Notes on the Baluchī Spoken in Persian Baluchistan

Abstract

Ii. The material which follows has been gathered during some twelve months anthropological field work (spread over the last three years) in the Persian Province of Sistan and Baluchistan, excluding the sahristdn of Zabol or Sistan (hereafter referred to simply as the Province). The language of the Administration is of course Persian, but outside the major settlements few people are bilingual, and probably as much Urdu as Persian is known-which is very little. Baluchi is the lingua franca of all natives of the Province (except a few Persian and Sikh merchants in the main towns) both in the settlements and the nomad encampments. Another language, Jadgili-said to be derived from Sindhi, is spoken by a few thousand people-the Jadgil tribes-in Dashtiari in the extreme southeast of the Province, but these also use Baluchi as a lingua franca, and all the men are bilingual in these two languages. Brahui is not spoken in the Province (as defined above, though I am told it is spoken by nomadic communities within the area of the .ahristdn of Zabol) but its influence is evident in the vocabulary of all the Baluchi dialects. This influence has been noted on the other side of the border in Pakistan in particular by Morgenstierne (esp. 1I932a and b), and in a recent published comment on the relationship between the two languages it has been suggested that future research will bring to the attention of linguistic scholars something unprecedented (I believe) in linguistic reporting, an instance of symbiosis over a large area of two genetically unrelated languages, between which there has taken place not only structural borrowing (demonstrated previously for these two languages) but even a structural borrowing which shows parallel divergences on the two sides (Emeneau, 1964: 75-76). Morgenstierne (I 932a: 9 ff.) noted the scale of interchange of vocabulary between the two languages, and considered it likely that some communities (in Pakistani Baluchistan) had changed from one language to the other more than once. Furthermore, he did not consider that either of the two languages possessed any cultural predominance as compared with the other. 2. This is not the place to attempt to account for the modern line of division between Persian and Pakistani Baluchistan. It is a complicated story and we do not possess sufficient historical evidence to account for it satisfactorily. However, two things are relatively certain: i. the main factors were political-in the form of alliances and enmities between Baluch leaders. (I am preparing a monograph on the subject of Baluch political activities and concepts.) ii. the process may be said to have started with the legitimization of the Khanate of Kalat by Nadir Shah in 1739, which was later confirmed by the British in India. The British may be said to have fossilized the western extent of the influence of the Khan of Kalat and treated it as their