Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 369

DECEMBER, 1931)
NWIAV. AND ETAV.
# 100-101
B. BR.
A. 0.
R. wo maryo or māryās (LSI, IX, ii, 35). EH.
māres. már lak. märilek. marile.
märila. But H. 18-nē mārā. A form of the past participle, of which the characteristic letter is l occurs in Dardic, NWIAV., SIAV., and EIAV., but not in MIAV. Thus Drd. (My.) kuf-ag-il, S. maria-24, G. mar-lo, M.0. mär-ila, B. mir-al, Bg. A. māril, struck. There is no similar form in H. or EH.1
1 S. K. Chatterji (Bg. Gr. Ch., 165) argues that, in the past tenses of transitive verbe, NWIAV., SIAV., and MIAV. use & passive construction ("toy him it was struck'), while the EIAV. use an active construction ('he struck'), whilo everywhere intransitive verbe take the active construction only. He therefore dividee the IAVs. into two broad groupe-Eastern, or Active,' and Western, or Passive.' His premises are, however, not correct. In the EIAV. languages the passive construction is still employed in these tenses of transitive verbs, although the fact may be disguised by the personal terminations of the nominative and of the agent having become confused. When a Bengali says 'mdrilek,' he really says 'by him it was killed,' although he does not kno' it. This is shown by both Bihårl and Assamese, in which the original distinction between the nominative personal terminations of intransitive verbs and the agentive personal terminations of transitive verbe is still retained. As the agentive terminations can only be used with passive forms, it will be seen that the distinction between active (intransitive) and passive (transitive) forms oxista in at least two EIAV, languages to the present day.
100. As regards Vocabulary one word may be mentioned which shows the relationship between EIAV. and NWIAV. in a striking manner. According to Hc. iv, 294, the Māgadhi Pr. equivalent of the Skr. urajati, he goes, is van jadi. The Maharastri Pr. form is vaccas (225). Cf. M. (Kön.) võts-, go; but L. vanj. or vañ., go.
101. It will therefore have been seen that, in many grammatical features, NWIAV. is connected with SIAV. and EIAV., and agrees with them in presenting the same contrasts to MIAV. That the North-Western languages in many respects occupy an independent position cannot be denied, and I do not go so far as to assert that they actually form one linguistic group with the languages of the South and East. But, nevertheless the three sets of languages show signs of more close relationship to each other than that which any one of them bears to Hindi,- the typical MIAV. language. One point must be made clear. It may be argued, and in many cases it is an undoubted fact,--that the points of mutual agreement between the different Outer Languages are of modern growth. That is to say, it may be shown that, for instance, the Lpast participle of Sindhi has developed quite independ ently of the l-past participle of Bengali, and that therefore they are not of common origin. If this participle were only one isolated coincidence, the argument might be valid ; but here we have a large number of different cases, affecting phonetics, morphology, and vocabulary, in which these instances of agreement occur. It must be remembered that the argument here is cumulative,-not a sorites. Even if several of the cases cited by me were proved to be unfounded, the remainder would not be one whit affected, and, in order to prove such a cumulative argument to be untrue, it would be necessary to prove that a large majority of my reasons are false. If, for the sake of argument, we admit that every single case of agreement between the North-Western and the Southern and Eastern languages was in each case an instance of independent development, it would also have to be admitted by my critic that for so many coincidences of independent development there must have been a common cause. This I find in what may be called the hereditary tendencies of languages or of language-groupe. Assuming that several languages can be traced to a common stock, even though that stock contains no signs of what will be the ultimate forms developed in after years, still these languages will in the main develop on the same lines and have similar
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