Haryanvi

The Haryanvi are the Indo-Aryan people of the plains west and south of Delhi, around Panipat, Karnal and Thanesar, between the Yamuna and the dry Bhattiana frontier. Their Haryanvi language is a Western Hindi tongue grouped with Khariboli and Braj, written in Devanagari and rich in folk song and oral epic.

In ancient times this was Kuru kingdom land, and in the seventh century the heartland of the Pushyabhuti dynasty, whose king Harsha ruled from Thanesar; Timur sacked Panipat in his 1398 invasion.

In 1337 the region belonged to the Delhi Sultanate, later lying at the centre of its wars with the Mughals: Babur won the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 and Akbar the Second in 1556. Its Jat, Ahir and Gujar countryside was fought over after the Mughal decline: Nadir Shah triumphed at Karnal in 1739, the Afghans broke Maratha power at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, and the East India Company annexed the region in 1803.