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Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 61
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name
Dr. Ghulam Raza*
Abstract
For the name, Saraikī, of one of the Indo-Aryan languages, many
etymological descriptions have been reported in the literature. Due to a
variety of these descriptions, different word forms like Saraikī and Siraikī
are implied in Roman script which dictate different pronunciations of the
name. In this article, I discuss different views of linguists and historians
about the derivation of the name of the Saraiki language and support the
hypothesis that the very name Saraikī is plausibly derived from the word
Sauvīra by advancing justifications on linguistic grounds, mainly drawing
on phonological aspects of the language. Such a derivation of the name
licenses the letter a following the first consonant s while spelling it in
Roman script. I also provide evidences to nullify the alternate hypothesis of
derivation of the name from the word Siro. The discussion results into the
suggestion that the sole word form, Saraikī, should be considered correct
and be adopted for the name of the Saraiki language rather than other word
forms such as Siraikī or Seraikī.
Keywords
The Saraiki language, etymology, accounts of derivation, Sauvira,
phonology
____________________________________________________________
*Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS),
Islamabad Ghulam.Raza@pieas.edu.pk
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 62
1 Introduction
Saraiki is spoken by millions of people around the world, most of them
living in the central districts of Pakistan, spanning over some of the areas
of all the existing four provinces of the country, and therefore is called the
language of central Pakistan. Before, it has also been called as
Hindi/Hindki (O‘Brien, 1881, Turner, 1924), Jatki/Jataki (O‘Brien, 1881;
Burton, 1849) and also Jagdali (O‘Brien, 1881). In addition to these names,
there were many local names of it, for example, Multani (O‘Brien, 1881,
Bahl 1936), Riasti/Bahawalpuri, Derewali, Uchi, (Bomford, 1895),
Shahpuri, Thallochi/Thalli (Wilson, 1899, Smirnov, 1975), etc. Some of its
names like Lahnda/Lahndi (Wilson, 1899, Smirnov, 1975) and Western
Punjabi (Bomford, 1895), were crafted by linguists for referring to this
language. With the passage of time all other names became part of the
history and the one name, ‗Saraiki‘, became popular for this language. This
was due to the consensus of Saraiki intellectuals in a meeting held in 1962
to adopt and promote only the one name ‗Saraiki‘ (Khan, 1995:105;
Mughal, 2002:163). Since then, this name has been in regular use in the
literature and mass media for the language of central Pakistan.
Due to dearth of written resources about history and culture of the Saraiki
people, researchers are unable to know confidently about the source word
of the name, Saraiki. Many opinions posited in this regard in 19th and 20th
century seem to be based on speculations. One of the two most believed
impressions is that the name of Saraiki language is derived from the Sindhi
word Siro ‗upper part or head‘ and the other is that the name of the
language is derived from the name Sauvīra of a state in old India. The
linguists who follow the former idea advocate that the first letter s in
Saraiki should be followed by the short front vowel /i/ and the supporters of
the latter idea urge to put schwa /ə/ (the letter a) after the first letter in
Saraiki. So, in Roman script, based on different implied pronunciations of
the name and due to ambiguous letters for the vowel sounds of English,
different word forms for the Saraiki language name have been in use. In all
of these words (Saraiki, Seraiki, Siraiki, Suraiki, Sraiki, Sraeki), there are
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 63
always the same three consonants (s, r and k) in the same order but
different vowels in between.
Contemporary Saraiki is natively written in Extended Arabic Script1 and
the short vowels that are in the form of diacritics are usually not put with
(over/under) consonants. So without diacritics, the word Saraiki and Siraiki
in Arabic script are written with the same pattern of alphabets and it is on
the discretion of the reader whether he/she assumes a or i after the first
consonant in the word Saraiki. In this article, different accounts of the
derivation of the Saraiki language name are explored and analysed to reach
the most plausible account of derivation and hence to know which short
vowel should come after the first letter in the name. The rest of the paper is
organized as follows. Section 2 explores different accounts of derivation of
the name in detail. The arguments to refute the hypothesis of deriving the
name from the Sindhi word ‗Siro‘ are given in Section 3. Section 4
provides argumentation to support the hypothesis of deriving the name
from the word ‗Sauvira‘ and Section 5 concludes the paper.
2 Accounts of the derivation of the Saraiki language name
In Indo-Aryan forms of speech, language names are made in the following
ways (Grierson, 1930):
• The name of the country in which it is spoken is taken
without alteration.
• The name of the language is formed by the addition of the
Persian suffix -ī to the name of the country.
• The name of the language ends in –ī, having come down
through Prakrit, being derived from a Sanskrit original in -
ikā or –ī and not being directly formed from the modern
name of the country.
• The name of the language is a modern formation, derived
directly from a newly created name of country.
1 Saraiki like Persian and Urdu is written in Arabic script. All these languages have also
added more symbols to the script for their peculiar sounds. Hence the term of Extended
Arabic Script is used here.
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 64
Language names therefore are either mere the names of countries or
otherwise usually carry the endings –ī or –kī. The –kī ending is originally
derived from the adjectival form kerā of Prakrit with some phonological
erosion (Cardona and Jain, 2003:233) and, now a days, is used mostly in
Genitive construction of Hindi/Urdu. The name of the Saraiki language in
many accounts has also been derived from the name of some country or the
name of some city or some other spatial noun. However, in some accounts,
derivation from some other nouns is also reported. The following
subsections describe the derivation of the different word forms for the
name. Many of the accounts given here could be found in Zami, 1970;
Hussaini, 1972; Wagha, 1990; Kalanchvi, 1994; Pervaiz, 2001 and Javaid,
2004.
2.1 Derivation of the word form ‘Saraiki’
Different scholars have mentioned different origins of the name of the
language. The word form ‗Saraiki‘ is believed to be derived from the
different source words by different scholars. These source words are
described in detail in the following:
i) From the source word ‘Sauvīrā’
Two countries of Sindhu and Sauvira are mentioned in a very old and
famous Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata (Rahman, 2002). These at present can
roughly be taken as the province of Sindh and the Saraiki Punjab of
Pakistan. Long before, Al-Beruni had located Sauvira in Multan and
Jahrawar (Al-Beruni, 1910:300,302). The latter region, Jharawar, indicated
by Al-Beruni himself, lay at the junction of the Jhelam and the Chenab
above Multan (Mukherjee, 1989:77). Some other scholars (Mirchandani,
1980:31; Sircar, 1967:73—74) have also reported Sindhu-Sauvira as
‗neighbouring countries of the Punjab‘ with Sindhu on the west and
Sauvira on the east of the Indus.
Dani (1981), however, locates Sindhu in the province of Sindh and Sauvira
to the east of the river Indus much higher up. He claims that Sindhi
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 65
language is confined to the lower Indus valley while Saraiki is now spoken
in much the same area where Sauvira is located by Al-Beruni. With this
distribution of languages in the area, he postulates that the very name
Saraikī is a corruption of the original term Sauvīrākī.
ii) From the source word ‘Sarāī’
Zami (1970) and Kalanchvi (1994) mention that there lived people of the
Sarāī caste in Sindh valley who once ruled over this region and Saraiki
language name might be after this tribe‘s name. The Sarāī tribe is also
mentioned in a gazetteer of Sindh (Hughes, 1876:31). In a glossary of
tribes and castes (Rose, 1997:381—382) the term Sarāī is defined as in the
following:
―Sarai.- (1) A Jat tribe found in Amritsar and Gurdaspur, in which
latter District its members are sometimes called Shaikhs, as being
leaders of Sultanias or followers of Sakhi Sarwar. As such they
receive small offerings, though they are rather shy of admitting the
fact. It is not certain that this tribe is distinct from (2).
(2) A tribe of Jat chiefly found in Gurdaspur and Sialkot, though
there are a few on the upper and middle Sutlej also. There are said
to be Sarai Rajputs in Sialkot, who are Bhattis descended from an
ancestor called Sarai who settled in the Hafizabad tahsil. Sarai is
also said to be a well-known Jat clan in Jullundur and the
neighbouring districts. Tod makes Sahrai the title of a race of
Punwar Rajputs who founded a dynasty at Aror in Sindh on the
eastern bank of the Indus and "gave their name Sehl or Sehr as a
titular appellation to the country and its princess, and its inhabitants
the Sehrais." The Sarai of Gurdaspur returned themselves in 1881
as tribe Sindhu, clan Sarai, but the Sindhu appear to have no such
sept. The Sarai may however be an offshoot of the Sindhu and they
certainly do not intermarry with that tribe.
(3) The title of the Klahora family of Rajanpur in Dera Ghazi Khan,
which is known as that of Mian Sahib Sarai, According to
Mackenzie the Sarais have a holy reputation and retain an uncut
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 66
lock on the crown of their heads -- whence the title (fr. sir 'head').
But the Dera Ghazi Khan Gazetteer (1898) says that males of the
Sarai family do not cut the hair or moustache, and the Sarai is a
common term for a native of Sind.‖
iii) From the source word ‘Sarāwā’
Zami (1970) has mentioned that there was a famous trade-city, Sarāwā,
near the border of Sindh and Multan. There was a very old university in
this city. Nowadays this city exists with the name of Sarwāhī in the
district of Rahimyar Khan. Here a language named Sarāwāī was
developed and had its own script. This name later became Saraikī.
iv) From the source word ‘Sarāñ’
In another account, Zami (1970) traces the origin of the name in the Saraiki
word Sarāñ ‗hotel‘ or ‗inn‘. The equivalent word for Sarāñ in Urdu/Hindi
is Sarai. There were many Sarai/Sarīñ in Multan region for serving and
hosting travellers, merchants and business-men. In these Sarai/Sarīñ people
from around the country spoke the local language Multani by mixing some
words of their own languages and this mixed language started to be called
Saraikī, meaning the language of Sarai/Sarāñ.
v) From the source word ‘Sarāsvatī’
Hussaini (1972) in an account says that a mighty river Sarsūtī (Sarāsvatī)
has been mentioned in the hymns of Rigveda which could be the river of
Quranic Ashaab-ur-Ras ‗people of Ras‘ and derives the name of the
language from the name of this river.
vi) From the source word ‘Sārah’
Fikri (1997) traces the root of the word Saraiki back to the word Sārah.
There has been an Arab district, Sarka, after the name of Bibi Sarah, the
wife of Prophet Ibrahim. This district has also been called as Sārka, Sarāka,
Sārkīn, Sarākīn and the words like Sārāsīn, Sarākīnū, Sarākīnūs were
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 67
initially used to call its inhabitants only and later they began to be used for
all Muslims. Fikri postulates that the people might have called the language
of Muslim rulers/chiefs (Sarākīnūs) in Multan as Saraiki.
vii) From the source word ‘Sārh’
In another etymological description, Fikri (1997) derives the name from the
words Sārh and aikī. He takes the first morpheme in the meaning of
‗fact/knowledge/news‘ and the second morpheme in the meaning of ‗one‘
and extends the meaning of the word Saraiki from ‗one fact‘ to ‗a language
of describing facts‘ or ‗a language of knowledge and cognizance‘.
viii) From the source word ‘Sanb’
The city of Multan was formerly called as Sanb or Sanābpur (Hunter,
1908). Fikri (1997) reported the meaning of the word Sanb as ‗to become
nearer to God‘ and hinted that the name of the Saraiki language might have
roots in this former name of Multan.
ix) From the source word ‘Sarāīragh’
A Baloch writer (Mari, online) considering the location of the Saraiki
region relative to the Balochi speaking area, claims that the word Saraiki
has in fact originated from the Balochi word Sarāīragh used in the
meaning of ‗the lower‘ or ‗slope‘.
x) From the source word ‘Sar’
Sindh was brought under the Arabs‘ rule after it was conquered by
Muhammad Bin Qasim, an Umayyad‘s commander, in 712 A.D. Many
soldiers of his army were from Basrah and Sheeraz, cities of Iran, and were
Persian speaking (Jalibi, 1987). After Muhammad Bin Qasim, many other
governors of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties ruled over the region.
Many commanders, officials of the government and preachers of the
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 68
religion from different strongholds of the Islamic empire reached here and
among them the Persian speaking were in majority (Collection,1971).
After some years, rule of Arabs expanded to Multan and the Sar,
‗boundary‘ between Sindh and Punjab established and due this reason the
language of Multan is called Saraiki, in the meaning of the language of the
Sar ‗border‘ (Hosseini, 1997).
2.2 Derivation of the word form ‘Seraiki’
In Pakistani English media, the word form Seraiki is also used for the name
of the Saraiki language. This form of the name, however, cannot be directly
implied in any account of the derivation.
2.3 Derivation of the word form ‘Siraiki’
Two source words Siro and Sirā are used to derive the form Siraikī of the
name. These accounts are narrated in detail in the following:
i) From the source word ‘Siro’
In linguistic literature, the Saraiki language name has been repeatedly
mentioned to be derived from the Sindhi word Siro. Burton (1849), as far
as I know, is the first person who described this derivation. According to
him the corrupted dialect of Punjabi in Sindh is called Siraiki due to Siro
‗upper Sindh‘, where it is commonly spoken by the people.
Burton, however, has not quoted any local reference for this derivation.
Later on, other linguists like Grierson and Shackle described the same
etymology of the Saraiki language name. Grierson (1894—1928) has
explained that the word Siraiki is derived from Siro which in turn is derived
from sir ‗head‘. From Siro he takes the meaning of extremity of anything
and hence, the upper part of Sindh, from the northern frontier down to, say,
the 27th degree of north latitude, about midway between Larkana and
Sehwan. And from Siraiki he takes the meaning of ‗the language of the
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 69
upstream country‘. Shackle (1976:2) also derived the word Siraiki from
Siro in the meaning of ‗language of the north‘. He although later reported
that this etymology of the Saraiki language name is not verified (Shackle,
1977:388).
ii) From the source word ‘Sirā’
Hakeem Faqeer Ilahi Bakhsh (1960) claimed that the region between
Bhakkar and Multan was once called Sirā and, the Sirāī people and the
Siraikī language are after the name of this region. His claim has also been
narrated in Pervaiz (2001) and Rasoolpuri (2010). Later, Kalanchvi (1994)
claimed that the whole Saraiki region in fact has been called Sirā or Siro in
Sindh and its people and their language therefore have been called Sirāīs
and Siraikī, the latter of which is now called Saraikī.
2.4 Derivation of the word form ‘Suraiki’
On the internet, I have also seen the word form, Suraiki, to be used for the
Saraiki language name. There is an account which supports this form of the
name. There lived Asury people who worshiped the Sun. The Sanskrit
word Asury is derived from Surya ‗Sun‘ as mentioned in (Javaid, 2004).
Asury people ruled over Sindh for three thousand years and they spoke
Asury or Asurki (Zami, 1970) which later took the present form Suraiki.
The word form Suraiki could also be assumed to be directly derived from
the word Surya ‗Sun‘.
2.5 Derivation of the word form ‘Sraiki’
In an account it is said that a Hindu, Sri Ram Kysath, of Uch was a great
literary figure and author of many books. The language was named ‗Sri
Ram Puri‘ after his name (Hasan, 2001). This name with the passage of
time became Sraiki. Zami (1970) explains that the meanings of Sri/Shri in
Sanskrit and Hindi are chief, scholar and intellectual and therefore the
Sraiki language means the language of chiefs, scholars and intellectuals.
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 70
3 Negating the derivation of the name from the source
word ‘Siro’ or ‘Sira’
There are some problems in the derivation of the word form Siraiki from
the Sindhi word Siro. One is of the adding the suffix –kī to it. In Sindhi -kī/-
kā/-ke suffixes are rarely used; instead the native -jī/-jo/-je suffixes are
used. Names of Sindhi dialects, however, have been made by adding the
Persian suffix –ī to the spatial relational terms representing the regions
where dialects are spoken. For example, Vicholi is derived from Vicholo
‗the central part‘ and Lari is derived from Laru ‗the lower part‘. In the
contemporary literature, (Pirzado, 2009) the dialect of Sindhi spoken in the
upper Sindh has been reported with the name of Siroli derived from Siro.
Were the Saraiki language name derived from the Sindhi word Siro by
adding the suffix -ī or –jī, its name would have been Siroī or Sirojī
respectively. The suffix -ki in the name hints that the name has not been
made by following the rules of Sindhi morphology.
In Saraiki, however, although genitive suffixes are -dī/-dā/-de/-diyāñ, there
are some words which have been made by adding -kī/-ka/-ke suffixes. For
example, vadhī-kī ‗aggression‘ is derived from vadh ‗out of bound‘ and be-
īmān-kī ‗dishonesty is derived from be-īmān ‗dishonest‘. There are two
cities in the present Sindh, Ghotki and Dahirki, the names of which carry
the -kī suffix and interestingly Saraiki is natively spoken in these cities
(Rasoolpuri, 2010:98). Two names, Belcohki (Burton, 1849) and Hindki
(Turner, 1924), which also carry the -kī suffix, have also been in use to
refer the Saraiki language. If we suppose that the Saraiki suffix -kī is added
to the Sindhi word Siro, one question which still remains there is how
Sirokī transformed into Siraikī while the first one is at least as fluent in
speaking as the second one.
So, the second problem is of the word Siro itself. In Saraiki, Sirā is the
equivalent word to the Sindhi word Siro. An alternate supposition can
therefore be made that the word Siraikī is derived from the Saraiki word
Sirā as it is done by Hakeem Ilahi Bakhsh (1960) and later by Kalanchvi
(1994) as already mentioned in Section 2.3 above. Their claims of some
region to be called as Sirā, however, cannot be authenticated through
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 71
genuine resources. Native speakers would not call their region, where they
lived, by giving it a name like Sirā as some smaller regions are given
spatial relational names in the context of a larger region and those smaller
regions natively are called by their proper names. Furthermore, as already
discussed, the spatial relational nouns are usually used to form the names of
dialects, not the names of languages. If we believe that the name of the
Saraiki language also is derived from a spatial relational noun then the
more plausible account of the derivation seems to be from the word Sar as
mentioned in Section 2.1 rather than the words Siro or Sira.
Believing in the derivation of the language name from a spatial relational
noun Siro has caused the third problem of ambiguity which is present in the
word form, Siraiki. Grierson (1894—1928:9,140) explained this ambiguity
very well as in the following:
―It is evident that this can have two meanings. Either it may mean
‗the Sindhi spoken in Upper Sindh,‘ or it may mean ‗the Lahnda
spoken higher up the Indus than Sindh,‘ and, as a matter of fact, it is
used in Sindh in both these senses. In order to avoid confusion, I
shall henceforth call the former ‗Siraiki Sindhi,‘ and the latter
‗Siraiki Lahnda.‘ There are numerous immigrants from Lahnda-
speaking tracts in Sindh, so that the province has a considerable
population whose language is Siraiki Lahnda. - - - As for Siraiki
Sindhi, an examination of the specimens shows that it differs from
the standard Sindhi of the Vicholo only in having a more clearly
articulated pronunciation, and a slightly different vocabulary. This
does not entitle it to be classed as a separate dialect, and I hence
class Siraiki Sindhi as a form of Vicholi. - - - It is true that the
word ‗Siraiki‘ is employed to indicate a form of speech, but this is
not any dialect of Sindhi.‖
Although Grierson asserts that Saraiki language is not a dialect of Sindhi,
he accepts that the derivation description of its name from Sindhi word Siro
makes it ambiguous to consider it also as a dialect of Sindhi. After Burton
and Girerson, the word Siraiki began to be used to refer to the language of
the upper country and the word Sirais began to be used to mean the men of
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 72
the upper country. It is, for example, evidenced in the gazetteers of Sindh
published in 1907 and 1968:
―In this region there is also a distinct dialect in use, known as Jatki
or Siraiki (i.e., the language of the north country), which is common
to it and part of the Punjab and is regarded by Sindhis as a dialect of
Punjabi. Punjabis, on the other hand, are said to consider it a dialect
of Sindhi.‖ (Aitken, 1907:189)
―The rise of the "Sirais" (men of the upper country), as the Kalhoras
and Talpurs were commonly called in Lower Sind, changed all
this.‖ (Aitken, 1907:116; Sorley, 1968:169)
Lambrick (1975:213) describes that many Jat tribes like Sayals, Joyos and
Khuhawars migrated from neighbouring regions to Sindh in relatively
modern times. They were either disciples or supporters of Kalhoras. The
generic term for all these tribes was used as Sirai which at first meant just
‗a man from the north‘ and later it became an honorific title for the Kalhora
dynasty. Here, again I will argue that some title could not be honorific if it
is derived from some spatial relational noun rather than deriving it from the
proper name of the region. For example, ‗American Lady‘ is honorific than
‗Western Lady‘. Hence I believe that by the term Sarāī one should have
meant ‗a person from the region Sauvīrā‘ which later became an honorific
title for some tribes who migrated to Sindh.
4 Reinforcing the ‘Saraiki’ form of the name
In the previous section I showed that deriving the name from the spatial
relational nouns of Siro and Sira is problematic and is linguistically
unjustifiable. Deriving the name from the Persian word, Sar, however, is
not as much problematic, supposing that by adding the suffix –i to the word
Sar the name became Sari/Sarai which natively used to be called Saraiki.
In this section I show the plausibility of deriving the name from the state
name, Sauvira and report some other facts which reinforce the ‗Saraiki‘
form of the name.
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 73
When the suffixes –ī and –kī are added to the word Sauvīrā, two word
forms are generated, Sauvīrāī and Sauvīrākī. It looks as if the consonant v
with its neighbouring vowels dropped with the passage of time and the
name became simpler as Sarāī or Saraikī. Elision here took place to
make the pronunciation of the name simple from four syllables to three
syllables. In Saraiki, words of four syllables are not so common; shortening
is therefore quite a legitimate process in such cases.
The contraction of Sauvīrāī to Sarāī and hence that of Sauvīrākī to Saraikī
can be best explained by two phonological processes. First is the deletion
of v. In Saraiki the consonant v is not a labio-dental fricative (obstruent) as
it is in English; it is rather labio-dental approximant in Saraiki (Varma
1936:72) which is called a semi-vowel because sometimes it behaves like
vowels in phonological processes like nasalization etc. (Syed, 2009). When
a semi-vowel immediately follows a vowel, it merges into the vowel
because the occurrence of two consecutive vowels which is called hiatus or
umlaut is not accepted in many languages of the world including Saraiki.
This phenomenon is explained by the following two examples in Saraiki:
ro (weep)+vā → ruā not *ro-vā (make someone weep)
pā-va-lī → pao-lī (a caste name)
So, in this process the word Sauvīrāī become Sauerāī. The second process is
the vowel shortening. In Saraiki we don‘t find a word having two long
vowels or diphthongs. If Saraiki takes even a loan word with two long
vowels, it shortens one of the long vowels as the following examples of
Arabic loanwords show:
Arabic → Saraiki
/īmān/ → [imān]
/hārūn/ →[harūn]
/fārūq/ →[farūq]
/kāināt/ → [kaināt]
In all of the above loanwords from Arabic, the first long vowel of the
original Arabic words changes into short vowel in Saraiki. Due to vowel
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 74
shortening the word Sauerāī results into Sarāī.2 The like could be the case
for Sauvīrākī to Sauerākī to Saraikī. Hussaini (1972) also hinted that the
word Saraiki originated from Sauerākī.
The Sarāī tribe mentioned in Section 2.1 might have descended from the
king in whose name the Sauvīrā state was named. Otherwise, it could also
be assumed that people living in the region of Sauvīrā mentioned by
Dani and others were called Sarāī and their language was called the Sarāī
language after the name Sauvīrā as people living in Sindh are called Sindhi
and their language is called the Sindhi language. Some of tribes adopted the
title of Sarāī for them specially those who migrated from Sauvīrā to other
regions, for example, to Sindh (Lambrick, 1975). We get the evidence for
the claim that the present Saraikī language was called Sarāī from
Wathen‘s article (1837:352—353) in which he included alphabets plate for
some languages. On that plate, Sarāī is written as an alternate name for
Multani, presently called Saraikī. An image for that portion of the plate is
shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: An image of alphabets plate from Wathen‘s article showing alternate name Sarai
for Multani language which is now called Saraiki
2 Dr. Nasir Abbas Syed is of the view that the simplification of Sauvirai to Sarai can be
explained with a better theoretical support if the concepts of mora and harmonic serialism
in optimality theory are invoked. I am deeply thankful to him for his valuable directions
and useful remarks on the first and pre-final drafts of this article.
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 75
So, the derivation of the language name, Saraiki, from the proper noun
Sauvira seems to be more plausible as it does not create any kind of
ambiguity, it is according to the naming convention noted by Grierson
(1930) in Indo Aryan forms of speech and furthermore this etymology is
linguistically justifiable. It is important to mention here that some poets of
Saraiki have perhaps referred the same state of Sauvira in their poetry by
giving it a new name of Saraikistan or Saraik (Buzdar, 2014).
To guess about relative number of people agreeing on different forms of
the Saraiki language name, different tokens from five websites were
searched on 19/11/2013 and their number of hits are recorded in Table 1. In
Figure (2a) results are reported after a general search of tokens. In web
search the minus operator is used to make it sure that the retrieved results
should have some specific form exclusively. The results of exclusive search
of tokens are shown in Figure (2b). These results show that the form
Saraiki is more popular among the masses. One can check the trend at any
time in future by repeating the experiment.
Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 76
a) General search of tokens b) Exclusive search
of tokens
Figure 2: Web hits of different tokens
On the internet, in Devanagari script also, the Saraiki form (सराइकी) is much
more common than the Seraiki form (सेराइकी) and the Siraiki form (ससराइकी).
5 Conclusion
In this article it is shown that there exists a huge variety of etymological
descriptions of the Saraiki language name. Total fourteen accounts were
reported here; ten of the accounts dictate the word form Saraiki, two dictate
the word form Siraiki, one dictates the word form Suraiki and one the word
form Sraiki.
Some of the widely believed etymological descriptions were analysed in
detail and it was argued that the derivation of the name from the Sindhi
word Siro is problematic and cannot be verified. The main problem with
this derivation is that people become too confused to determine whether the
Saraiki form of speech is a separate language or mere a dialect of the
Sindhi language. On the other hand the derivation from the source word
Sauvira is according to the naming tenets of the Indo-Aryan languages and
no ambiguity is found in it. The historical and regional facts and knowledge
Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 77
of linguistics imply that the name of the language, Saraiki, is most
probably derived from the source word Sauvira.
So, the linguistic and historical facts and impressions of common people as
noted in Table 1 all advocate that the word form, Saraiki, be used for the
name of the language. Use of other word forms like Siraiki, Seraiki or any
other need to be avoided for the Saraiki language name.
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