Dhundhar & Shekhawati · Arid Northwest
Dhundhari and Shekhawati are Rajasthani varieties, close enough to each other to be treated by their speakers as one continuum with a change of accent, and close enough to standard Hindi that they are eroding faster than Marwari or Mewari. What survives longest is not the grammar but the vocabulary of two specialised trades — the merchant's accounting terms and the printer's and mason's process words — because those have no Hindi equivalents that mean the same thing.
Speech varieties
The Jaipur basin register. Closest of the Rajasthani varieties to standard Hindi in vocabulary, and therefore the one that gives way to it first in the city.
Speakers: Field estimates run to around 15 million; census returns record most of them as Hindi
Spoken across Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu, and usually classed with Dhundhari while its speakers hear it as leaning towards Marwari. This is the variety the merchant diaspora carried to Calcutta and Bombay, where it is what people mean by "Marwari" as a spoken language.
The eastern hill register around Neem Ka Thana, Udaipurwati and Khetri, transitional between Shekhawati and the Ahirwati of the Haryana side.
Spoken across the Narnaul, Mahendragarh and Rewari tract on the other side of the administrative line. It is the clearest evidence that this region does not end where the state does.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Chowkri चौकड़ी | One of the nine rectangular wards of the 1727 Jaipur plan. Two of the nine were displaced by the hill on the north side, which is why the grid is a nine-square scheme that does not look like one on a map. |
| Chaupar चौपड़ | The wide square formed where two of the plan's main streets cross, with a fountain or tank at the centre. Jaipur has three, and they still work as the city's addresses. |
| Rasta रास्ता | A side street in the Jaipur plan, below a bazaar and above a gali in the hierarchy, and named for the trade assigned to it — Maniharon ka Rasta for the bangle makers, Khajane Walon ka Rasta for the stone carvers. |
| Araish or ala gila अरैश / आला गीला | Wet-on-wet lime plaster work — the true fresco technique, in which the pigment is taken into the setting lime. Ala gila translates roughly as "damp niche" and describes the working condition, not the picture. |
| Chejara चेजारा | The mason-plasterer community who laid the araish and, in most Shekhawati towns, painted it as well. |
| Chhipa छींपा | The block-printing community of Bagru, Sanganer and the printing villages. The word means the printer. |
| Dabu दाबू | The mud-and-gum resist paste printed onto cloth to block the dye. Literally "that which presses down", from the act of pressing the block into the paste tray. |
| Harda हरड़ | Myrobalan, used to pre-treat cloth so the mordant will hold. It leaves the ground a warm ivory rather than white, which is how a naturally dyed print can be told from a bleached one. |
| Syahi स्याही | The black dye liquor made by fermenting scrap iron with jaggery for several weeks. The same word means ink. |
| Hundi हुंडी | A bill of exchange payable by a correspondent firm in another town, honoured on reputation rather than on any legal instrument. The device that let a Shekhawati family move money between Calcutta and Churu without moving any. |
| Parta पड़ता | The daily working-out of profit and loss that a firm's manager was expected to send the head of the house — a same-day account of the position, decades before anyone called it management reporting. |
| Bahi-khata बही-खाता | The bound ledger, written in Mahajani script and opened afresh at Diwali, when the old book is closed and worshipped along with the account of the year. |
| Chhatri छतरी | A domed cenotaph over a cremation site. In Shekhawati these carry the best-preserved frescoes, for the practical reason that they are the one building type nobody lived in and nobody repainted. |
| Bas बास | A hamlet named for the family that founded it, as in Kashi ka Bas. The Shekhawati settlement pattern is full of them, and a surname in a place name here is usually literal. |
| Gindad गींदड़ | The Shekhawati Holi dance around the nagara drum, and the season it runs through. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Jahan na pahunche gaadi, wahan pahunche Marwari | Where the cart cannot reach, the Marwari does | Said across north and east India about the trading families from this belt, admiringly, resentfully or both. The later version substitutes the railway for the cart, which is closer to what actually happened. |
| Baap bado na bhaiya, sabse bado rupaiya | Neither father nor brother is the greatest — the rupee is | A merchant-country proverb quoted as a joke and used as a warning. It is worth setting against the fact that the same families endowed schools, wells and hospitals at home with the money it refers to. |
| Hare ka sahara, Khatu Shyam hamara | The support of the defeated is our Khatu Shyam | The Khatushyamji epithet, from the story of Barbarik, who gave up his head before the battle and was granted worship in Krishna's name. It is painted on trucks, shopfronts and pilgrim banners across the region. |
| Sawai | One and a quarter | The title Jai Singh II took and every Jaipur ruler used after him, claiming to be a quarter more than any peer. The city flag flies a smaller pennant beside the main one to stand for the extra quarter — a boast turned into a piece of vexillology. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Dhundhar & Shekhawati. (19)