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JULY, 1885.]
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as used by Europeans, is merely a vague expression While, however, I folly agree with Mr. Grierson for so many of the Aryan dialects as have not in separating Bihári from the so-called Hindi, I been distinguished by territorial names. I had feel a little difficulty in following him when he partially grasped this fact, though not fully, when divides his newly discovered language into 80 I wrote the remarks on p. 31 et seq. of Vol. I. of many as seven dialects. Indeed, he himself seems my Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan rather doubtful on this point, for he admits on p. 15 Languages of India in 1872. All round the outer of the Introduction that there are in reality only edge of Aryan India is a circle of kingdoms or three dialects, Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magadhi, provinces; Bengal, Orissa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and his seven grammars are, or are to be, made up Sindh, Pañjab, Nepal; and the "Indian," or as the by giving in addition to these three, four mixed Muhammadans called it the Hindi, spoken in forms, such as Maithili affected by Magadhi, each of these places came by degrees to be called Maithili-Bang&li, and so on. All this extremely fine Bangali, Oriya, Marathi, and so on.
classification and subdivision, though it entitles But in the centre there remained a vast area for Mr. Grierson to high rank among scientific philowhich no special name was found, it was merely logists, is rather out of place in hand-books Hind, and its language or languages were all merely intended to teach officials the patois of their Hindi. It has long been known that under this districts. general term were included forms of speech differ- When one comes to look even at the three lead. ing very widely from each other, and it only ing dialects, one finds them so very much alike remained for some scholar to enquire into the that a grammar of any one of them would almost subject and classify these various forms, referring | be a sufficient guide to the whole group. Take for them to their proper relationships. Mr. Grierson instance the pronouns. That of the first person has done this for the Eastern part of the hitherto may be summarised as follows:undefined area, and he has therefore a perfect
Nominative.
Oblique. right to give a name to the form of speech whose independence he has successfully established.
Short Long Short Long Indeed, it is highly probable taat had the province
form. form. form. form. of Bihar, like the neighbouring province of Singular, "I” men ham
morå hamrå Bengal, maintained itself in independence of the
Plural, "we" hamant hamrani hamani hamrani crown of Dehli for any length of time, its language The only deviations from this scheme are would have been called Bihari many centuries that men is not used in Magadhi or South ago.
Maithili; that North Maithili uses moh as In the second place, the researches of Dr. well as mord; that Bhojpuri adds kú to hamani, Hoernle into the obscure subject of the Prakrit and all the dialects use also ham sabh and dialects, have placed it beyond a doubt that these hamrd sabh for the nom, and obl. plural forms of speech fall into two groups, called respec- respectively. The same close similarity runs tively Magadhi, and Saurasêni, the former being through all the parts of speech. Apart from this the elder of the two and at one time probably the defect of over-refining and over-classifying, which only language of Northern India, the latter and is a defect only in so far as it tends to embarrass younger having gradually extended from the west the practical student, these little grammars are as eastwards and pushed the older language before complete and perfect as can be desired. The it, till the domain of Mågadhi lay entirely to arrangement is admirable, being both scientificand the east of a line drawn north and south simple. The rules are clear, and not too numerous, through Benares, though its influence on the and the examples well chosen and carefully worked Saurasen resulted in the growth of a mixed out. "As none of these languages possesses any dialect called Arddha-Magadhi, which seems to literature (with the exception of Maithili, which have extended far to the west. At a later period has a little poetry), there is no recognized standard Magadhi pushed to the south-west through the of speech for any of them, and it is therefore Marath country, but in the valley of the Ganges inevitable that there should be many varying it never seems to have got much further west than
forms for every person of every tense. Mr. the longitude of Benares. From this it follows that Grierson's trained musical ear has enabled him to the dialects spoken in Bihár have very much less detect a very large number of those varintions, connexion with those spoken in the western parte very many more in fact than are apparent to the of the loosely defined and misleadingly designated ordinary observer; and all of these are very fully "Hindi" area than they have with the other given. It would have been well if some effort had speech forms of Magadhi origin, such as Bangali been made to select for each person or tense une and Oriya.
form, to be considered as the standard form, from
