# Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi:Hazaar



## Qureshpor

*What Indic word for "thousand" was being used before "hazaar" landed in the subcontinent?*


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## flyinfishjoe

I'm not an expert, but I remember seeing सहस्र _sahasra_ being used before in certain contexts in Hindi articles. If I'm not mistaken, it is the Sanskrit word for thousand.


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## Qureshpor

flyinfishjoe said:


> I'm not an expert, but I remember seeing सहस्र _sahasra_ being used before in certain contexts in Hindi articles. If I'm not mistaken, it is the Sanskrit word for thousand.



*Many thanks! Once again, is "sahasara"used in everyday speech and writing?*


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## flyinfishjoe

No, it's never used in speech and very rarely in writing. I think it is used in certain Hindu religious contexts and some poetry.


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## Faylasoof

flyinfishjoe said:


> I'm not an expert, but I remember seeing सहस्र _sahasra_ being used before in certain contexts in Hindi articles. If I'm not mistaken, it is the Sanskrit word for thousand.


 Isn't it *सहस्त्र *_*sahastra*_ in Shuddh Hindi? Or are both *सहस्र sahasra *and *सहस्त्र sahastra* used? Not in common, everyday Hindi as you say. In Sanskrit it is  *साहस्र saahasra*.


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## greatbear

Yes, it is "sahastra" in shuddh Hindi, and is quite well understood: of course, usage of "hazaar" is much more common in day-to-day life ("sahastra" is seen as more literary). There are also place names like "Sahastra Dhaara" (lit. "thousand springs"), which keep the word always fresh in people's minds, hence it's unlikely to be forgotten soon.


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## Faylasoof

greatbear said:


> Yes, it is "sahastra" in shuddh Hindi, and is quite well understood: of course, usage of "hazaar" is much more common in day-to-day life ("sahastra" is seen as more literary). There are also place names like "Sahastra Dhaara" (lit. "thousand springs"), which keep the word always fresh in people's minds, hence it's unlikely to be forgotten soon.



Thanks!


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## flyinfishjoe

Ah yes, you're right. It seems that I misspelled it.


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## Faylasoof

flyinfishjoe said:


> Ah yes, you're right. It seems that I misspelled it.



That's OK! We are, after all, only human! Yours was close rather to the Sanskrit version!


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## Wolverine9

In Sanskrit it is *सहस्र *(*साहस्र *is a derivative form).

Both *सहस्त्र *and *सहस्र *seem to be current in Hindi.  Does anyone know the reason why this is the case?  Only *सहस्र *should be correct.  Which is the more common pronunciation?

To answer the question in the opening post, _sahas _is one of the NIA forms of _sahasra _and is occasionally still used in Hindi.


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## littlepond

^ From my experience, *सहस्त्र *is the more common pronunciation.


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## Qureshpor

Thank you everybody for your kind input. The reason I asked the question is this. As a school boy I remember using words for units, tens, hundreds in the following way.


ikaa'ii, dahaaii, saiNkRaa, hazaar, dah hazaar, laakh, dah laakh, karoR, dah karoR....and so on.

You can see that if you ignore the word "dah" for "das", the "odd one out" is hazaar, being of Persian origins whereas all the rest are of Indic origins. It seemed strange to me that we had words which go as far as padam and dah padam, there was n't one for "hazaar". Now I know we've had one all the time. It just did n't catch on!


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## Dib

Wolverine9 said:


> Both *सहस्त्र *and *सहस्र *seem to be current in Hindi.  Does anyone know the reason why this is the case?  Only *सहस्र *should be correct.  Which is the more common pronunciation?



As littlepond pointed out, *सहस्त्र *(sahastra) is the more common pronunciation in Hindi. I don't know the reason, but I have noticed this "spurious t" in at least one more Sanskrit-origin word with the "sr" cluster: "strot" (source) < Skt. srotaḥ (current). In my early days of speaking Hindi, I actually once tried to _correct_ a Hindi-speaker's pronunciation of "strot". How naive of me! 

I wonder if Sanskrit "sr" clusters are regularly replaced in Hindi by "str", and not only in these two words. Anybody can cite any other relevant words?

---

Btw. though they look rather different, sahasra and hazaar are exact cognates, i.e. derive from a common ancestral form.


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## marrish

^ Re sahastra, it is not only Hindi but Marathi also (I know only about Marathi, might be others).


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## Wolverine9

Dib said:


> I wonder if Sanskrit "sr" clusters are regularly replaced in Hindi by "str", and not only in these two words. Anybody can cite any other relevant words?



Chaturvedi listed _srashTaa_ and _sraav_, but transcribed the Devanagari incorrectly as *स्त्रष्टा *and *स्त्राव*. The latter forms with "str" are probably common just as _sahastra _and _strot _are.


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## Dib

Given Wolverine9's example above, and an example found in a purely  Sanskrit context today - online Uni Chicago version of Grierson's  Kashmiri dictionary, where occasionally Sanskrit equivalents are given  (the example is: मालतीपुष्पस्त्रक् - the correct word is स्रक्, which, I doubt, has any currency in any modern Indian language), I have a growing suspicion that the स्र > स्त्र shift might be primarily a typographic confusion. They clearly look similar enough in Devanagari to confuse Optical Character Recognition softwares, as these online dictionary typos likely demonstrate, and they may confuse human readers too - maybe even more so in old types and press with smudgier prints, or maybe in handwriting (Any input from "native" Devanagari-writing people?). This confusion might have invaded into spoken high register Hindi and Marathi through spelling pronunciation of a small set of words, which are directly borrowed from Sanskrit without a recent native spoken background, but have gained enough currency to be used by Sanskrit-ignorant speakers. That Bengali shows no sign of this confusion (as far as I know) is also consistent with this script-related observation, as in Bengali script they look more different (স্র  - sr; স্ত্র - str) - at least in hand-writing and print, which may be more relevant here: the hindwriting and many (all?) print-types have an extra circle in "str" that does not show up in the Bengali font on my computer, making the two appear more similar than they actually should. I don't know how it will render on your computers.


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## tarkshya

Dib said:


> ...
> Btw. though they look rather different, sahasra and hazaar are exact cognates, i.e. derive from a common ancestral form.



Interesting piece of information! I am in fact interested in the etymology of words, especially the cognates between Sanskrit and Persian. This is a nice example.


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## tarkshya

Interesting headline from Dawn newspaper..

سیلاب سے دو ملین افراد متاثر، این ڈی ایم اے "do million" ! I thought "bees laakh" was a more natural number to use. Is it a common practice in Pakistan to use numbers like million and billion instead of natural hazaar, laakh, karoR etc?


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## panjabigator

Qureshpor Sahib, you do find ਸਹਸ in Gurbani for ਹਜ਼ਾਰ, though I have never heard it in speech. I suspect that it would be understood by Punjabi speakers, or at least ones versed in Punjabi poetry, Gurbani, and/or Sant Bhasha.


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