Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/51

Rh doubt its accuracy in more than one instance. By far the best of the whole set is Molesworth’s Marathi dictionary. This is really deserving of the name. The words are classed and distinguished, as literary or colloquial, full examples are given to show the way in which they are used, and meritorious, though sometimes mistaken, attempts at derivation are also supplied.

The materials being thus defective, an opinion can only be given with some hesitation; but in a general way it may be said that the proportion of Tatsama words is greatest in Bengali, Oṛiya, and Marathi; less in Hindi and Gujarati; and least in Panjabi and Sindhi. In the latter language, in fact, a pure Sanskrit word in its original shape is hardly ever met with. This position is easily explained by geographical and historical considerations. The first province of India which was conquered by foreigners was Sindh, the next the Panjab. These provinces, especially the former, adopted the Muhammadan religion at an early date. Brahmans are, and have long been, comparatively scarce in both places. The Prakrits in use in both, especially in Sindh, were always noted for their extreme corruptness. A soil, for the most part sterile, and more suited to a pastoral than to an agricultural people, was left by the main stream of the Aryan immigrants to the cattle-tending Abhiri, or Ahirs, and to the Gujars and other rude tribes, to whom supervened the Jats, a branch of the great Kshatriya or Rajput caste, who had been excluded from fellowship for some reason which has not yet been fathomed. With so rude a population as this it is not wonderful that the language became debased, and that the constant state of warfare and turmoil in which the people lived for ages, the perpetual sieges of their towns, pillagings of their humble dwellings, wholesale slaughter of their cattle, and the other annually recurring horrors with which they were visited, should have left them