HINDUSTANI LANGUAGE

lingua franca of modern India before partition (1947). Based on Khari Boli, a dialect originating in the area around Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur, it was spread throughout India by the Mughals and merchants. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the language was strongly promoted by an Englishman, John Borthwick Gilchrist (1759-1841), who wrote a Hindustani dictionary and a number of grammars and served as the first president of the Fort William College in Calcutta, an institution that trained British civil servants. It was Gilchrist who invented the name Hindustani, or, as he spelled it, "Hindoostanee." Two literary languages arose from colloquial Hindustani: Hindi, showing a strong Sanskrit influence, and Urdu, with a heavily Persianized vocabulary. Hindi is now the national language of India, and Urdu is the official language of Pakistan.