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JUNE, 1903.) EARLY PUBLICATIONS OF THE SERAMPORE MISSIONARIES.
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This information is followed by the following important statement:- In our prosecution of it (i. e., our object), we have found, that our ideas relative to the number of languages which spring from the Sungskrit, were far from being accurate. The fact is, that in this point of view, India is to this day almost an unexplored country. That eight or nine languages bad sprong from that great philological root, the Sungskrit, we well knew. But we imagined that the Tamul, the Kurnata, the Telinga, the Guzrattee, the Orissa, the Bengalee, the Mahratta, the Panjabee, and the Hindoostance, comprised nearly all the collateral branches springing from the Sungskrit language, and that all the rest were varieties of the Hindee, and some of then, indeed, little better than jargons scarcely capable of conveying ideas,
But although we entered on our work with these ideas, we were ultimately constrained to relinquish them. First, one language was found to differ widely from the Hindee in point of termination, then another, and in so great a degree, that the idea of their being dialects of the Hindee seemed scarcely tenable. Yet, while they were found to possess terminations for the nonds and verbs distinct from the Hindee, they were found as complete as the Hindee itself; and we at length perceived, that we might, with as mucb propriety, term them dialects of the Mahratta or the Bengalee language, as of the Hindee. In fact, we have ascertained, that there are more than twenty languages, composed, it is true, of nearly the same wordt and all equally related to the common parent, the Sungskrit, but each possessing a distinct set of terminations, and, therefore, having equal claims to the title of distinct cognate languages. Among these we number the Juypore, the Bruj, the Oodnypore, the Bikaneer, the Mooltanee, the Marawar, tbe Maguda (or South Bahar), the Sindh, the Mythil, the Wuch, the Kutch, the Harutee, the Kosbula, &c., languages, the very dames of which have scarcely reached Europe, but which have been recognized as distinct languages, by the natives of India, almost from time immemorial.
That these languages, though differing from each other only in their terminations and a few of the words they contain, can'scarcely be called dialects, will appear, if we reflect, that there is in India no general language current, of which they can be supposed to be dialects. The Sangskrit, the parent of them all, is at present the current language of no country, though spoken by the learned nearly throughout India. It's grammatical apparatus, too, the most copions and complex perhaps on earth, is totally unlike that of any of its various branches. To term them dialects of the Hindee is preposterous, when some of them, in their terminations, approach nearer the Bengalee than the Hindee, while others approximate more nearly to the Mahratta. The fact is, indeed, that the latest and most exact researches have shown that the Hindee has no country which it can exclnsively claim as its own. Being the language of the Musulman courts and camps, it is spoken in those cities and towns which have been formerly, or are now, the seat of Musulman princes ; and in general by those Musulmans who attend on the persons of European gentlemen in almost every part of India. Hence, it is the language of which most Europeans get an idea before any other, and which, indeed, in many instances, terminates their philological researches. These circumstances have led to the supposition, that it is the language of the greater part of Hindoostan ; while the fact is, that it is not always understood among the common people at the distance of only twenty miles from the great towns in which it is spoken. These speak their own vernacular language, in Bengal the Bengalee, and in other countries that which is appropriately the language of the country, which may account for a circumstance well known to those gentlemen who fill the judicial department; namely, that the publishing of the Honourable Company's Regulations in Hindoostanee has been often objected to, on the ground that in that language they would be unintelligible to the bulk of the people in the various provinces of Hindoostan. Had this idee been followed up, it might have led to the knowledge of the fact that each of these various provinces bas a language of it's own, most of them nearly alike in the bulk of their words, but differing so widely in the grammatical terminations, as when spoken, to be scarcely intelligible to their next neighbours.'
