Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/72

50 of words not found in Hindi, than upon any radical difference in its structure or inflections.

Gujarati is somewhat less developed than the two preceding languages. It retains the needless and troublesome arrangement of three genders, whereas the Hindi and Panjabi have but two, and in common use wisely ignore to a great extent the existence of even those. The noun retains one inflectional case, the instrumental, only the noun ending in o undergoes any change of termination previous to the application of the postpositions; and these postpositions, though different in form, are used in the same manner as those in Hindi. The pronouns are almost identical with Hindi, especially with those dialectic forms of Hindi spoken in Rajputana, on the northern frontier of Gujrat.

The verb, as expounded by its unphilosophical grammarians, Messrs. Leckey and Eduljee, appears to possess a bewildering variety of forms; but a little examination shows that the five presents, seventeen preterites, and three or four futures, are really nothing more than instances of that subdivision and amplification in which grammarians so much delight. We find here again the present indefinite, an inflectional tense derived from the Sanskrit present indicative. It may be as well to state that this tense, though often most ingeniously disguised by grammar-writers, exists in all the languages of this group, as will be shown in the chapter on verbs. Gujarati has, however, another inflectional tense in the future hoisho from the Sanskrit bhavishyâmi, Prakrit hoïssam, etc. The rest of the tenses of a Gujarati verb are merely neat and varied combinations of participles with each other, and with the substantive verbs.

Sindhi ranks next in the matter of development. It is a rough language, loving thorny paths of its own, but there hangs about it, to my mind, somewhat of the charm of wild flowers in a hedge whose untamed luxuriance pleases more