The Harauti Alphabet

Harauti is written in the Devanagari script (Unicode Block U+0900–U+097F) — the same script used for Standard Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. Devanagari is a Brahmic abugida, written left to right, in which each consonant letter carries an inherent /a/ vowel that is modified or suppressed using diacritical marks called matras.

The Devanagari alphabet used for Harauti includes 33 standard consonants, 11 independent vowels, a set of vowel diacritics (matras), and native Devanagari digits (०–९). Because Harauti uses the same script as Standard Hindi, written Harauti is visually similar to Hindi text, though the two languages differ in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammatical constructions. Harauti shares the Devanagari script with the other Rajasthani languages such as Marwari and Dhundhari, reflecting the common written tradition of Rajasthan.

Harauti is spoken by approximately 3 million people, primarily in the Hadoti region of southeastern Rajasthan — comprising the districts of Kota, Bundi, Baran, and Jhalawar. The 2011 Census of India recorded around 2.9 million speakers of Harauti, though this figure may be undercounted as many speakers identify their language as Hindi in census enumeration.

Beyond Rajasthan, Harauti is also spoken by the Hadoti diaspora in cities across India, particularly in Kota's significant student and trading communities in Delhi, Mumbai, and other urban centres. Kota itself is one of India's largest educational hubs for competitive exam coaching, drawing hundreds of thousands of students annually from across India — many of whom encounter Harauti as the local vernacular language of their host city.

Harauti belongs to the Rajasthani group of Western Indo-Aryan within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Rajasthani languages are spoken across the state of Rajasthan and adjacent areas of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab. Harauti is the principal variety of the southeastern Hadoti region, distinct from Marwari (the western Rajasthani variety centred on Jodhpur), Dhundhari (the Jaipur region), and Mewari (the Udaipur region).

All Rajasthani varieties, including Harauti, are descended from the Apabhramsha of the early medieval period and share features of Western Indo-Aryan including postpositional grammar, verb agreement morphology, and a vocabulary of Old Indo-Aryan origin. Harauti's closest relatives within Rajasthani are Dhundhari (spoken to the northwest in the Jaipur region) and the transitional varieties of eastern Rajasthan and western Madhya Pradesh. The Rajasthani languages as a group are related to Sindhi, Gujarati, and Punjabi within the broader Western Indo-Aryan continuum.

The Hadoti region of southeastern Rajasthan is renowned for its rich cultural and artistic heritage, closely tied to the Harauti language. The two principal cities — Kota and Bundi — are famous for their remarkably preserved Rajput palaces, step wells (baoris), and the Kota–Bundi school of miniature painting. This school, which flourished from the 17th to 19th centuries, is celebrated for its vibrant hunting scenes, court life depictions, and vivid use of colour — particularly the Kota school's bold animal portraiture.

The Chambal river, which flows through the Hadoti region, was historically associated with the dacoits (bandits) of the Chambal ravines — a landscape that features in Harauti folklore and regional identity. The region is home to important Hindu pilgrimage sites including the Garadia Mahadev temple overlooking the Chambal gorge and the ancient Shiva temple at Rameshwar Ghat. Hadoti also has a strong tradition of folk music and performance, including the Teej and Gangaur festivals celebrated with particular enthusiasm in the region.

Harauti differs from Standard Hindi in several important ways, reflecting its status as a distinct Rajasthani variety rather than a Hindi dialect. Phonologically, Harauti preserves the short vowel /o/ in many positions where Hindi has schwa or /a/ deletion, and shows characteristic Rajasthani vowel lengthening patterns. The pronunciation of final vowels in Harauti is more consistent than in Hindi — a feature shared with other Rajasthani varieties and contrasting with the vowel reduction common in Standard Hindi.

Grammatically, Harauti uses distinctive Rajasthani postpositions and case markers not found in Standard Hindi, and the verb conjugation system shows agreements that differ from Hindi. Vocabulary-wise, Harauti retains numerous Rajasthani words of Old Indo-Aryan origin — particularly in domains of agriculture, kinship, and folk culture — that have been replaced in Standard Hindi by tatsama (Sanskrit) borrowings or Urdu-derived terms. The lack of official status means Harauti is rarely taught in schools, and most Harauti speakers use Hindi in formal and written contexts, resulting in a Hindi-Harauti bilingualism typical of Rajasthan.

The ISO 639-3 code for Harauti is hoj. The language is also known as Hadoti (from the Hadoti region) or Harauti. In Glottolog, it is catalogued under the identifier hado1235, reflecting its classification within the Rajasthani subgroup of Western Indo-Aryan. Harauti has no official two-letter ISO 639-1 code, as such codes are assigned only to major world languages.

The ISO 639-3 code "hoj" is the standard reference for Harauti in linguistic databases, language documentation projects, and digital resource repositories including SIL International (Ethnologue) and Glottolog. Harauti has no official recognition as a scheduled language of India — it is subsumed under the Rajasthani language category in census enumeration, and Hindi serves as the official language of Rajasthan. This lack of official recognition means Harauti lacks a standardised literary form, and written Harauti is relatively uncommon compared to spoken usage in daily life across the Kota, Bundi, Baran, and Jhalawar districts.