Sumit Guha, “Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dakhan, 1500-1800” -
[...] Dakhani, like Urdu in north India, was a language of the urban centers and the elite. It was perhaps an errant aspiration to urbanity that led Tukaram's sinful kaliyugina Brahman to pop a pan-vida into his mouth and then use avindha speech. Furthermore, as already mentioned, over time central authority developed a more intrusive presence in the localities. In such a setting, official languages and the power to prescribe them would impact deeply upon the formation of speech communities. Superiors are truly such only in the presence of inferiors; elites, only if they dominate over subalterns. So the court officials that ambitious leaders of gentry clusters invoked, resisted, and emulated were (particularly after the fall of Vijayanagara), Persianized rather than Sanskritized. It was important for local potentates, proprietors of all sorts, and even humble peasant plaintiffs to get some understanding of officialese and polite usage.
[...] Indeed, if we take even a cursory look at the volume of records, orders, summons, and warnings surviving through the troubled sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seems likely that the form of written document that a commoner would most frequently hear or see would be an official document such as a zahirnama, katba, mucalka, dospatra, hakikata, takidpatra, izarpata, dastak, karina, or mahzar. How common an understanding of the structure and function of such documents became is shown by the fact that the immensely popular Eknath (1533-99) and Tukaram (1608-50) both composed devotional poems that played upon these formats. For example, Eknath wrote an arzbeginning:
Arzdast arzdar
bandgi bandenawaz
Alekam salam
Sahebance sevesi
bande sarirakar
Jivaci sekdar
Budhaji karkun
Prgane Sarirabad
Kille Kayapuri Sarkar Sahebanci ajna gheun svar jahlon
Ton pargane mazkuri yeun sarkar kam suru karavayas laglo
ton pargane majkurce jamadar Dambhaji sete ….
[A petition from the slave to the cherisher of slaves, on whom be peace: the writer has the form of the Body, which is bailiff-custodian of Life, together with the clerk who is its Intellect, situated in the subdivision of the Living (follows)
Having received the Lord’s command at the Fort of the Body, I set off for the aforementioned subdivision and began conducting government business. The tax-farmer of the subdivision is Dambhaji …]
This poem ingeniously mimics the structure and tone of reports from touring subordinates to central ministers, down to descriptions of malfeasance and accounts of the writer’s efforts to remedy the situation as a parable for the frail human body beset by evil desires and impending death. So affairs of the pargana (body) on which Budhaji (the consciousness) is reporting are represented as being in disorder, with Kamaji (Desire) as the mahajan (head of the merchants), covetousness as the (female) despandina (hereditary registrar) and Krodhaji (Rage) as the nayakvadi (chief of police), etc. Then Jarasandha, a mace-bearer, brings news that Death in the form of a Brahman auditor (Yamaji Pant) is about to take charge. At this terror the pargana almost empties of life; Kesganv (Hair-ville) turns white; Kanganv (the Earvilles) close their gates; Nakapur (Noseham) begins to run, Gandapur (Anuston) begins to flow, and so on. It ends:
Eka Janardanaka banda
bandgi roshan hoya he arzdast.
Read as Hindustani, which the genitive case-marker “ka” suggests, it means: “Eka (Eknath) is (solely) the slave of Janardana. So that this servitude may be illuminated [by the divine presence] this petition is in the hand.” Janardana of course refers to Krishna; but Eknath’s guru was also named Janardana and is said to have been a fort commandant under the Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar.
