Scholars debate Gilchrist's role in the distillation of Hindustani into the modern languages of Hindi and Urdu, but according to Gilchrist, the rise of the new prose tradition was also the "bifurcation of Khariboli into two forms – the Hindustani language with Khariboli as the root resulted in two languages (Hindi and Urdu), each with its own character and script." He not only discovered/invented the Hindustani language, but he was credited as a great patron of Urdu and indirectly the reinvigoration of Hindi. During his time at Fort William College, he encouraged the use of the purer form of Khariboli from which contemporary Hindi evolved. In the words of K.B. Jindal, author of "A history of Hindi literature": "Hindi as we know it today is the product of the nineteenth century."