Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/15

Rh various parts of Hindustan Proper (the North-western Provinces), has rendered me familiar with Panjabi, Hindi, Bengali, and Oriya, all of which, at different times, I have had to speak, read, and write. The western languages, Marathi, Sindhi, and Gujarati, I only know from books and from such information as I have obtained from kind correspondents in Bombay, among whom my thanks are specially due to Mr. Flynn, translator to the High Court, whose notes have been of great value to me, and whose knowledge of the languages of his Presidency is both accurate and profound.

A great difficulty has been the want of good books of reference. Living in this remote wilderness, I have had only such books as my own scanty library contains; my best book has been the peasant in the fields, from whose lips I have often learnt more than I could find in dictionaries or grammars.

Such as it is, then, volume the first is now about to make its voyage home to be printed,

I dismiss it with the hope that it may prove useful to those for whom it is intended.

My learned friend, Dr. R. Rost, Librarian of the India Office, has kindly undertaken to give this volume the benefit of his superintendence while passing through the press, thus conferring an inestimable favour, not only on the author, but on the public, by preventing the book from being disfigured by errors of printing; for all other errors I must remain responsible.

This volume contains only the Phonetics of the group. A second volume, on the noun and pronoun, is already on