Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 222

194
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTODER, 1931
PLACE NAMES.
BY RAI BAHADUR HIRA LAL, B.A. WHILE engaged in the preparation of District Gazetteers of the Central Provinces, under. taken for the first time in the first decade of the current century, it struck me that placenames usually revealed a wonderful history, which I occasionally noted in the volumes under preparation. Later on an educational Journal pressed me to contribute some thing which would be interesting to schoolmasters and their pupils, and I thought of making an experi. ment whether the interpretation of place-names would be of any interest to those people. An article was therefore prepared giving in a general manner the signification of village names together with somewhat detailed information in connection with the derivation of the names of 117 towns and cities found in the Central Provinces. The article aroused such enthusiasm that it had to be reduced to the form of a booklet, which had to be reprinted within a month of its first issue, and had to be translated into Marathi, the second great verna. cular of the province. Later on I circulated the booklet to the Directors of Public Instruction and notable literati of the various provinces in India, recommending that similar booklets, giving the signification of geographical names in each province, might well be prepared. The proposal was heartily approved everywhere, but so far as I know not a single work in that line has been yet produced, although some thirteen years have elapsed.
Meantime I noticed that the matter had independently attracted the attention of geo. graphers in England, and a society for interpretation of place-names was formed at once. I am not aware of its transactions, but I trust a good deal of spade work has been done. I, however, believed that this was the first attempt in Great Britain in this direction, but the other day I was disillusioned, when in a heap of old books for sale in a Simla shop, I found a work named Etymological Geography written by C. Blackie, with an introduction by Profes. sor J. S. Blackie and published in 1875. In the preface Mr. Blackie wrote:"When I was myself one of a class in this city (Edinburgh) where geography and history were taught, no information connected with etymology was imparted to us. We learned with more or less trouble and edification the names of countries, towns, etc., by rote: but our teacher did not ask us who gave the names to these places, nor were we expected to know if there was any connection between their names and their histories. Things are changed now: and, I be. lieve, the first stimulus to an awakening interest in Geographical Etymology was given by the publication of the Rev. Isaac Taylor's popular work, Words and Places." So it was somewhere in the sixties of the last century that an effort was made to unravel the mysteries which surrounded the names of places at least in one part of the world.
Professor Blackie, while introducing the subject, wrote enthusiastically saying, “ Among the branches of human speculation that, in recent times, have walked out of the misty realm of conjecture into the firm land of Science and from the silent chamber of the student into the breezy fields of public life, there are few more interesting than Etymology. For as words are the common counters, or coins rather, with which we mark our points in all the businesses and all the sport of life, any man whose curiosity has not been blunted by familiarity will naturally find a pleasure in understanding what the image and superscription on these matters mean; and amongst words there are none that so powerfully stimulate this curiosity as the names of persons and places. About these the intelligent interest of young persons is often prominently manifested ; and it is a sad thing when parents or teachers, who should be in a position to gratify this interest, are obliged to waive an eager intelligence aside, and by repeated negations to repel the curiosity which they ought to have encouraged. Geography, indeed a subject full of interest to the young mind, has too often been taught in such & way as neither to delight the imagination with vivid pictures nor to stimulate enquiry by a frequent reference to the history of names; and this is an evil which, if found to a certain extent in all countries, is particularly rank in Great Britain, where the language of the coun. try is composed of fragments of half a dozen languages, which only the learned understand,