A Grammar of the Hindustani Language
Overview
A Grammar of the Hindustani Language, first published in 1813 by John Shakespear, stands as one of the most influential linguistic works produced during the colonial period in India. This comprehensive grammar went through multiple editions (1813, 1818, 1826, 1843, 1855) and served as an essential text for British civil servants and military officers learning Hindustani, the lingua franca of North India.
Author Credentials
John Shakespear (1774-1858) was a British Orientalist scholar who, remarkably, never visited India despite being the foremost authority on Hindustani language instruction in Britain. Born in Lount, Leicestershire, to a farming family, he received his early education in local parish schools before studying Arabic under John Richardson in London. This trajectory from humble rural origins to linguistic prominence was facilitated by patronage from Lord Rawdon, demonstrating the class mobility possible through Oriental scholarship in this period.
Shakespear held the position of Professor of Hindustani at the Royal Military College, Marlow (from circa 1805) and later at the East India Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe (from 1809 until his retirement in 1829). His qualifications rested not on firsthand experience of India but on mastery of texts, dictionaries, and interactions with native speakers in Britain. This textual rather than experiential expertise was typical of metropolitan Orientalism and shaped his pedagogical approach.
East India Company Context
The production of Shakespear’s grammar was intimately connected to the East India Company’s expanding territorial control and administrative needs in early nineteenth-century India. Following the establishment of Fort William College in Calcutta (1800) by Lord Wellesley, language instruction became central to colonial governance. While John Gilchrist’s pioneering grammar of Hindustani (1796) had been the standard text, it went out of print and was considered too elaborate for practical use.
Shakespear’s grammar emerged as a more accessible, condensed alternative specifically designed for the Company’s military officers and civil servants who needed functional proficiency rather than scholarly mastery. The work was commissioned as part of the systematic training program at Addiscombe, where future administrators prepared for service in India without leaving England. This metropolitan training site reflects the institutionalization of colonial knowledge production.
The third edition (1826) was explicitly marketed as “an essential text for the dedicated servant of the East India Company,” indicating its official status within the colonial bureaucracy. The grammar’s commercial success allowed Shakespear to accumulate considerable wealth from book sales, enabling him to purchase Langley Priory upon retirement—a material demonstration of how Oriental scholarship supported upward mobility within British class structures.
Methodology
Shakespear’s methodological approach was grounded in comparative philology and classical grammatical frameworks. The grammar systematically covered Persian and Nagari writing systems, pronunciation, morphology (nouns, pronouns, verbs, numerals), and syntax. His framework imposed Latin-derived grammatical categories onto Hindustani, a common practice in colonial linguistics that both illuminated and distorted indigenous linguistic structures.
The work drew heavily on John Borthwick Gilchrist’s earlier scholarship while condensing it for practical application. Shakespear’s major innovation was pedagogical rather than theoretical—he created exercises, paradigms, and examples suited to classroom instruction of British learners. Later editions included a supplementary grammar of Dakhni (Deccan Hindustani), recognizing regional linguistic variation.
His dictionary work (first published 1817, with subsequent editions in 1820, 1834, 1849) complemented the grammar. Originally a revision of Hunter’s dictionary, it evolved through continuous improvement across editions, demonstrating an empirical, accumulative methodology characteristic of nineteenth-century philology.
Orientalist Scholarship
Shakespear’s work exemplifies metropolitan Orientalism—the study of Eastern languages and cultures from European centers of learning. Unlike earlier scholar-administrators like William Jones or Halhed who worked in India, Shakespear represented a new generation that systematized and institutionalized Oriental knowledge within British educational establishments.
His approach participated in the broader project of making Indian languages legible and accessible to colonial power. By codifying Hindustani grammar according to European linguistic models, he rendered the language teachable, standardizable, and instrumentalizable for administration. This process simultaneously preserved linguistic knowledge and subordinated it to colonial purposes.
The grammar contributed to the emergence of “Hindustani” as a distinct linguistic category, separate from both Hindi and Urdu—a categorization that reflected and reinforced colonial administrative needs rather than indigenous linguistic practices. This taxonomic work had lasting effects on how South Asian languages were conceptualized and divided.
Contemporary Reception
During Shakespear’s lifetime, the grammar achieved remarkable popularity and commercial success. It became the standard textbook at both Addiscombe and the Royal Military College, ensuring steady institutional demand. Contemporary sources described it as “a remarkably popular grammar to the Hindustani language,” with early editions becoming uncommon due to intensive use.
The multiple editions testify to sustained demand throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Each revision incorporated improvements and expansions, suggesting active engagement from users and reviewers. The addition of Dakhni grammar in later editions responded to practical needs of administrators serving in the Deccan region.
The grammar’s accessibility compared to Gilchrist’s more scholarly work made it the preferred choice for practical instruction. This utilitarian focus aligned with the Company’s emphasis on functional language acquisition for administrative efficiency rather than deep cultural understanding.
Later Critiques
From postcolonial perspectives, Shakespear’s grammar represents the instrumentalization of indigenous languages for colonial domination. The standardization of Hindustani served administrative convenience while contributing to linguistic hierarchies that marginalized regional varieties and classical registers.
Critical scholarship has noted how colonial grammars like Shakespear’s participated in “fixing” languages presumed to be unstable, imposing European grammatical categories, and creating artificial boundaries between Hindi and Urdu that fed communal divisions. The designation of “Hindustani” as the language of colonial administration, as articulated by Gilchrist and systematized by Shakespear, has been critiqued as a colonial invention that disrupted indigenous linguistic pluralism.
The fact that Shakespear never visited India highlights the problematic nature of metropolitan expertise—knowledge extracted from informants and texts, systematized according to European frameworks, then re-exported as authoritative. This dynamic exemplifies what postcolonial theory identifies as epistemic violence.
Contemporary scholars also note the enduring influence of colonial linguistic categories. The Hindi-Urdu division, partly shaped by colonial language policies and codifications, continues to have political and social ramifications in South Asia.
Value as Primary Source
Despite these critiques, Shakespear’s grammar remains valuable for multiple scholarly purposes. As a primary source, it documents early nineteenth-century Hindustani usage, providing lexical, grammatical, and orthographic data for historical linguistics research. The example sentences and paradigms offer insights into language as it was taught and used in colonial contexts.
The work illuminates colonial pedagogical practices and the institutional structures of language instruction at East India Company training facilities. It reveals how linguistic knowledge was produced, authorized, and disseminated within imperial networks.
For scholars of Orientalism and colonial knowledge production, the grammar exemplifies the relationships between language study, administrative power, and imperial ideology. It demonstrates how seemingly objective linguistic description served political projects of governance and cultural domination.
The successive editions provide a longitudinal view of how colonial linguistic knowledge evolved, responding to changing administrative needs and accumulating expertise. Comparing editions reveals the dynamic process of knowledge refinement within colonial institutions.
Finally, the grammar’s influence on subsequent linguistic scholarship—both colonial and postcolonial—makes it essential for understanding the genealogy of South Asian language studies. Many later grammars, dictionaries, and language policies bear traces of categories and frameworks established by Shakespear and his contemporaries.