Indian Antiquary Vol 39

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 74

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1910.
The student, then, has to practise himself in observation and description of the life around him, and to select some particular aspect thereof to begin upon. These aspects are infinitely various, and whereas some have already been closely studied, others have hardly yet attracted the attention of qualified investigators. For instance, the real beliefs of the Indian people as regards the constitution and duties of Governments have not yet been enquired into without bias: and the study of Indian economics in a scientific spirit has only just begun. In these two regions, the passion and prejudice engendered by political disputation are still dominant, and little progress can be hoped for until they are put aside. On the other hand, much study has already been devoted, with encouraging results, to the bodily structure, languages, ethnology, social organisation, religious beliefs and customs of the Indian peoples.
It is well known that an experienced eye can discern from the appearance of a man from what part of India he comes and to what caste he belongs. Measurements of large numbers of persons of all castes from all parts of India have established the existence of a limited number of racial types, roughly corresponding to the great linguistic divisions of India, and have shown that within the area of each such type is to be found a number of caste sub-types. The bars to marriage arising from caste rules and difference of language account for the persistence of these types, but their ultimate origin may lie in an admixture of foreign blood. It is a good training in observation to learn to distinguish the castes by the eye, and the anthropological measurement of new subjects will doubtless result in the establishment of a number of new types and sub-types, and perhaps in the correction of some of the averages upon which the conception of the type is based. Upon the whole, however, the anthropological measurements hitherto taken in India have yielded somewhat disappointing results. In every civilised country, the rapidity of mental evolution far exceeds that of physical change, and the bodily frame of man remains practically unaltered over great intervals of time and space.
Taking next the study of the living languages, the first remark to be made is that the spoken and not the written language is the proper subject of study, and therefore the lower and not the educated classes are to be singled out for observation. The educated man's pronunciation is largely governed by his reading, and he gives Sanskrit pronunciation to many words that in the mouths of the peasantry retain their Prakrit form. Thus, where a Maratha Brahman will say smaran as in Sanskrit, a Kunbi will give the word in its Prakrit form as sumaran, though the latter is never to be found in printed Marathi. The first essential for scientific study of the language is careful analysis of its sounds, and minute observation of differences of pronunciation. In Europe the study of phonetics has been brought to great perfection, and whole alphabets of symbols have been devised to represent in writing minute differences of sound that cannot be expressed in ordinary letters. It is not possible to distinguish all these without long special study, nor is it necessary for the ordinary student of language to try to do so. A little practice will give those who have a naturally acute ear a sufficient command of the subject. Thongh the languages of India are being comprehensively treated in Dr. Grierson's great enterprise, the results of which are now being published under the name of the Linguistic Survey of India, much remains to be done in the way of determining dialectal differences in pronunciation and vocabulary.
Moreover, the analysis of the vocabularies of vernacular languages is capable of yielding results of high historical value. Take for instance the familiar word ghoda which is in common use in the Gaudian languages as the name of the horse. Sanskrit dictionaries give a form ghotaka, which is not a genuine Sanskrit word, for it has no Sanskrit etymology or congener, but is a mere Sanskritised form of the vernacular word. What then is the origin of the word ghoda? Now, Chinese authorities tell us that the Western Turks, who first appeared on the frontiers of India in the 6th century, A. D., had a word ghoran, meaning a white horse; and it seems probable that, by an extension of meaning that is common in all languages, this name came to be applied to horses in general, and completely displaced derivatives of the old Sanskrit word aéva. Further investigation is very