Sanskrit

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Sanskrit must have had many spoken dialects. It was the dialect of Panini which became the standard throughout India. However, we know that there were many other spoken dialects, e.g. the language of the Vedas is slightly different from Classical Sanskrit.

The Kashmiri language is much closer to Vedic Sanskrit than Classical Sanskrit. All the native words of Kashmiri, i.e. excluding those borrowed from Persian or Tibetan, are Sanskritic. It is a proven fact that an ancient dialect of Sanskrit was the mother tongue in Kashmir for a long time. However, in Kashmir it did not develop into a Prakrit but remained pure. Most of the changes that took place were vowel-based. The grammar of Kashmiri is very ancient and is based on Vedic forms, e.g. Kashmiri 'nitam' (please take me) or 'ditam' (please give me). These are found only in Vedic.

The 'purest' form of Kashmiri, i.e. the one least corrupted by Persian, is the Kishtwari dialect, which is spoken by both Hindus and Muslims in the Kishtwar region of JK. Other than Kishtwari, there is the standard Valley dialect.

The Kashmiri language has been facing an onslaught for the last 16 years. Attempts are being made to Persianise it to such an extent that it is changed beyond recognition. Many elements have even denounced Kashmiri as a 'Hindu' language - parallels can be drawn with pre-1972 Bangladesh.

As for script, the original Kashmiri script was Sharada, but the Hindus nowadays write it in Devanagari.