As a language, Urdu has a most composite ancestry, and comprises
elements derived from the original languages of India, from Sanskrit,
the tongue of the Aryan invaders, from Persian, from Turkish, from
Kurdish and other Tartar tongues, from Arabic, even from Egyptian and
Abyssinian; and later from such very foreign sources as Portuguese,
Dutch, French, and English. The political phases through which India
has successively passed have left their record in this hybrid character
of the language. The process of its evolution really began long before
the Christian era, when Sanskrit--the language of the Aryan
conquerors--began to commingle with the languages of the peoples in
Upper India, or Hindustan. From this union came the prakrits, or
vernaculars. The one which at the time of the Buddha was current in
Magadha--parts of the present British Behar and Orissa and the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh--was known as Magdhi, and the message
delivered by the great Teacher was recorded in that vernacular. This
spread rapidly with the growth of Buddhism, and became the court and
official language of a large part of Upper India. The language which
was developed in the north and north-west was called at first by the
simple name Bhasha (Bhakha), which means the usual tongue, but later
took the name of Hindi, and is written in the Sanskrit (Deva-nagari)
character.

At the beginning of the eighth century the Muslims appeared as
conquerors in India. Mahmoud of Ghuzni, about 1,000 A.D., won great
victories, and from that time Bhasha began to be modified in the towns.
Four centuries later Tamerlane of the Mogul race entered India and
took Delhi, laying the foundation of the Empire definitely established
by Babar in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Hindi became
saturated with Persian, itself already laden with many Arab words
introduced through conquest and religion. The market of the army was