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Article: Arabic in India: a survey and classification of its uses, compared with Persian.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- July 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Arabic in India carries an almost absolute Islamic identity, to the extent that even the study of pre-Islamic pagan poetry is ascribed to a spiritual impetus. This is not surprising, for it is generally acknowledged that the Arabic language has a predominantly sacred character outside the Arabic speaking Middle East. However, the functional manifestation of the language in the subcontinent has great historical significance and has not been systematically explored. (1) To this end, this paper presents a survey of the uses of Arabic in India from its arrival in the eighth century through the twentieth, under the following eight-part classification: liturgy, teaching and ...