1 Para, 326.
2 Chap, V. THE LANGUAGES OF THE PEOPLE.
3 Part IH.—Comparative Sketch of Hindi, Panjabi, and Sindhi.
4 PART IIL—COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF HINDI, PANJABI, AND SINDHE*
5 326. The languages of the Western Gaudian group.—The Gaudian speech of cis-Himalayan
6 India comprises seven languages, Hindi, Panjabi, Sindhi, Géjarati, Marathi, Oriya, and Bangali. Of these
7 Oriya is not represented at all in the Panjab, while Gajarati, Marathi, and Bangali are only spoken by a
8 few casual immigrants, by the Pérsis of our shops, or by the Bengali Babu of our offices. Sindhi proper is
9 spoken by only 5,128 people; but it acquires importance from the fact that Jatki, which is the language
10 of a million and a half of the inhabitants of the Province, is a dialect of Sindhi, or, to say the least, stands
11 half-way between that language and Panjabi. Thus the three first of the seven languages which form the
12 group are the ones with which we have to deal.
13 “Of these three languages,” Mr. Beames writes, “ Hindi is the most important. It is the language of the people from the Panjéb
14 to Bengal. Under the general term Hindi are included many widely difering dialects, so widely differing indeed that it is very
15 difficult to say what Hindi is and what it is not, The word itself is foreign, and introduced by the Mahomedans to whom the
16 country was known by its Persian name of Hind; while the natives, on the rare occasions when they used any one common
17 “ appellation for the whole country, knew it as Bbératavarsha, Hindi then strictlp means the language of India, As the two
18 “great ns of Prakrit, the Sauraseci and Magadhi, drew apart and gradually developed into the modern dislects, those of the
19 “outlying portions of the Aryan territory took the names of the kingdoms or provinces in which they were spoken, Thue tbe
20 "Hindi of Orissa became known as Oriya, that of Bengal ‘as Bengali, and go on. Bat thore remained in the centre a mass of
21 dialects, for which there was no provincial name aufficiently definite or suffigiently permanent. These gonsequently have continued
22 “to be called Hiadi. Bnt recent researches have proved that under this general name aro included dialects derived from the
23 “ Sauraseni, and thus pertaining to the western group of Indo-Aryan speech, aud dialects belonging to the eastern or Magadhi group.
24 “ Had there not been Rr many centuries aa indepen it kingdom of Bengal there seems to be no reason why the Bhojpuri, Maithili,
25 “and Magadbi dialects of Bebar should not bave been, together with Bengali, treated as one language called Pirbi or Hastern Hindi,
26 “In the opposite direction bad not the Mabomedans imposed on the country between the Satluj and the Indus the Persian name of
27 “the Pany 45 “or five waters,” no one would ia all probability have ever heard of Panjsbi as a distinct langaage; we should have
28 “merely had one more dislect of western Hindi. Simitarly the Arab conquests in Sindh secured for that Province an independent
29 iy sien, 88 for ite language 3 name and on individuality which in spite of its marked peculiarities it would otherwise not
30 ve obtained,
31 “ \t-was apparently doring the 11th or r2th century A.D. that the dialects included under the generic term Hindi first began
32 “totake their present shape. At that time neither Gujarati, Panjébi, nor Sindhi were yet dofuitely separated from Hindi
33 “or from each other.
34 “ Of the two groups into which the Hindi dialects fall, the western has been the most fortunate. Upon tho Braj, the Principal
35 “member of the group, have been based first the Urdu the lingua franca of the greater part of India, and latew the High Hindi,
36 “ the literary langaage of the whole Hindi area."
37 . The composition of the three languages.—Our three languages, or Hindi, Panjabi and Sindhi,
38 are 7 of Prakrit origin ; but all three have a large admixture of Arabic and Persian and even Turkish
39 words, which the languages of North-Western India have borrowed from their Musalmén conquerors where
40 those of the east and south have gone back to the original Sanskrit. At the same time Hindi stil] bears
41 clearer marks of its Sanskrit origin than does any other of the Gaudian tongues, the Sauraseni Prakrit
42 of North-Western India from whic it is derived, and which is still the sacred language of the Jains,
43 having been a dialect of special purity*. In Panjabi, the language of a Province where Mahomedan predo-
44 minance has been more widely extended and is of older date than in the Hindi-speaking tract, the propor-
45 tion of words of which the Sanskrit origin is at once apparent is smaller, and the admixture of foreign terms
46 larger than in Hindi; while the language of Sindh, the first part of India to be brought under the influence
47 of Islam, possesses hardly a single word in its original Sanskrit form.
48 “This, writes Mr, Beames, ‘“ie one of those cases in which we observe a regular gradation from west to east, In the extromo
49 “west we have Sindh and the Panjéb, with a vast majority of Musalman inhabitants, anda large amount of Arabio worde, contrasted
50 “with a very scanty allowance of "Pateamnae + Going cast we come into the great central Hindi arca, where tho balance between the
51 “ two races 18 more even, the numerical superiority ‘of the Hindua being balanced by the greater intelligence of the Mahowedans; and
52 “here we find consequently the habit of borrowing from Persian kept up side by aide with recurrence to Sanskrit, such recurrence,
53 “however, being lesa frequent in consequence of the already existing abundance of Tadbhara words. Further east again, in Bengal
54 “‘and Orissa, there is an immense majority of Hindus, while the Mahomedan element consists chiefly of races of Indian origin con-
55 * verted to Isldm after their language bad finally adopted its present form; ands a natural roault their specch contains a maximum
56 “of Tatsaunas, With regard to the Arabie and Persian element, however, it maat be observed that in all the languoges it ia etill an
57 “alien. It has not woven itself into the grammar of any of them. All the Arabic words in Hindi or any other language are uouns,
58 “or participial forms used as nouns. They conform to their own grammatical rules as strictly, in the mouth of @ correct speaker, a6
59 “ though the rest of the sentence were pure Arubic, Rarely aud quite exceptionally occur snch words 28 taksflna, kabtilna, ddégkana,
60 “where Arabic and Persian nouns have been furnished with a Hindi termination; but the naval form is taksil karna, where tho
61 “Hindi verb does sll the grammatica) work, and the Arabic noun is unaltered and uninflected throughout. When. they are used as
62 “notins they take the aeual poat-positions indicative of case, but as these post-positions ara merely appended to them without caus-
63 “ing any internal change in their structure, it cannot be said that they are at all affected."
64 ; 38. The structural development of the three languages.—Here again I quote from Mr. Beames
65 as follows :— : :
66 “Looking upon the change from a synthetical to an analytical atate as progress and development, not as corraption or decay,
67 * it may be interesting to institute comparison between the several languages in this respect. And here, as might be expected, we
68 # find in most instances that those languages which are most prone to the use of ‘Tatsama worde aro also moat backward in devolop-
69 “ mont.
70 1 For the source whence this sketch {s chiefly compiled, see the end of section 300 supra.
71 2 For a most interesting discussion of the probability that the Magadhi Prdkrit was once the vernacular of almost the whole
72 of Northern India, but was displaced from Sindh, the Panjab, and the upper Ganges Valley by an immigration, probably from. Western
73 Réjpdténa, of an Aryan people speaking the closely allied yet distinct Sauraseni, sec poges xxxi, xxxii of the introduction to
74 Hirnte’s Grammar of the Gaudian Languages.
75 2 Tatsama and Tadbhava are two convenient terms used by Sanskrit grammarians. Tatsama or “the same as it” describes
76 words taken straight from the Sanskrit aiter the language into which they were introduced had developed and assumed its present
77 form, and which therefore retain their Sanskrit garb and remain foreign words. Tadbhava or “of the nature of it" is applied to words
78 which, derived from the Sanskrit, have developed with the language of which they form a part and have conformed with ita genius,
79 but have not undergone such alteration in the process as to obscure their Sanskrit derivation,
80 168