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108
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1915
Patra in 1872 A. D. He pointed out, amongst other things, that'the h-sound could not be left unrepresented in writing, though the position he assigned to it in the body of a word was not quite correct. His efforts proved futile. Then after a lull of sixteen years, the subject was revived by me in a small treatise on Gujarati Spelling in which I pleaded for the adoption of a phonetic system of writing Gujarati words, on the two-fold ground that our vernacular languages, being evolved out of Sanskrit (an essentially phonetic language) possessed a special phonetic aptitude and their genius was suited, unlike English, to such a system, and that the philological history of the words in our language justified and facilitated the adoption of that system. I wrote to the Director of Public Instruction forwarding a copy of my treatise, and suggesting an inquiry into this question with a view to reform the existing system (or want of system) of spelling. Nothing came out of it. Later on about the year 1904 A. D. when a committee was appointed by the Educational Department to revise the Vernacular Text Books, I made a fresh effort and brought the subject to the notice of the President of the Committee, but with an equal want of success. T It may be noted in passing that between the year 1888 (when my first treatise appeared) and 1904 A. D. the agitation for phonetic spelling was kept up by me by articles in Gujarati magazines and by putting into practice my system in all my writings. It succeeded to some extent in influencing the method of spelling in the case of several books written by private persons unconnected with the Educational Department.
Before the First Gujarati Sahitya Parishad in 1905. A. D. I read a paper on Gujarati spelling wherein I reviewed the whole history of the question, and discussed all the moot points and offered my viows and suggestions. The result of all this agitation is that my efforts have borne fruit through their very feiure. For it must be remembered that outside the limits of the Departmental Literature there exists a wide field, and, while the Educational Department and some of its devotees have stuck to the orthodox system of unscientific and historically untrue spelling, a number of present day writers and others have accepted the rational system and are freely using this h in the words in which it is really sounded, as a glance at any recent book or monthly magazine will show; thus pointing to the signs of the times and leaving no doubt that this h has come to stay, as has been admitted to me even by the adherents of the orthodox school.
I must not omit to mention the name of the late Mr. Madhavlal H. Desai, Principal of the Ahmedabad Training College, who, as Editor of the Gujarat-Sala Patra and in other
T I must frankly state here that the composition of this Committee was far from representative, as it mainly consisted of gentlemen wedded to the existing system, and the results of their labours practically showed that they adhered to the policy of clinging to the existing departmental practice, and where any changes were introduced they made matters worse, instead of improving them.
8 I have in view especially the admission of some of the members of the Spelling Committee appointed at my Instance by the First Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, who finished their deliberations and submitted their report to the Fourth Parishad. I was one of the members. Our report was necessarily inconclusive, in the face of certain strong views held by sevoral members, and our recommendations were therefore on the lines of & non-committal policy. As regards the h sound we all admitted its existence, but in view of the divergence of opinions held by the members, we refrained from stating how it was to be represented. This was but an official statement. But as a matter of fact the h-sound is now freely used in writing in our every day literature by a number of writers,
