The Grammar of Simplicity: The Gandhari Spirit in Pashto Syntax

By Assad Sharifi

Language is not merely a means of communication — it is the skeleton of thought, the blueprint of a people’s worldview. If vocabulary is the flesh, then grammar is the soul. And when we examine the grammar of Pashto, we find something remarkable: the silent presence of Gandhari still pulsing beneath every sentence.

This is not coincidence. This is the residue of an unbroken heritage.

Gandhari: The Forgotten Simplicity

The ancient Gandhari language was a Prakrit — a natural, street-born language spoken by monks, merchants, and ordinary people in the old Gandharan cities. Prakrits were known for their simplicity and fluid structure compared to the rigid, caste-bound Sanskrit.

The Gandhari dialect favored:

• Direct, subject-verb-object (SVO) or subject-object-verb (SOV) structures.

• Light use of inflection, especially in casual speech.

• Dependency on particles rather than strict conjugation.

• Loose treatment of gender and honorifics in colloquial exchanges.

This mirrors Pashto’s grammatical DNA almost uncannily.

Pashto: A Living Gandharan Syntax

Pashto, for all its poetic richness, is built on a clean, minimal core — a system that values:

• SOV word order (Subject-Object-Verb)

• Flexible noun cases based on ergativity rather than strict nominative-accusative.

• Particles that carry nuanced meaning rather than heavy inflections.

• Economy of structure, especially in spoken Pashto.

This is no modern accident. These patterns are ancient, and they reflect a Gandharan mindset — one that values clarity, balance, and simplicity, rather than ornamental complexity.

The Ergativity Puzzle

One of the most striking features of both Gandhari and Pashto is their relationship with ergativity.

In ergative languages, the subject of a transitive verb takes a special case — something many Indo-European tongues abandoned, but Gandhari and Pashto preserved.

For example:

Pashto	English
ما کتاب ولید	I saw the book (literally: "By me the book was seen.")

This construction isn’t just grammatical — it’s philosophical. It reflects a worldview where actions are not strictly owned by the agent but unfold through them. In other words, the doer is not the absolute center of the sentence — a concept deeply aligned with Buddhist Gandhara's non-egoic thinking.

The Particle Philosophy

In Gandhari, particles like ca, pi, hi played roles similar to Pashto’s خو، لا، هم، نو، بیا.

These particles:

• Modify emphasis.

• Shift emotional tone.

• Mark logical connections.

In both Gandhari and Pashto, the meaning of a sentence often lies in these particles, not in the bare words. It’s not the verb that delivers the soul of the sentence — it’s the little, often-overlooked fillers. The words that, like the Santara (space) in your Sacred Pentology, allow meaning to breathe.

Honorifics: Echoes of Ancient Respect

Pashto has an elaborate but intuitive system of honorifics — soft shifts in verb endings and word choices depending on age, gender, and social rank. Gandhari too had this — though only fragmentary evidence survives in inscriptions and Buddhist texts.

This shared trait shows that even in the syntax, the Gandharan mind valued social nuance:Not to flatten people into grammatical equality, but to honor difference without hierarchy.

Pashto: A Grammar Forged by Geography

Language is often shaped as much by geography as by genes.The harsh yet poetic mountains of the Hindu Kush and the openness of the Gandharan plains forged a speech pattern that needed:

• Brevity (for the harsh climate),

• Directness (for trade and war),

• Flexibility (for multicultural dialogues).

Gandhari and Pashto both answer that call — with syntax that flows like a mountain stream, simple on the surface, but profound underneath.

Finaly The Grammar of Continuity

When you speak Pashto, you are not merely using a modern Iranian language. You are walking a grammatical bridgethat connects you to monks, merchants, artisans, and shepherds from 2,500 years ago.

Their sentences were shaped by the same forces that shape yours:A need for clarity, a love of balance, and an embrace of cosmic humility.

Pashto is not just a language. It is the last living breath of Gandhara.

If the skies remain kind, the next piece in this journey will explore how Pashtun art and Gandharan aesthetics still speak to each other across the centuries.

Until then, dear reader,keep your zra open, your saray honest, and let your syntax reflect the simplicity of an ancient world that never truly left.