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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ SEPTEMBER, 1928
associations. At first we may suppose that he word Mahârâstri was applied to the form of Prakrit, not necessarily uniform or consistent, spoken by the southern highlander and was exactly equivalent to Dakşinâtya. For this reason it was the Prakrit (as Vararuci indicates) being not Magadhi, the limited court dialect of the Mauryas, nor Suråseni, the highly sophisti. cated dialect of the almost Aryanised Mathura population, nor Paisâcî, the barbarous dialect of the so called cannibal northerners, but the general dialect understoo land spoken by the southerners when they spoke Indo-Aryan and capable of logical handling, (especially where Sanskrit words were concerned), by them alone, as they still spoke their southern Dravidian tongues among themselves. In course of time, Vaidarbhî, without much reason except that Vidarbha was an important political entity, distinguished itself as a separate dialect from Mahåråştri. To the east of Vidarbha and in the north-eastern highlands were spoken the Mundârî languages, and to-day Marathi stretches in the north from the south of the Surat district on the west coast to Raipur, quite close to the border of the Mundân area, which practically forms a linguistic barrier from that point to the north of the Mahanadî delta & South and west of the Mun. dan area stretches the country of Dravidian speakers. Owing probably to the intenser adherence to their language evidenced by the existence of Sen-Tamir (correct Tamil) which from a very early time rejected all Sanskrit words (Caldwell, Comp Gram. p. 80), the inhabitants of Kalinga and the eastern regions refused to adopt Pråkrit as their language, and Maharastri flourished only in the west. The capitals of Vidarbha, Paithan, Vatâpi (Bådâmi) and later Poona, brought the centre of gravity further to the south-west, and it is known that the rulers of the various western dynasties, e.g., Hala and the Rastrakūtas and Calukyas were earnest patrons of Prakrit and Sanskrit as well as of the Dravidian tongues.
It is not necessary here to point out the close connection of the Marathi with the Kaparese language, as the specific object of this article is to connect the terms Maharastra and Kannada That, it is hoped, will form the subject of future articles.
MISCELLANEA.
MAMLUK-QULAMAX.
CEREMOXIAL MURDER. In this Journal and elsewhere I have frequently I have several times recorded in this Journal explained that the Oriental term mamlúk meant cases where unfortunate persons have been murder
foreigner of any re-sometimes of migh- ed in India for ceremonial reasons. Here is another standing by birth-onslaved and forced to instance, in the Faizabad District, recorded in Islam by Turks or other Muhammadan peoples. The Times on 8th August 1927. H. 8. Longrigg, however, in his well-informed book, i
"At the Faizabad sessions Gayadin Murao was Four Centuries of Modern Iraq, in describing the
tried for the murder of one Hubb. The defence soventeenth century reigns of mamlaka, who
was that the accused, who had been suffering from ruled in Baghdad, muul after the fashion of the
i dysentery for three months, took the advice of earlier "Slave Kings" of Delhi, gives a somewhat
Mohan Pasi, an exorciser of evil spirits, who assured different view of them as observable in
him that this illness was due to a spell cast over Longrigg, in a footnoto (p. 163) says that the him by Hubba, who was under the influence of mamlaks were "slave, known in Arabia as
evil spirits. Gayadin accordingly killed Hubbå mamlak (plu. mamalik), in Turkish as qila or
with two blons of a láthi (iron-tipped staff). The qilaman, more commonly the latter. The Iraq
sessions judge expressed unwillingness to inflict historians in Turkish always so write them. Of
the death penalty, as the accused was virtually Circlesian race, they were known in Turkey from
mad in thinking that with a lathi he could expel the earliest (Muhammadan) times... In
the evil spirits from Hubb&; so he sentenced him name [Gurjand) they are by majority natives of the
to transportation for life." Tiflis area of Georgia (Gurjistán); but other closely similar Circagsian breeds were included in the wild
There have been several persona transported tribo-Laz, Abazik and the like who had migrated to the Andaman Penal Settlement for similar from the hills of their origin."
murders. R. C. TEMPLE. 1
R. C. TEMPLE. • See mape Linguistic Survey of India. (Mundâ, Dravidian and Marathi.)
