Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 342

$ 37 )
ON THE MODERN INDO-ARYAN VERNACULARS
[JUNE, 1931
1 Such, 0.g., are the very un-Indian treatment of the letter r; the change of om and sm to 6 and 8, respectively, of ty and tm to I, and of t to lor ; the retention of the sibilant in conjuncts containing that letter: the regular disaspiration of sonants: the not infrequent retention of intervocalie consonants and hardening of sonant consonants; a work sense of the difference between cerebrals and dentale; and the use of alveolar sounds to represent both; the tendency to aspirate a final surd; the frequent palatalization of gutturals, cerebrals, dontals, and l; and the regular retention of a short vowel before a simplified double consonant.
E.g., the treatment of the vowels; the preservation of numerous consonantal compounds; the change of d to l; of dy to d; and of sk(ok) to c.
3 JRAS, 1911, 45. I differ hero, sae ib., 195. 4 E.g., the Aveeta change of om to hm, and the preservation of 5 Bhn., 94. 6 P. L., 5.
7 Morgenstierne (Megn. Rep., pp. 50 ff.) comes to an opposite conclusion. He is inclined to differentiate between the Käfir and the other Dardic languages. The former he admits (p. 68) has some affinities with Eranian, but has far closer affinities with Indian. The others (p. 52) are absolutely and unquestion. ably Indian.' His arguments have not convinced me (800 JRAS, 1927, pp. 371 ff.).
37. Under the shadow of the Hindūkuš lie the two small chieftainships of Hunza and Nagar. Their inhabitants have a language of their own, which is not Aryan, and which has not yet been definitely connected with any other family of speech. This language, or an old form of it, must once have been spoken over the whole Dardic area and also in the west of Baltistan, where a Tibeto-Burman language is now spoken. This non-Aryan language is called Burušaski, the Boorishki of Biddulph, and the Khajuna of Leitner. Stray words from its vocabulary can be found in nearly all the Dardic languages. Thus, comar, the Bur. word for 'iron,' is used in every Dardic language, and iakun, an ass, buš, a cat, bring, & bird, appear in şiņā under the forms of zakūn, būšu, and brin, respectively. Again the Kš. chan", empty, recalls the Bur. can, with the same meaning, the Veron iul, the belly, the Bur. yūl, and so other words for which there is no room here. It is probably owing to the influence of this language that we find the peculiar treatment of the letter in Dardio (cf. 8287). In all these languages it shows a remarkable tendency to become a palatal letter. This tendency cannot be considered as original in Dardic itself, for it is not confined to it alone, and is really typical not of any group of mutually related languages, but rather of a tract of country, i.e., the whole of the Dardic area and also of the immediately adjoining Baltistan; for in the TibetoBurman Balti the same change occurs, though it does not appear in other Tibeto-Burman dialects more to the east, such as Purik or Ladakhi. Both Tibeto-Burman Balti and the Aryan Dardic must therefore have borrowed this peculiarity from a common source, and that can only have been their predecessors in the country. It is impossible to point out instances of such a change in Burušaski itself, as there is no other known language with which comparison can be made. It is an isolated language, with no known relative.
See, however, P. L. Barbour in JAOS, XLI (1921), pp. 60 ff. He suggests that Burušaski ia a remnant of a language akin to the ancestor of the modern Munda (Austro-Asiatic) forms of speech, spoken in northern India before the Aryan invasion, the people using it being driven further north by the new comers into the fastnesses of the Himalaya, where they have led an isolated existence ever since.
P. L., 20.
3 LSI, III, 1, 34. The only parallel that I have been able to find in an oriental language is the Chinese sound which in Southeru Mandarin is pronounced like an English, but in Pekin as (Matoer, xvii).