“In the region of Hariyanau which has numerous villages, and whose inhabitants are ever happy, there is the large city called Dhilli, favoured by Indra, destroying hostile armies, a mass of wealth, boiling the blood of the enemy.”
This is how Delhi is described in 1132 by the Agravala Digambara poet Shridhar in his hagiography of the 23rd Jain Tirthankara Parshvanath, as one of the big cities of the "Haryana region".
In the beginning of the 20th century, the British official George Grierson, in his Linguistic Survey of India (1916), mentions a single language spoken in the districts of Delhi, Rohtak, Karnal, and Hisar, along with the South East corner of the state of Patiala (present day Narwana).
The Hariana tract at this time referred to the tehsils of Hissar, Fatehabad, and Hansi, and the eastern part of Bhiwani tehsil. The language, what is today called 'Haryanvi', was known as Jatu in Delhi and Rohtak due to the bulk population of Jats speaking the language in Hariani, Deswali or Desari in the Hariana tract. It was also called Bangaru language in Karnal and Narwana. The survey returned 2.36 lakh speakers of the language from Delhi district.