Sirsa district

Sirsa district (Hindi: सिरसा) is one of the districts of Haryana state, India. Sirsa is the district headquarters, and is located on National Highway 10, 250 km away from Delhi.

Etymology

, Panini's "Ashatadhayayi and Divyavadan". In "Mahabharata", Sairishaka is described as being taken by Nakula in his conquest of the western quarter. It must have been a flourishing city in the 5th century B.C. as it has been mentioned by Panini.

There are a number of legends about the origin of the name of the town. Its ancient name was Sairishaka and from that it seems to have been corrupted to Sirsa. According to local tradition, an unknown king named Saras founded the town in 7th century A.D. and built a fort. The material remains of an ancient fort can still be seen in the south-east of the present town. It is about 5 km in circumference. According to another tradition, the name has its origin from the sacred river Sarasvati which one flowed near it. During the medieval period, the town was known as Sarsuti. It has been mentioned as Sarsuti by a number of medieval historians. The derivation of name Sirsa, is also attributed to the abundance of siris trees ("Albizia lebbeck" (Benth)) in the neighborhood of Sirsa which seems quite plausible for it finds some corroboration also in Panini and his commentator. In the ancient period, Sirsa was also known as Sirsapattan.

Language

Bagri [ Lakhan Gusain 2000. Bagri. Munich: Lincom Europa (Languages of the World/Materials, 384)] , a dialect of Rajasthani language, is spoken by majority of population. Besides, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu are also in use in this district. The linguistic survery of Bagri was carried our by a team of scholars of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 1993 under the supervision of professor Lakhan Gusain, was a major development for linguistic work on Bagri. A lot of research work (given in references) is done on Bagri in recent times.Now, Bagri has a reference grammar, dictionary, primers, and other reference material. The prominent poet on Bagri was Chander Singh "Birkali", who wrote "Loon" and "Badli" poems in the early twentieth century.Some samples of Bagri are:

* क्यूकर है ?
* नास में आन्गळी ना ले
* सलिमों देखण चालसी के ?
* तेरै बळत के है ?
* तन्नै कुचरणीं ही लेणीं है के ?
* टींगर जे तेरै फिन्च्यां मैं लट्ठ प्या दियो नी तो मोरिया ही बोलसी.
* इन्नै आ तनै सलिमों दिखाऊं
* गोळालाठी लगाणी पड़सी तेरै
* क्यामी राफ चोड़ी करै है रे?
* धापली मोती सामैं अंग्रेजी कोनी बोल सकै नी.
* बातां गा पीसा लागै.
* सत्संग मैं घाघरियो ना झड़का

References

*Gusain, Lakhan. 1994. Reflexives in Bagri. M.Phil. dissertation. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University
*Gusain, Lakhan. 1999. A Descriptive Grammar of Bagri. Ph.D. dissertation. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University
*Gusain, Lakhan. 2000a. Limitations of Literacy in Bagri. Nicholas Ostler & Blair Rudes (eds.). Endangered Languages and Literacy. Proceedings of the Fourth FEL Conference. University of North Carolina, Charlotte, 21-24 September, 2000
*Gusain, Lakhan. 2000b. Bagri. Munich: Lincom Europa (Languages of the World/Materials, 384)

External links

* [http://sirsa.nic.in/ Sirsa District- official website]