Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 360

$$ 71-72 ]
ON THE MODERN INDO-ARYAN VERNACULARS
(OCTOBER, 1931
changes are intimately connected with the history of a language, and the borrowed Tes. of the IAVs. form no part of its history. Now, in all IAVs. the verb must change its form in the processes of conjugation, while the noun is not necessarily changed in the processes of declension. Hence, nearly all Tss. are nouns, and hardly any, except in manifest instances of false analogy, are treated as verbs. If it is necessary to use a Ts. to employ a verbal idea, it must be done with the help of another Tbh. verb. For instance, the word darsan, seeing, is a Ts., and if we wish to use it in the phrase "he sees,' we cannot say daréanē, but must employ the periphrasis darsan karē, he does seeing. On the other hand, in all the modern vernaculars, nouns need not necessarily be declined synthetically. They can all be also declined analytically.1 Hence Ts. nouns, necessarily declined analytically, are common, and in the high literary styles of most of the IAVs. very common; and, although there are sporadic exceptions to the broad rule, it may be laid down as a general law that IAV. nouns may be either Ts. (including sTs.) or Tbh., but that IAV. verbs must be Tbh.
1 There are a few exceptions to this. In K. and M., for instance, under the influence of analogy, borrowed nouns can be declined synthetically; but the above holds true as a general rule.
71. The extent to which Tss. are used in the IAVs. differs for each. Everywhere in the common speech of even educated people they are few in number, but in some tongues, such as Bengali, they flood the literary languages to such an extent that it is unintelligible to anyone who has not been specially taught to understand it. In the literary Bg. of the commencement of the nineteenth century, when, under English auspices, there was a general revival of learning, actual counting shows that 88 per cent of the vocabulary of a book called the Puruga-parikpā was composed of Tss. Of late years, an improved literary taste has tended to reduce the proportion in this language, but literary Bg. is still so overloaded with Sanskrit words that it is not understood by the common people. In Hindi, the High Hindi of Benares has been showing signs of succumbing to the same fate, but a body of enlightened writers is doing its best to stem this flood of borrowed terms.
The lato Sudhakars Dvivodi (Ramakahant, p. 7) gives an amusing instance of the difference between literary and colloquial H. A friend wrote to him a letter as follows ap.kd samagamartha mai gata-diana ap-ka dhama-par padhara Grha kā kapaya mudrita tha, ap-sd bhli na hus. Halda ao-kar pardvarttita hud, i.e., yesterday I went to your house to see you. The door of the house was shut, and I did not meet you. I returned home disappointed. Shortly afterwards Sudhakars met the writer of this letter, who, not knowing that it had been received, said, -kal mai ap-se milna-kd liye ap-kd ghar par gaya tha. Ghar kā darwază band tha, ap-së bhat nahi hut. Låcår ho-kar laut aya. This, in conversational H., has exactly the same meaning as the letter in Sanskritized literary style, yot both came from the same man. As Sudha. kara observes, the feeling of a pen in the hand of such a person makes him Sanskrit drunk, and prevents him from using his own mother tongue.
72. Besides Sanskrit, otber Indian languages have exercised influence on the IAVs. The Dravidian and Munda languages have had most influence in the Ganges Valley and in M. The contributions from the Dravidian languages have not been unimportant from the earliest times. In the Tertiary Prs, such borrowed words are often given a contemptuous meaning, e.g., the Dravidian pillai, a son, becomes the IAV. pillā, & cub. In phonology, if the cerebral sounds were not directly borrowed from Dravidian, their development was at least encouraged by Dravidian example. These sounds are an essential feature of Dravidian languages. The peculiar development of the letter l in Indo-Aryan languages has also probably been due to Dravidian influence. We may also note the softening of the Indo-Aryan medial surd consonants. This would have occurred in the course of natural development, but it is also permissible to look upon it as encouraged by Dravidian, in which it is a very prominent feature. Again, we may mention as probably due to Dravidian influence the double pronunciation of the palatals in Marāthi and in the languages of the North-West, such as Pašto and Kašmiri, the frequent change of c and ch to e, and the eastern change of a to 1.'In certain languages of the Outer circle, viz., Sindhi and Bih äri and also in Kasmiri,