The Source Book On Sikhism

Philological importance of Punjabi

Punjabi is a language and not a dialect of any other language. It leads an independent life, like other well-known languages - Hindi, Bengali, English or German. The study of this language is important, not only because it is one of the most widely spoken languages of India, but also because Punjabi has preserved some of the rarest phonological and structural peculiarities of the ancient Aryan speech, from which have sprung up the majority of Indian and European languages of today. No student of Aryan philology can, therefore, afford to ignore Punjabi.