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226
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1915.
THE NORTH-WESTERN GROUP OF THE INDO-ARYAN VERNACULARS.
BY SIR GEORGE A. GRIERSON, K.C.L.E. The North-Western Group of Indo-Aryan Vernaculars comprises two languages,
Sindhi and Lahnda. The number of speakers has been estimated Number of Speakers.
for the purposes of the Linguistic Survey as follows: Sindhi ... ... 3,069,470 Lahnda ... . 7,092,781
Total ... 10,162,251
As its name implies, the languages of this group are spoken in the extreme North
West of India,-in the Pañjâb, west of about the 74th degree of Where Spoken. east longitude, and, south of the Panjab, in Sindh and Cutch. It is bounded on the West, in the Pañjâb, by Afghanistân, and in Sindh, by Balãohistân; but, in the latter country, Sindhi has overstepped the political frontier into Kachchhi Gandava and into Las Bela, both of which fall within the geographical boundaries of Baluchistân.
In Afghanistan and in Balochistan the languages are Eranian, and are quite distinct Linguistio Bounda- from both Lahndâ and Sindhs. On the North, the North-Western ries.
languages are bounded by the Piśâcha languages of the North-West Frontier, of which Kashmiri is the most important. These are closely connected with the languages now under consideration. On the East, Lahnda is bounded by Panjabi, and Sindhi by Rajasthani. On the South, Lahndá has Sindhi, and Sindhi Gujarati. The position of Lahndå in regard to Pañjâbi is altogether peculiar. The whole
in regard to Pañjab is the meeting ground of two entirely distinct languages, neighbouring Indian viz., the Pikacha parent of Lahndå which expanded from the Languages.
Indus Valley eastwards, and the old Mid and language, the parent of the modern. Western Hindi, which expanded from the Jamna Valley westwards. In the Pañjab they overlapped. In the Eastern Pañjab, the wave of old Lahndå had nearly exhausted itself, and old Western Hindi had the mastery, the resulting language being Panjabi. In the Western Pañjab, the old Western Hindi had nearly exhausted itself, and old Lahndâ had the mastery, the resulting language being modern Lahndâ. The latter language is therefore in the main of Piśâcha origin, but bears traces of the old Western Hindi. Such traces are much more numerous, and of much greater importance in PañjAbi. Lahndâ may be described as a Pisacha language infected by Western Hindi, while Panjabi is a form of Western Hindi infected by Piśâcha.
Sindhi, on the contrary, shows a much more clear relationship to the Pisacha languages. being protected from invasion from the East by the desert of Western Râjpûtânâ. While modern Lahndâ, from its origin, merges imperceptibly into Panjabi, Sindhi does not merge into Rajasthâni, but remains quite distinct from it. Such border dialects as exist are mere mechanical mixtures, not stages in a gradual linguistic change.
On the South, the case of Sindhi and Gujarati 18 nearly the same; but there is a certain amount of real change from one language to another in the border dialect of Kachchhi owing to the fact that Gujarati, although now, like Rajasthâni, a member of the Central Group of Indo-Aryan Vernaculars, has at its base remnants of some north-western language.
The North-Western Group is a member of the Outer Circle of Indo-Aryan Vernaculars. Position as regards
The other members of this Outer Circle are the southern language other Indian Lan- Marathi, and the eastern group of languages, Oriya, Bengali, Bihârî, guages.
and Assamese. The mutual connexion of all these languages, and their relationship to the Central and Mediate languages, Rajasthani, Pahari, Western
