Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/104

82 etymologically no reduplication can be proved to exist, but the hardness of the pronunciation can be explained by adjacent circumstances, e.g. ग़ोठु 'a village,' Pr. गोट्ठ, Skr. गोष्ठ." This is the same remark as has been illustrated above, though, in the absence of properly spelt dictionaries, it is difficult for one not resident in the country to determine in which cases the dotted letter should be used.

It is often found to be the case, especially in unwritten languages, in which consequently there is no universally received standard of spelling, that when any peculiar pronunciation has established itself in the popular speech, it is extended through carelessness to cases where it ought not properly to occur, and it is readily conceivable that this may have taken place in a wild and uncultivated language like Sindhi. At the same time it is to be hoped that those who take this language in hand will not fall into the common error of all Indian linguists, of representing the words, not as they are, but as they think they ought to be, remembering that it is the popular practice and custom, "usus," as Horace says,

and not the Pandits or would-be reformers.

§ 28. Some remarks on the literature of these languages may now be offered, though to give a full and complete review of this subject would occupy many volumes, and would be beyond the limits of my task. All that will here be done is to give such brief general statements as may afford to the reader a tolerably accurate idea of how the various modern languages stand in this respect. Although the majority of the written works in the Indian vernaculars are to the European mind very tame and uninteresting, yet it is by no means accurate to say that there is nothing worth reading in them. Religion has