19

Punjabi literature vs. literature in Punjab

Many are perhaps familiar with the conventional representation of the broad
sweep of Punjabi literary history: its early formations in the work of Baba Farīd
and then of later Sufi poets. Generally, the compositions of the Gurus are central
to this narrative (a point to which we will return). If we do look to Baba Farīd
(said to have been active in the first half of the thirteenth century) as a founding
voice for Punjabi literature, it is for the most part to the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib or
Ādi Graṅth (AG) that we turn, since it is indeed one of the earliest reliable textual
sources available for his work, although a small selection of his Punjabi verses
were preserved in the malfūzāt of Zain ud Din Shirazi (d. 1371), showing that
vernacular verses of Farīd were in circulation within a century of his death.20 And
of course, Amir Khusrao spoke of ‘Lahouri’ in 1317–1318, attesting to a clear
consciousness of a linguistically distinctive language at Punjab’s cultural centre.21
The work of other Sufi poets was not collected and published until the nineteenth
century, however; the distinctively Punjabi linguistic flavour of their compositions
therefore may result from the later date of their being recorded; Punjabi forms
could have been introduced and/or enhanced at a later transcription time.22 The
Farīd material in the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib, Shackle argues, is distinctive amongst
the so-called Bhagat Bānī or compositions of the devotees because of the strong
imprint of Punjabi forms (specifically Multani or in more current usage Siraiki),

18  See Rinehart (2011), pp. 4–ff, 165–ff on issues that emerge in relation to the Dasam
Graṅth. Rinehart argues for a ‘new Sikh conception of the role of the leader with both
spiritual and worldly responsibilities’ (ibid., p. 10) in this period, but this is not new and
not unique to Sikh tradition; it reflects a broad range of religious formations in the period;
see Murphy (2015).
19  Vig (2016).
20  We know of Farīd earlier through the memoir of a follower of Farīd’s leading disciple,
Nizam ud Din Auliya, whose circle also included Amir Khusrau (d. 1325) (Shackle (2015),
see p. xii). See discussion of the malfūzāt in Singh, P. (2003), p. 47 and Shackle (2008). See
also discussion in Ernst (1992), pp. 167–ff and Shackle (1993), pp. 269–ff.
21  Faruqi (2003), p. 819. In the same passage, he wrote (translated by Faruqi): ‘Since I am
an Indian, it's better/To draw breath/From one’s station. In this land /In every territory, there
is /A language specific, and not so/By chance either.’ Ibid., p. 820. The earliest example of
Khusrao’s Hindavi works is 1636. (Bangha (2010), pp. 24, 33)
22  Shackle (2015), p. x. On varying interpretations of Bulhe Shah, see Rinehart (1999).
309
 Anne Murphy

rather than the more generic ‘Sant bhāṣā’ as it is so often called, which com-
prised the linguistic flavour of the remainder of the Bhagat’s contributions to the
Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.23 As Shackle notes well, when Punjabi does emerge, it does
so in two different ‘flavours’: ‘a central language based on the Lahore area, and a
south-western based on the Multan area, also cultivated to the south in Sind under
the name Siraiki, in parallel with Sindhi’24—but of course, as is discussed further
below, distinctions among languages were generally not highlighted, so searching
for a clear distinction is an anachronistic task. We can see Punjabi’s emergence
in other manuscript evidence, with one colophon in the British Library’s Punjabi
manuscript collection claiming a surprisingly early date equivalent to 1592 CE.25
There is, as shown in Purnima Dhavan’s emerging research on that collection and
beyond, evidence for the emergence of Punjabi in seventeenth century fiqh ‘legal’
and other texts, and its emergence overall is deeply tied to the emergence of other
languages, particularly Braj and Urdu—again, not a surprise, given the lack of
named differentiation among them, but useful for our now retrospective attempt to
recognize Punjabi in linguistic terms.26
In the textual production associated with the Sikh tradition in particular Braj’s
influence was powerful; this is where the conventional Punjabi literary historio-
graphical narrative becomes quite problematic, since the linguistic ‘Punjabiness’
of many of the compositions in the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib is unclear. While Guru
Nānak and the early Gurus composed in what Shackle called early on ‘The Sacred
Language of the Sikhs,’ with some Punjabi and other flavouring (what Shackle
calls ‘stylistic variety,’ particularly in works by Gurus Nānak and Arjan, and in
bhagat or other saints such as Farīd), by the time of Guru Arjan the influence of
Braj was strong and increased over time, replacing the influence of Sant bhāṣā as
a defining feature of the compositions.27 Shackle has described in detail the rela-
tionship of the ‘peripheral’ linguistic features of the Ādi Graṅth or Gurū Graṅth

23  Shackle (2008), p. 3.

24  Shackle (1979), p. 193. This article provides a useful in-depth discussion of the differ-
ences between Siraiki and Punjabi.
25  Shackle (1977a), p. 42.
26  Dhavan (2017).
27  Shackle (1977b). On ‘stylistic variety,’ see Shackle (1978a), p. 82. In addressing Ar-
jan’s continuation of stylistic varieties that feature in Nānak and the Bhagats, Shackle notes
particularly Arjan’s ‘function to have isolated and pursued further . . . a particular line of
development, out of the many radiating in such extraordinary profusion from the dense nu-
cleus of possibilities with which early Sikhism was gifted by its founder’ (Shackle (1978b),
p. 312). I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for discussion of the parallel between Braj
and Sant bhāṣā as perhaps competing cosmopolitan idioms for compositions represented in
the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
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 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

Sāhib28 in relation to its core features as a pattern that features ‘classicizing’

elements (the pull, that is, towards Persian and ‘Sahaskriti’ or archaic ‘colouring’)
and regionalizing elements such as the south-western features he has described for
Farīd, in particular.29 Guru Arjan demonstrated his self-consciousness of linguis-
tic form in his designation of some compositions with the term dakkhanī, what
Shackle calls an ‘artificial style’ designed perhaps to extend the linguistic reach of
the Gurus farther south into Sind.30
The Janamsākhī, or narrative representations of the life of Guru Nānak, provide
an important early source not just on the formations of the Sikh tradition and as an
early example of hagiography, as explored in important new work by Simran Jeet
Singh, but also on vernacular language production, literarization, and the produc-
tion of new genres.31 Building on the earlier work of Ratan Singh Jaggi, Simran
Jeet Singh argues for an early date for the Purātan Janamsākhī (and for its relative
prominence within the Sikh community, countering early claims by W. H. McLeod
that asserted that the Janamsākhī lacked influence until the modern period).32 The
early date of 1588 CE, however, is attributed to a manuscript that is no longer avail-
able to us; a transcription exists, but does not feature a colophon; the other older
tradition, known as the Colebrooke Janam-sākhī (which is available in the British
Library) is also undated.33 Either way, however, the text is important as an early ex-
ample of prose, which appears alongside the poetic compositions of the Guru (and
is therefore distinct from the other possibly early Punjabi text discussed in brief
here; the work of Bhai Gurdas, which is wholly poetic in form).34 Although space
limitations do not allow for evaluation of the language of the Janamsākhī tradition
in this essay—the effort here is to set out the parameters of the problem, not exam-
ine all the evidence—R. S. Jaggi’s assessment of the language of the text provides
an entry point. He describes the language of the text, overall, as ‘sādh bhāshā-numā
28  I generally utilize Gurū Graṅth Sāhib to indicate the final version of the canon in 1708,
rather than the earlier version, from 1604, for which the term Ādi Graṅth is used. I do this
in deference to conventions cited by members of the Sikh community, and for the sake of
distinguishing between the two versions in chronological sequence. The general scholarly
convention, however, is to use the term Ādi Graṅth.
29  See Shackle (1978b), p. 313, for a valuable diagram of linguistic features; on ‘colour-
ing,’ see ibid., p. 307.
30  Shackle (1993), p. 278.
31  Singh S. (2016). While the term for this genre is a modern one, as Singh points out,
we can use it as he does, with awareness of its limitations in historical terms. Ibid., p. 34.
32  Singh S. (2016), p. 112. For Ratan Singh Jaggi’s assessment of the date of the text, see
Jaggi, R. (2010), ch. 3, pp. 31–39; see p. 38 for final assessment.
33  Singh S. (2016), pp. 113–114; see following for extensive discussion of the history of
the dating of these manuscripts.
34  As noted by S. Singh, not all of the poetic compositions cited in the text, however, are
included in the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib as Guru Nānak’s; some do not appear in the canonical
text at all (Singh S. (2016), p. 152).
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Paṅjābī’ or Punjabi influenced by/appearing as or like ‘Sādh Bhāshā’ or Sadhuk-

karī (he also notes the influence of Khaṛī Bolī and Urdu).35 Imre Bangha calls the
language of the text a form of ‘Gurmukhi Rekhta,’ which he defines as a language
that ‘consciously mixes the vernacular Hindavi . . . and the cosmopolitan Persian,’
with a loose Khaṛī Bolī core; he distinguishes this from Sadhukkarī, defined as ‘the
spontaneously mixed literary language of the Sants that blends elements from var-
ious north Indian dialects and languages.’36 He rightly notes, however, that Persian
vocabulary is not prominent in what he calls Gurmukhi Rekhta; the language of the
text is thus more of a combination of vernacular forms, the mix that Jaggi notes,
although perhaps less definitively Punjabi than Jaggi suggests.37 The language of
the text does exhibit western Punjabi features (particularly verbal forms and char-
acteristic post-positions); these, in Jaggi’s view, reflect specifically the Avāṇakārī
dialect of western Punjabi.38 Does this mimic the western Punjabi features present
in the compositions of Nānak and Farīd, as seen in the work of Guru Arjan, which
Shackle suggests was an intentional stylistic decision on Guru Arjan’s part?39 It is
possible. Either way, here we have elements of Punjabi emerging, although undeni-
ably later than those that emerge in the compositions attributed to Nānak and Farīd
(recognizing that Farīd’s much earlier works are attested in the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib
significantly after the period of their purported composition). We see resonances
of the same linguistic features in the Hukamnāme, letters to the paṅth’s dispersed
communities that were extant from the time of the sixth Guru, Hargobind, in the
first half of the seventeenth century, where Punjabi forms are utilized alongside
more broadly familiar Sadhukkarī or Sant bhāṣā forms.40 It is striking that Punja-
bi’s initial emergence is seen here among what might be called more ‘pragmatic,’
non-devotional works, contrary to the conventional formulation of Punjabi litera-
ture’s emergence among Sufis and the Sikh Gurus.
The Vār literature represents another Punjabi genre. One early example of this
generally oral tradition in the work of Bhai Gurdas, an associate of the Gurus. As
the work of Rahuldeep Singh shows, Bhai Gurdas is said to have written, interest-
ingly, in both Punjabi (for his vār) and Brajbhāṣā (for a large number of kavitt).41
This is of particular importance, because if the Punjabi nature of the Vār is authen-
tic—Gill argues for a dating of Gurdas’ work to the early part of the seventeenth
century, after the execution of the fifth Guru, but others argue that some composi-
tions pre-date it—this would certainly be an early sustained example of Punjabi,

35  Jaggi, R. (2010), p. 101. On Khaṛī Bolī and Urdu, see ibid., pp. 99, 106.
36  Bangha (2010), p. 26.
37  Ibid., p. 60.
38  Ibid., pp. 95–96, 102–103.
39  See above, footnote 30.
40  Singh G. (1990).
41  Gill (2014).
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 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

or a Punjabi-influenced Rekhta or mixed language alongside the Janamsākhī.42

The general lack of verified and strictly dated early manuscript evidence, however,
means we cannot be sure of the Punjabi linguistic nature of the compositions in
their original form; the compositions attributed to Gurdas may have been Punjabi-
fied over time before being written down.43 The acceptance of the language of the
Vār as clearly Punjabi is also something we can debate, given the predominance of
Brajbhāṣā verb forms and vocabulary alongside Punjabi features, with occasional
preferences for Persian vocabulary, exhibiting some of the elements Bangha utiliz-
es to describe Gurmukhi Rekhta. We can see these features in Vār 4:44

māṇasa deha su kheha tisu vici jībhai laī nakībī

The body of human birth is [mere] dust, but the tongue within it acts as a
herald

akhī dekhani rūpa raṅga rāga nāda kaṅna karani rakībī

Seeing with the eyes the colour and form, and hearing the music of the raga,
as a rival

naki suvāsu nivāsu hai paṅje dūta burī taratībī

The nose is the home of the breath; the five messengers are in a terrible order

sabha dūṅ nīvai caraṇa hoi āpu gavāi nasību nasībī

The feet are below all, and losing oneself [before them] proves one’s good
fortune

haumai rogu miṭāidā satiguru pūrā karai tabībī

The True Guru obliterates the illness of ego, the Unani doctor does the job
in full

pairī pai riharāsa kari gura sikha gurasikha manībī

At the feet the Guru’s Sikhs recite Rahiras and become Gursikh

murdā hoi murīdu garībī

Having become like the dead, the disciple is humbled.
(Vār 4, Pauri 3, Jaggi, G. (2010), p. 60)45

42  Bhalla (2017).

43  Gill notes that neither of the two manuscripts he relies on for Gurdas Bhalla’s composi-
tions feature colophons; orthographic evidence supports his designation of them as ‘early,’
but no date is suggested. (Bhalla (2017), p. 14).
44  According to the currently traditional numbering system, which is attested in the manu-
scripts in the first position. Ibid., p. 150.
45  This and all translations are mine.
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There is typical Punjabi vocabulary here, but also parallels in verb form with Braj,
as well as, in this example, a striking use of Persian words in the rhyme scheme
that are generally overlooked in conventional translations.46 Shackle has argued
that the use of Persian loanwords in the Gurū Graṅth Sāhib is strongly associated
with governance (both in terms of administration and in describing royal authori-
ty) and trade as ‘a mirror reflecting the impression made by Islamic political dom-
inance on at least one section of non-Muslim society in sixteenth-century Panjab’;
R. S. Jaggi has argued that it is used in the Purātan Janamsākhī to provide a kind
of contextual flavour: speakers who are Muslim are represented as speaking with a
more Persianized vocabulary.47 In the example above, Persian vocabulary provides
a striking rhyme, demonstrating that the influence of rhyme and other literary
considerations thus must be accounted for alongside semantic ones, as Shackle
suggests.48 As Shackle argued early on, the presence of such flavouring in texts
associated with the Sikh tradition does not support a general idea of ‘syncretism’
in defining Sikh religiosity: ‘the actual patterns of influence which are suggested
by the analysis of the Persian loans in the AG are so very much more interesting,’
reflecting complex inflections of meaning and citations of alternative regional and
religious moorings.49 More intensive examination of such markings, beyond the
Gurū Graṅth Sāhib, will enhance our understanding of how such citations/‘variet-
ies’/‘flavours’ work; so will further work on the Vār tradition in broader terms, as
Ali Usman Qasmi of Lahore University for Management Sciences is undertaking
at the time of the composition of this essay.
Outside of these early examples, with the exception of the Rahit literature of
the eighteenth century, Braj dominates. The description of Hawley and Mann
for the Pothi Prem Ambodh (dated by them to 1693 CE) is instructive; that text
features ‘a version of western Hindi or Brajbhasha that shows a familiarity with
Punjabi idioms—[fitting] . . . comfortably within the range laid out by other early
texts in the Sikh tradition.’50 In addition to a rich range of non-canonical writings
in Braj by figures like Harji, a competitor of accepted Guru-lineage and explored
recently in an important monograph by Hardip Singh Syan, we have the Dasam
Graṅth, explored in recent work by Robin Rinehart, an overwhelmingly Braj text,
as will be visible in a moment.51 It is into this world that we can also place the

46  Except for the use of nasīb. For an exemplary translation, see <https://searchgurbani.
com/bhai_gurdas_vaaran/vaar/4/pauri/3>. (Accessed 4 June 2015). See also a modern Pun-
jabi translation that takes more account of the Persian words: Jaggi, G. (2010), p. 61.
47  Shackle (1978a), pp. 85–86. Jaggi, R. (2010), pp. 107–108.
48  Shackle (1978a), p. 86.
49  Ibid., p. 94.
50  Hawley and Mann (2014).
51  See Syan (2013) and Rinehart (2011), p. 24, on the language of compositions in the
Dasam Graṅth.
314
 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

Gurbilās literature, a historiographical literature that also is written in Braj

(although often claimed as a mixture of Punjabi and Braj, such works actually
strongly reflect Braj, not Punjabi). In this material, here from Sainapati (complete
c. 1708), we can see a relatively simple form of Braj, without elaborate Persian-
isms and Sanskritisms:

anika bhāṅti līlā taha karī/phate shāh suni lai mani dhari/
bahuta kopa mana māhi basāyo/pha'uja banāi judha ka’u āyo//
(Sainapati (1988 [1967]), ch. 2. 9, p. 69)
He performed līlā in various ways/Fateh Shah heard of this and held it in
his mind.
A great anger took hold in his heart/So he amassed an army and came for
battle.52

Stylistically this material reveals something perhaps akin to the ‘tadbhava sim-
plicity’ Busch identifies with Rahīm and Raslīn; there is more work to be done
along these lines of analysis in the Punjabi case as well.53 The use of līlā here is of
interest, as it seems clearly to function outside of its conventional Vaishnava sen-
sibilities, functioning as a description of ‘actions’ or ‘deeds’ and, indeed, a form
of tarīkh or history; we can see a parallel in the use of the term vilāsa or ‘play’
for narrative descriptions of the history of the Gurus in the Sikh tradition in the
genre known as Gurbilās. Vocabulary choices are more complex but still heavily
Braj in Kuir Singh’s Gurbilās of the mid to late eighteenth century, as Julie Vig’s
emerging doctoral work shows.54 As a result it seems many of the designations of
this genre as a mix of Punjabi and Braj are aspirational at best: Braj is the main
linguistic form in use. The exception to this is the Rahit literature, which does
not feature a ‘high’ Braj form and features a stronger Punjabi articulation; Peder
Gedda’s emerging assessment of the dating of texts in this genre will inform our
understanding of Punjabi’s emergence within it, however, so judgment on this
point is premature.

52  Sainapati (2014), p. 21. This translation is mine. On this dating of Gur Sobhā, see
Dhavan (2011a), p. 182, n. 5 and 6; Mann (2008), p. 252, suggests 1701 for the initiation of
the text. On the text in general, see Hans (1988), pp. 245–ff.; Grewal (2004a); and Murphy
(2007).
53  Busch (2010), pp. 114, 116. Busch’s insights into how and why Sanskritization is en-
gaged in the premodern can be applied fruitfully in the material under consideration here
(ibid., p. 119).
54  Vig (2016). The nature of this interaction, in short, is where an important part of the
story of Punjabi lies, reminiscent perhaps of Jesse Knutson’s exploration of Jayadeva’s
Gītagovinda as ‘a consolidation of two distinct literary registers’ where the cosmopolitan
and vernacular ‘strategically coincide’ (Knutson (2014), p. 74).
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Punjab-located vernacular cultural production, then, is very much a part of

the larger story of a cosmopolitan Braj literary world (both courtly and religious),
operating within a broader Persian cosmopolis that was expressed in local terms
in the Dasam Graṅth (in the Zafarnāmāh) as well as the court of Ranjit Singh
and other courtly contexts, such as the emerging courts of other Sikh chiefs, who
generally sought to narrate their own historical emergence in Persian, as Purnima
Dhavan has discussed.55 Recent work by Pasha Khan provides a valuable portrait
of the patronage that supported (limited) Punjabi language textual production in
that period; as Khan notes, however, Brajbhāṣā was ‘very much part of this story
as well.’56 And, of course, mainstream Sufi literature in Punjab, like courtly litera-
ture, was overwhelmingly in Persian (although this does not mean that vernacular
production was absent, as Orsini notes).57 Persian also strongly informed the lin-
guistic flavour of the qissā or narrative story literature in Punjabi, part of a larger
genre across North India and, in the case of Hīr–Ranjha, with at times striking
narrative commonalities with the older genre of the Avadhi/Hindavi premākhyān
of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.58 We are, however, generally constrained
in our ability to speak in definitive terms about specifically Punjabi linguistic
production in this domain by the relatively late manuscript evidence available to
us; lexical choices in the qisse are strongly Persianate, mixed with some Punjabi
grammatical forms (as we’ll see in a mid-eighteenth-century example below).59
As Pollock points out, ‘vernacularity is not a natural state of being but a willed
act of becoming’; Busch suggests that ‘courtly context and cultural orientation’ are
ways of beginning to understand that will.60 She notes that one figure’s virtuosity
reveals in part his cosmopolitanism, but also ‘a kind of revelling in the poetic
power of Braj Bhasha.’61 This can perhaps help us to understand the state of play
between Punjabi and Braj as well. Indeed, there is significant crossover between
55  Dhavan (2011b).
56  Khan (2013), p. 159 for quote; see discussion and citations of limited Punjabi language
textual production in the period in ibid., pp. 159–ff.
57  Orsini (2014), p. 404.
58  Sufi commitments and the lover-to-yogi transformation motif visible in Hīr–Ranjha in
particular finds a strong parallel with the earlier premākhyān tradition. On the relationship
between the qissā narrative genre and the earlier premākhyān, see Behl and Doniger (2012),
p. 336; on that genre overall, see Behl and Doniger (2012); De Bruijn (2012); and Shantanu
Phukan’s beautiful dissertation, which is ‘only partially a thesis about Padmavat,’ the most
famous of the Avadhi premākhyān, but is a valuable contribution on the genre (and more)
(Phukan (2000b), p. 6). On the qissā genre in broad terms, see the early foundational work
in English, Pritchett (1985), and the important new work of Orsini (2009) and Khan (2013).
59  According to Jeevan Deol the manuscript evidence is late for Waris’ Heer (1821 for the
earliest MSS) and there is clear evidence of the expansion of the text at the hands of various
editors and poets. Deol (2002), pp. 151–152.
60  Pollock (2006), p. 24; Busch (2010), p. 111.
61  Busch (2010), p. 112.
316
 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

Braj and early Punjabi, so drawing a clear line between these two is difficult. Busch
has described the broader difficulties of defining the boundaries of Braj, so this
is not an issue that is exclusive to Braj’s relationship with Punjabi; in her words,
Braj ‘often appears to be congenitally impure, that is to say, hybrid and multiregis-
tered’;62 as she has also noted, the designation of difference is almost always polit-
icized.63 Indeed, as Heidi Pauwels has noted so well, ‘rather than regarding these
as watertight categories’ among New Indo-Aryan languages in the period of their
emergence and literarization (to borrow again from Pollock), ‘we could here too
speak of a North Indian continuum of literary expression’ where ‘linguistic bound-
aries between these various idioms were often fluid.’64 Sources of the period that
Francesca Orsini examines, for instance, do not distinguish between Avadhi, Braj,
and other forms of what we call Hindavi; the term bhāṣā or bhākhā is used for all,
although the notion of a separate idiom associated with the region of Lahore was
contemporary to its use, as has been noted, so it is not that distinctive linguistic
forms were not recognized; it is crucial to note therefore that this does not mean
that all forms of ‘Hindavi’ are in fact ‘Hindi’; there is some slippage, at times,
between Hindavi and ‘early Hindi,’ when these must be two different things. Only
a history of Khari Boli, as Bangha rightly notes, can truly be said to excavate the
contours of ‘early Hindi.’65
Multilinguality, Orsini thus argues, is ‘a set of historically located practices
tied to material conditions of speech and writing, rather than as a kind of natural
heterogeneity’ or, further, a sense of absolute difference.66 Varying lexical features
can be identified in emergent Punjabi literary expression: strongly Persian vocabu-
lary choices in the qisse, and ties to Braj and, given the larger resonances of Braj’s
literary domain, Vaishnava vocabulary and imagery in Sikh contexts. As Shackle
notes in an important exploration of the historical evolution of modern standard
Punjabi, the language ‘is quite as close to the Khari dialect, which underlies both
Urdu and Hindi, as Surdas’s Braj, and is indeed far closer to it than the east-
ern Avadhi of the Ramcharitmanas.’67 We are faced with a sense of illusiveness,
therefore, for a history of Punjabi, unless instead we replace such a quest with the
ability to see Punjabi and Braj (as well as Punjabi and Persian, and Punjabi and

62  For quote ibid., p. 116; on the difficulty of drawing its boundaries, see pp. 85–86. As
Busch notes, ‘during the seventeenth century it became a language that travelled vast dis-
tances, and along the journey it encountered a range of courtly contexts and regional lin-
guistic practices, to which the poets adapted’ (ibid., p. 106).
63  Busch (2010), pp. 88–89. On parallel discussion of the issue of Hindi vs. Urdu, see
Phukan (2000a), pp. 18–19.
64  Pauwels (2009b). See also Orsini and Shaikh (2014), p. 15.
65  Bangha (2010), pp. 22–23.
66  Orsini (2012), p. 228.
67  Shackle (1988), p. 105.
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 Anne Murphy

other early modern linguistic formations) as a kind of interface, not a competition,

while still recognizing the distinctions among them (and not subsuming all things
written in Gurmukhi as automatically ‘Punjabi,’ willfully forgetting Punjabi’s rich
life in the Perso-Arabic script and Gurmukhi’s appearance in multiple linguistic
forms, and also not assuming all things written in Devanagari to be ‘Hindi,’ as has
been for too long the temptation).68

Region

But are there other ways to tell the story of the vernacular that is Punjabi, in this
terrain? The vernacularization process is accompanied by, as Pollock describes it,
‘new conceptions of communities and places,’69 although language choice does
not simply map to the political and religious. Punjab is no exception, as Julie
Vig’s research on the late eighteenth-century Gurbilās literature shows. The idea
and experience of region thus can emerge in multiple languages, and at points of
interaction among them, as Kumkum Chatterjee’s work on Bengal confirms. We
know that Punjab as a place was imagined in powerful ways by its residents—
Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, and others—in the time since Khusrao called attention to
it in linguistic and cultural terms. While some have argued for Punjabi regional
consciousness as a modern invention, there is a wealth of evidence to counter such
a claim.70 As I have argued elsewhere, the representation of the past was a partic-
ular concern for the Sikh community in the eighteenth century: the imagination of
the physical landscape of the community formed a part of such representations,
although they were never strictly coterminous with Punjab and the landscape of
the Gurus was far larger.71

68  See discussion of these issues, and script difference, in Murphy (2018a).
69  Pollock (2006), p. 6. As Pollock puts it: ‘To participate in Sanskrit literary culture was
to participate in a vast world; to produce a regional alternative to it was to effect a profound
break—one the agents themselves understood to be a break—in cultural communication
and self-understanding.’ Ibid., p. 21.
70  Harjot Oberoi argued in 1987 that ‘it was only in the 1940s, when the demand for
Pakistan was articulated by the Muslim League, and when the cold truth dawned that the
Punjab might after all be divided that the Sikhs with a tragic desperation began to visualize
the Punjab as their homeland.’ As such, he argued, the ‘affective attachment with the Punjab
among the Sikhs is fairly recent, and it does not date back to the early annals of the Sikh
community’ (Oberoi (1987), p. 27). It is undeniable that the notion of Punjab in national
territorial terms is entirely new; the idea of the nation state itself is entirely modern. But
there is a long history to the affective attachment to Punjab among Sikhs, as well as other
Punjabis. See Murphy (2012).
71  Murphy (2012).
318
 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

We see an emergent notion of the region in the Braj seventeenth-century text,

the Bachitar Nāṭak, attributed to the tenth Guru and contained within the Dasam
Graṅth, where ‘madara desh’ seems to refer directly to Punjab, and it is linked to
the founding of the Sodhi and Bedi clans, the lineages associated with the Gurus:

paṭhe kāgadaṁ madra rājā sudhāraṁ, āpo āpa mo baira bhāvaṁ bisāraṁ/
nripaṁ mukaliyaṁ dūta so kāsī āyaṁ, sabai bediyaṁ bheda bhākhe su-
nayaṁ/
sabai beda pāṭhī cale madra desaṁ, praṇāmaṁ kīyo ān kai kai naresaṁ//
(Bachitar Naṭak, ch. 4)
The Sodhi king of Madara sent letters to them, entreating them to forget past
enmities/
The messengers sent by the king came to Kashi and gave the message to all
the Bedis/
All the reciters of the Vedas came to Madra Desha and made obeisance to
the King.

Here we do seem to see a sense of new kinds of culture boundaries’ (in Pollock’s
words) that may or may not rely upon the formal designation of the Lahore prov-
ince in the Mughal administration to describe the region of the Indus and its trib-
utaries mentioned in earlier literature, but these boundaries also seem to exceed
it; they do not here map to the emergence of a regional polity at that time.72 We
also see the region’s emergence in Waris Shah’s mid-eighteenth-century rendition
of the story of the star-crossed lovers, Heer and Ranjha, perhaps the most quint-
essentially (ethnically?) Punjabi text one might identify (the text that the revolu-
tionary Udham Singh, alias Muhammad Singh Azād, wanted to take his oath on
when at trial); it is central, as Jeevan Deol has noted, to the ‘Punjabi episteme.’73
Waris Shah opens his classic version of the story, Heer, in praise of the Lord, and
the Prophet, and the Sufi saints who were so important to the cultural landscape
of Punjab, creating Punjab as an Islamic landscape (with variations between the
Shahmukhi or Perso-Arabic and Gurmukhi printed versions of the text):

ma'udūda dā lāḍalā pīra cishatī shakkara gaṅja māsa'ūda bharapūra hai jī

bāīāṅ kutabāṅ de vicca hai pīra kāmala jaiṅdī ājazī zuhada manazūra hai jī
khānadāna vicca cishata de kāmalīata shahira fakkara dā paṭaṇa
mashahūra/ ma’mūra jī

72  Pollock (2006), pp. 382–383. ‘Punjab’ as a term was in use in the period of Akbar, and
it was in his reign that the province of Lahore was reorganized to encompass the five doabs.
The first history of ‘the Punjab’ was written by Ganesh Das at the beginning of the colonial
period, the Char Bagh-i-Punjab. Grewal (2004b), p. 9.
73  On Udham Singh and the text, see Rabba Hun Kee Kariye (Thus Departed Our Neigh-
bours) by Ajay Bhardwaj. On the ‘Punjabi episteme’ and Waris Shah’s Heer, see Deol
(2002), p. 142.
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 Anne Murphy

shakkara gaṅja ne āṇi makāna/mukām kītā dukkh darada paṅjāba dā dūra

hai jī74 (Shah (1986), pp. 2–3; Padam (1998 [1977]), p. 61)
The beloved of Moinuddin (of Ajmer), the Chishti Pir, he is full as a treasury
of pure sweetness,
He is the perfect saint among the 22 poles (kutabāṅ) [that guide the world],
whose renunciation and humility is accepted by all,
He is the perfection of the Chisht lineage, whose city has become civilized
(ma'mūr)/famous (mashhūr) as a town of mendicants.
Shakar-Ganj has come and made this his home (makāna/mukām), dispelling
the sadness and pain of Punjab.

In Waris Shah, the territory or vilāyat of the saint is described, locating Punjab as
a distinctive region and simultaneously making it a part of a far broader Islamic
imaginary.75 Farina Mir has highlighted how regional imaginaries prevailed within
the qissā or story of Heer and Ranjha in the colonial period to define a territoriality
that ‘emphasizes the affective attachments people established with the local, and
particularly their natal places,’ where Punjab ‘emerges . . . as an imagined ensem-
ble of natal places within a particular topography (rivers, riverbanks, forests and
mountains) and religious geography (Sufi shrines and Hindu monasteries).’76 This
is a mapping of Punjab: Jhang, Takhat Hazara, Tilla Jogian, Rangpur; the places
that are enlivened by the always repeated story of Heer–Ranjha, fixed in time and
place in this region, alongside the histories and stories associated with the Sikh
Gurus and other figures with diverse religious affiliations. We can see in Waris
Shah’s version of the text that this mapping pre-dates the British arrival. We thus
see that Punjab as a place and a cultural sensibility mattered, percolating through
texts that were diverse in their linguistic and religious formations—and occasion-
ally reflective of a Punjabi vernacular linguistic form.

74  The second and third lines are transposed in the Shahmukhi text; I give the order of
the Gurmukhi version here. These published versions are well regarded, but there are sub-
stantial variants in published editions; compare with Ghumman (2007), p. 1. Waris Shah’s
text has not been formed into a critical edition; Mohan Singh published a manuscript-based
form of the text in 1947 that radically shortened the text based on manuscript evidence (and
was widely rejected as a result). See Deol (2002), p. 152.
75  There are many similar articulations of the region in Shah’s text; see also verses 56, 141,
311, 364 et al. in Shah (1986).
76  Mir (2010), p. 123 for first quote, p. 134 for second.
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 15. Punjabi in the (Late) Vernacular Millennium

Concluding reflections

Christopher Shackle has argued that the beginnings of Punjabi literature are found
in ‘two genres of religious poetry’ in ‘two distinct traditions.’77 But we also must
face that Punjabi itself as a language is illusive at best even within this formula-
tion,78 and that the narrative of Sikh and Sufi origins must be complicated. At the
same time, and in diverse textual contexts, religious communitarian formations,
organized in both local and supralocal forms, did somehow matter in the construc-
tion of a Punjabi literary imaginary, strongest in Sufi contexts (as we have seen,
with strong Punjabi flavouring in Farīd and Waris Shah) but perhaps strongest in
extra-canonical works associated with religious contexts. Early Punjabi instanc-
es are found within texts associated with the Sikh tradition particularly in Farīd,
the Janamsākhī, and Gurdas (with questions of dating complicating our under-
standing); otherwise, Sadhukkarī, at first, and Braj, later, dominate. In the Sikh
context it is loyalty to Gurmukhi as a script that stands out over the Punjabi lan-
guage, which is why Braj and Persian are both so easily integrated into Gurmukhi
eighteenth-century collections associated with the Dasam Graṅth (although there
is significant variation in the texts included in that compilation in its early ver-
sions); the lack of recognition of the difference between Punjabi as a language and
Gurmukhi as a script has effaced this important distinction.79 Of a region, how-
ever, we do see something emerge, but must be careful not to assume a strictly
linguistic association with it.
Francesca Orsini has argued for an understanding of North India as a ‘multilin-
gual and multi-locational literary culture,’80 defined by maps that are multiple and
sometimes overlapping. Punjab emerges in multiple linguistic registers and with
a particularly complex relationship with Braj, marked by religious valences that
do not map to the centralizing Braj vernacular forces (both courtly and religious)
that we see at work elsewhere in the early modern period.81 A broader history of
Punjabi literary production must address political changes in Punjab that brought

77  Shackle (2015), p. x.

78  The ways that languages function in this context, I would argue, mirrors the way re-
ligious domains also function: overlapping, and yet defined in particular contexts and for
particular purposes.
79  On the Dasam Graṅth and its contents, with an overview of printed editions and re-
search on manuscript traditions, see Rinehart (2011), ch. 1, and Deol (2001). On script and
the Persian language text, the Zafarnāmah, see Fenech (2013), p. 23.
80  Orsini (2012), p. 238. This is a vision that ‘mirrors the balance of social forces that
were active and vocal in the polities of the regional Sultans and local Rajput chiefdoms and
in the religious marketplace . . . of the time: rulers and chieftains, merchants and artisans,
religious leaders and groups of various kinds.’ (ibid., p. 239).
81  I address some aspects of the distinctive vision of Punjabi texts in Braj in Murphy
(2018b).
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late localized political control that, when it did arrive, translated into peripheral
courtly commitment to Punjabi language, such as during the rule of Ranjit Singh.
Neither was there sustained institutionalized religious commitment to the lan-
guage for writing, since the dominant literatures in both Sufi and Sikh contexts
were in either Persian or Braj. Punjabi emerges at the periphery. We can see this
in the court records of Ranjit Singh’s kingdom, which are in Persian (regardless
of whether or not Punjabi was used as a spoken language). Very rarely, Gurmukhi
Punjabi marginalia occur alongside the core text and marginalia/comments, all in
Persian, usually as an attestation of the authenticity of the document in question.82
The court therefore was not the major agent of linguistic innovation for Punjabi,
and religious interventions also appeared outside of institutional centres. This is in
keeping with Orsini’s findings that ‘rather than a model of literary culture centred
around either religious sites or around royal courts,’ we must look to ‘the interre-
lated efforts of singers, poets, patrons and audiences at courtly darbars and sabhas,
in the open spaces of chaupals in towns and villages, in temples and khanqahs.’83
This is where we therefore must locate Punjabi: as an alternative to institutional
powers (articulated in cosmopolitan languages like Persian and Braj),84 connected
to a generalized sense of regionality expressed not only in that language, important
perhaps particularly because it did not map to state or religious institution. Instead,
it was linked to a kind of aesthetic practice, as Pollock has argued, embodying
an affective domain available within and across religious boundaries.85 It is that
affective domain and aesthetic practice at the periphery that we must attend to in
the effort to make space for Punjabi and its illusive multilingual (and multireli-
gious) history (with striking parallels with the current situation).86 This might ex-
plain, for instance, why when Ranjit Singh consolidated his reign at the end of the
eighteenth century, he engaged a Punjabi-influenced Persian to do so.87 Was the
82  See, for example, in the Khalsa Darbar Records, Dharamarth Section, Bundle 5, X
Pt. 2, 429 and 471. Punjabi State Archives Collection, Chandigarh.
83  Orsini (2012), p. 243. Hawley concurs in his recent work (Hawley (2015), p. 311), cit-
ing an unpublished paper by Christian Novetzke. Shackle (1993), p. 288, conversely, argues
that Siraiki emerges as a distinct literary language precisely because of court patronage.
84  This has continued to a degree into the modern period, perhaps in keeping with Tariq
Rahman’s description of Punjabi’s association ‘with pleasure [that] is connected with a cer-
tain kind of Punjabi identity’ (Rahman (2002), p. 395). See Murphy (2018a) for discussion.
85  Pollock (2006), p. 18. These non-state formations interacted with the court, to be sure, but
were not limited to polity. As we know, Sufi shrines, Nāthyogī centres, and the Sikh Gurus too
made their claims on the political sphere, and the issue of ‘sovereignty’ was not equivalent to
that imagined in the formulation of the modern nation state. I cannot address this broader issue
here, but discuss the problem of reading ‘sovereignty’ in Sikh contexts in Murphy (2015).
86  Murphy (2018a).
87  Based on reading of the dharamarth records of the Lahore state (see Murphy (2012),
pp. 165–ff) For similar observations on ‘easy’ Persian and the influence of the vernacular,
see Orsini (2014), pp. 406–407.
322
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vernacular already, perhaps, marked by a non-statist imaginary, as Ishwar Gaur’s

recent study of Waris Shah’s Heer suggests, in a context where a vernacular polity
had had no space to emerge and Braj and Persian functioned as institutionalized
idioms of power, both religious and courtly?88 This puts it on par with the ethical
dimensions of Marathi as a vernacular that Christian Novetzke’s work engages
with, and his discussion of non-state locations for Marathi literary emergence,
although the Punjabi case is in fact far more clear in terms of its extra-institutional
moorings and individualistic orientation.89 It is also in keeping with Shantanu Phu-
kan’s and Allison Busch’s respective insights into the emergence of early Hindavi
in relation to Persian and Sanskrit, where we see the emergence of Hindavi along-
side Persian as allowing for a particular kind of emotional expression that, in Phu-
kan’s words, acted ‘not as an instrument of conversion, nor yet as a concession to
the simple sensibilities of rural folk, but as an effective vehicle for the expression
of such emotional states and modalities of knowledge as can better be captured
by it’; it was also as such particularly associated with the feminine voice.90 Busch
has shown that courtly rītī literature in Braj ‘developed an extraordinary capacity
to speak across cultural barriers to a wide variety of people in a way that neither
Persian or Sanskrit could ever do.’91 All of these resonances were of course radi-
cally reconfigured with the new politics of language in the nineteenth century, but
in the early modern period, we can see Punjabi enacting its own set of affective
connotations within a larger diverse linguistic landscape otherwise dominated by
Persian and Braj.
The emergence of Punjabi similarly meant something particular in the complex
linguistic and literary expressive worlds of early modern Punjab. The role I sug-
gest here can be said to prefigure the position of Punjabi that Farina Mir describes
in the colonial period, positioning Punjabi as simultaneously ‘outside’ (of state
and other forms of power) and yet vividly present and resilient perhaps because

88  Gaur (2009).

89  The state was certainly an agent of vernacular literalization in the inscriptional evidence
for Marathi Novetzke discusses; he admits that ‘vernacularization occurred at the inter-
section of state and public culture,’ acknowledging a state role (Novetzke (2016), pp. 168,
194.) His observation of the Yadava neglect of Marathi as an opening to literary innovation
bears striking similarity to the earlier argument of Farina Mir regarding the florescence of
Punjabi in the colonial period, outside of colonial influence (Novetzke (2016), p. 75; Mir
2010). See Murphy (forthcoming 2019?) on expressions of individualization in early mod-
ern Punjabi cultural forms.
90  Phukan (2000b), p. 87 (for quote); see overall discussion pp. 72–ff; see also Phukan
(2000a), pp. 15–ff. As Phukan well notes, such an interplay of languages does not just allow
for the expression of different semantic registers but extends the range of each language so
utilized (Phukan (2000a), p. 15).
91  Busch (2011), p. 100. This is an argument also visible in Bangha (2010), p. 83.
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of such a position.92 This, of course, also explains why it is so difficult to find.

Overall, we need an explanatory mechanism for the dynamics of vernacularization
in Punjab that embraces the range of material before us, religious and not, courtly
and not, both when distinctive features of Punjabi as a language do emerge (to
differentiate it from other forms or ‘flavours’ of Hindavi) and when they do not.93
This essay represents preliminary thinking along such lines.

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