equal in number and still the communication takes
place between them. There are also Punchi and Kagani speakers around them.
It is interesting to note in a village where there is a mixed population the
Gujjars usually will have their settlements on a much higher altitude than
the non Gujjars.
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Further their contact with various languages depends upon the place of
habitation, the routes to their summer patures and trade with the people.
Thus in the area where whatever the language is dominant must have
influenced Gojri of that region. So Gojri in Jammu and Kashmir is
influenced by Dogri, Pahari, Kashmiri etc. And because of contacts with
various languages in different regions all Gujars in Jammu and Kashmir may
not be speaking the same variety of Gojri rather there are regional
variations within the Gojri of Jammu and Kashmir, Baniari boli (the
language of Dodhi Gujars) has more influence of Dogri and Gojri spoken in
Kashmir villages must have the influence of Kashmiri. A systematic
investigation may relect the regional variations in Gojri of Jammu and
Kashmir.
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According to local sources Gojri of Poonch is more acceptable because
it has less influence of other languages over it. And there is another
notion that Gujars came from Gujarat in batches and went on settling in
Jammu and Kashmir and the Gujjars of Poonch and Rajauri districts belong
to the later stock as compared to the Gujars of other districts such as
compared to the Gujars of other districts such as Srinagar, Anantnag etc.
As a whole there is no doubt about that Gujjars are immigrants in Jammu
and Kashmir.
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Gojri is, without doubt, an Indo-Aryan language of Central group. There
are references to Gojri/Gujuri in Grierson’s LSI and in the work The
Languages of the Northern Himalayas of T. Graham Bailey (1908). Their
descriptions are very brief and they hardly speak of phonetics and
phonology of this language. Grierson points out the closeness of Gojri
with Rajasthani in 190110 "-it is a curious and
noteworthy fact that we find in the mountains of Kashmir a dialect of a
language spoken so many hundreds miles to their south east." To be
very specific Grierson has classified Gujari as a dialect of Rajastani
closer to Mewati and the same is being followed by Chatterji.11
In Grierson’s words, "One of two things is quite certain either
Gujuri is a form of Rajastani or conversely Rajasthani is a form of Gujuri,
and resemblance of Gujuri to Mewari is very striking. But still closer is
the resemblance of Gujari to the Mewati dialect of Rajasthani, spoken in
Alwar some distance to north of Mewar and separated from the state by the
territory of Jaipur. Putting the linguistic position of Gujuri in its
broadest terms, we may say that it is related to the dialects of East
Central Rajputana and that its closest relative is Mewati"12
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Presently Gojri shares certain common retentions with Panjabi within
the Central group of Inner-sub-
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10 Grierson, G.A.Op.cit. §
586.
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11 Chatterji, S.K. The Origin and Development of
the Bengali Langauge, Vol.I, 1926.p.9.
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12 Grierson, G.A. Linguistic Survery of India
Vol. IX, Part IV, Reprint 1968. p. 925.
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