Rajasthan Quiz: Language, Literature and Dialects

In his Linguistic Survey of India he used the name Rajasthani in 1912 for the group of speeches of this region and classified its dialects, replacing older names such as Maru Bhasha and Maru Gurjar.

The tract formed by these two districts in the far south of Rajasthan is called Wagad, and the Bhil population there speaks Wagdi, which carries features of both Rajasthani and Gujarati because of its position on the border.

These four districts of the south east formed the Hada Chauhan country, from which the region takes the name Hadoti and the dialect its name Hadoti or Harauti.

It is the speech of Jodhpur, Pali, Nagaur, Barmer and Jalore, that is of the largest region of the state, and the Dingal poetry of the Charan poets was composed in it; its speakers also carried it across India with the trading communities of Marwar.

Dingal is the literary style built on Marwari, and the Charans used it for heroic verse on battle, honour and self sacrifice, sung in a loud rolling metre; the Veli Krisan Rukmani Ri of Prithviraj Rathore is a celebrated example.

The correct answer is B, Prithviraj Rathore, a prince of the Bikaner house known in tradition as Peethal, who told the story of Krishna and Rukmini in Dingal verse; the poem is counted among the finest works in the language and is the one most often cited as a Dingal…

The correct answer is A, Chand Bardai, who is remembered as the court poet of Prithviraj Chauhan and the author of the Prithviraj Raso, the long martial epic that made the Rasau form famous, although historians treat many of its details and dates with caution because the text grew by…

He served the Bundi court in the nineteenth century and wrote the Vansh Bhaskar, a long chronicle of the Hada rulers in verse, and the Veer Satsai, seven hundred couplets of martial feeling that were widely recited in the period of the revolt of 1857.

Nainsi was the minister of Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar in the seventeenth century, and besides the Nainsi Ri Khyat he compiled this district by district record of the parganas of Marwar, with details of villages, revenue and families, which is why he is called the Abul Fazl of Rajasthan…

The correct answer is B, Vijaydan Detha, often called Bijji, who spent his life at Borunda in Jodhpur district gathering the oral tales of the countryside and retelling them in Rajasthani in the many volumes of Bataan Ri Phulwari; several of his stories became well known Hindi films.

The academy for the Rajasthani language, its literature and culture works from Bikaner, publishing works in Rajasthani and honouring writers in the language.