The Origin of Punjabi: Between Linguistic Lineages, Civilisational Depth, and Historiographical Debate

The question of the origin of Punjabi is not merely linguistic,it is deeply entangled with history, identity, politics, and competing narratives about the Indian subcontinent’s past. For decades, a dominant scholarly view—particularly within mainstream Indian academia, has placed Punjabi within the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family, tracing its ancestry back to Sanskrit through Prakrits and Apabhraṃśa. This narrative has often been presented in a linear and genealogical manner, suggesting a clear descent from Sanskrit to modern North Indian languages. However, alternative perspectives, such as those advanced by the late Professor Manzur Ejaz and discussed in contemporary forums like Sikh Siyasat, challenge this linear genealogy. These perspectives raise important questions about linguistic continuity, civilisational depth, and the possibility of pre-Aryan substrata shaping Punjabi. When examined closely, the debate is not simply about classification, but about how knowledge itself has been constructed, prioritised, and sometimes politicised.

In conventional historical linguistics, Punjabi is classified as part of the Northwestern Indo-Aryan subgroup, and this classification is supported by a considerable body of linguistic evidence. According to this framework, the development of Punjabi follows a broadly accepted trajectory beginning with Old Indo-Aryan, represented by Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, moving through Middle Indo-Aryan stages such as Prakrits - particularly Shauraseni - and Pali, and then evolving into Apabhraṃśa dialects before finally emerging as a modern Indo-Aryan language around the end of the first millennium CE. This model explains many structural features of Punjabi, including its phonological shifts, simplification of inflectional morphology, and the transition from case endings to postpositions. At the same time, Punjabi’s tonal system,relatively rare among Indo-Aryan languages, marks it as distinct, suggesting that its evolution was not simply internal but also shaped by contact with other linguistic systems. Even within mainstream scholarship, there is recognition that Punjabi is not a “pure” descendant of Sanskrit but a language that has absorbed influences from Persian, Arabic, and possibly even older, less understood linguistic layers.

A central critique raised by Manzur Ejaz, and one that aligns with broader developments in modern linguistics, is the problem inherent in speaking of languages as being “born” from one another in a straightforward way. Such metaphors oversimplify what is, in reality, a highly complex and dynamic process. Languages do not emerge fully formed from a single source; instead, they evolve gradually through internal developments, interactions with neighbouring speech communities, and shifts in social and political contexts. Ejaz’s argument that stable grammatical structures make it unlikely for one language to simply give birth to another resonates with the linguistic understanding that structural continuity often coexists with lexical and phonetic change. The example of English is instructive here: while it is classified as a Germanic language, its vocabulary is heavily influenced by Latin and French due to historical contact. Similarly, Punjabi may retain an Indo-Aryan grammatical framework while simultaneously reflecting deeper and more diverse linguistic influences. This shifts the debate from rigid origins to processes of layering and interaction.

The discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in the early twentieth century profoundly transformed understandings of South Asia’s antiquity. Flourishing between roughly 2600 and 1900 BCE, this civilisation predates the commonly accepted timeline of Indo-Aryan migrations and presents compelling evidence of urban sophistication, long-distance trade, and complex social organisation. Archaeological findings indicate that the Harappans engaged in trade with Mesopotamia, maintained standardised systems of weights and measures, and developed a script that, although still undeciphered, suggests a structured form of communication. The existence of such an advanced civilisation raises important questions about language. It is difficult to imagine a society of this scale functioning without a complex linguistic system, yet the nature of that language, or languages, remains unknown. Mainstream hypotheses suggest a possible Dravidian base, while others propose that the Harappan language may have been a lost isolate or part of a multilingual environment. Within this context, Ejaz’s argument that Punjabi and other North Indian languages may preserve elements of pre-Aryan linguistic systems becomes particularly significant, even if it remains speculative.

One of the more radical extensions of this line of thought is Ejaz’s hypothesis linking Punjabi to the Austroasiatic language family. This family includes languages such as Santali, Mundari, Khasi, Vietnamese, and Khmer, and is geographically spread across parts of India and Southeast Asia. Ejaz’s approach involved comparing basic vocabulary, terms for elemental and universally experienced objects such as water, sky, and earth, across different languages. He observed that Punjabi, Sindhi, and certain Austroasiatic languages displayed phonetic similarities in these core lexical items, whereas Sanskrit and Tamil differed significantly. This line of reasoning draws on the idea that basic vocabulary is less susceptible to borrowing and therefore more likely to preserve traces of older linguistic stages. However, while intriguing, this hypothesis faces considerable methodological challenges. Comparative linguistics requires systematic correspondences across sound systems, grammar, and syntax, rather than isolated similarities. Moreover, accidental resemblances between words are not uncommon across languages. As such, while the Austroasiatic hypothesis is not widely accepted, it nevertheless contributes to a broader conversation about substrate influences and the possibility that Punjabi’s history extends beyond the Indo-Aryan framework.

Another important dimension of the debate concerns the historical presence—or relative absence—of Sanskrit in the Punjab region. Epigraphic evidence from the Mauryan period, particularly the edicts of Ashoka in the third century BCE, indicates that administrative and public inscriptions were composed in Prakrit dialects rather than Sanskrit. These inscriptions were written in scripts such as Brahmi and Kharoshthi, the latter being especially prevalent in the northwestern regions, including Punjab. Sanskrit inscriptions become more prominent only in the Gupta period, several centuries later. This suggests that Sanskrit was not the primary language of everyday communication or governance in early Punjab. Instead, local dialects and Prakrits dominated linguistic life, particularly during the long period of Buddhist influence in the region, when religious and literary traditions favoured vernacular expression over classical Sanskrit. This challenges the notion of Sanskrit as a universally spoken language and reinforces the idea that it functioned primarily as an elite or liturgical medium.

The Aryan migration theory has long shaped discussions of language and culture in South Asia, but it too has undergone significant revision. Earlier formulations, such as those associated with the nineteenth-century scholar Max Müller, suggested that Indo-Aryan speakers brought Sanskrit and Vedic culture into the subcontinent, displacing or even destroying earlier civilisations like the Harappan. Contemporary scholarship, however, presents a more nuanced picture. There is little evidence to support the idea of a violent overthrow of the Indus Valley Civilization, and its decline is now generally attributed to environmental factors such as climate change and shifting river systems. At the same time, increasing attention is being paid to cultural and material continuities between Harappan and later societies. From a linguistic perspective, this implies that Indo-Aryan languages did not simply replace pre-existing languages but interacted with them, resulting in layered and hybrid linguistic forms. Punjabi, in this sense, may be seen as a product of such long-term interaction rather than a straightforward descendant of a single linguistic ancestor.

The historiography of Punjabi language itself reflects the political and intellectual contexts in which it has been studied. As noted by scholars such as Sikandar Singh, systematic efforts to document the history of Punjabi gained momentum only after the Partition of 1947, when Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan. In India, linguistic scholarship often became intertwined with broader efforts to construct a unified national identity, within which Sanskrit occupied a central and prestigious position. This sometimes led to an overemphasis on Sanskrit as the origin of all Indian languages and a corresponding marginalisation of regional linguistic histories and pre-Aryan contributions. Alternative perspectives, such as those proposed by Ejaz, can be understood as attempts to challenge this dominance and to recover a more plural and inclusive understanding of linguistic history. At the same time, it is important to approach all such narratives critically, recognising that the search for a single origin—whether Aryan or pre-Aryan—may itself be misguided.

Punjabi’s own linguistic features provide strong evidence for this layered history. Its tonal system, for instance, sets it apart from most other Indo-Aryan languages and has been attributed by some scholars to substrate influence. Its vocabulary reflects centuries of contact, incorporating elements from Sanskrit and Prakrit as well as Persian and Arabic, particularly during periods of Islamic rule. At the grammatical level, Punjabi retains core Indo-Aryan structures while also exhibiting unique developments that distinguish it from related languages such as Hindi and Urdu. These characteristics support a model of language evolution based on contact, adaptation, and innovation rather than simple descent. Punjabi, in this sense, is best understood as a dynamic and evolving system shaped by multiple historical forces.

The claim that all Indian languages originate from Sanskrit is therefore an oversimplification that does not withstand linguistic scrutiny. A more accurate formulation would recognise that many North Indian languages, including Punjabi, belong to the Indo-Aryan family, within which Sanskrit represents an early and well-documented stage. However, this does not mean that these languages are direct or exclusive descendants of Sanskrit. Instead, they have evolved through intermediate stages, interacted with other linguistic systems, and undergone continuous transformation. Ejaz’s critique is valuable in exposing the ideological underpinnings of the Sanskrit-origin narrative, even if his own alternative proposals remain open to debate.

In conclusion, the origin of Punjabi cannot be reduced to a single lineage or moment in time. It is the product of a long and complex process involving Indo-Aryan linguistic evolution, pre-Aryan substrate influences, and centuries of cultural and linguistic interaction. The work of scholars like Manzur Ejaz is important not because it provides definitive answers, but because it challenges established assumptions and opens up new avenues of inquiry. Much remains unknown, particularly in light of the undeciphered Harappan script, and future research in linguistics, archaeology, and related fields may yet reshape our understanding. For now, it is perhaps most accurate to think of Punjabi not as a language with a singular origin, but as a linguistic palimpsest, one that carries within it the traces of multiple pasts, layered upon one another in ways that continue to invite exploration and debate.