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Rh linguistic progress later than that of Sanskrit, and earlier than that which we find recorded in the Iranian Avesta.

The immigrants into Kashmir must have been Shīns, speaking a language closely allied to the ancestor of the modern Shīnā. They appear to have dispossessed and absorbed an older non-Aryan people, whom local tradition now classes as Nāgas, or Snake-gods, and, at an early period, to have come themselves under the influence of Indo-Aryan immigrants from the south, who entered the valley along the course of the river Jhelam. The language has therefore lost most of its original Piśāca character, and is now a mixed one. Sanskrit has been actively studied for many centuries, and the Kashmiri vocabulary, and even its grammar, are now largely Indian. So much is this the case that, for convenience’ sake, it is now frequently classed (see ) as belonging to the north-western group of languages, instead of as belonging to the Piśāca family as its origin demands. It cannot be said that either classification is wrong.

Kashmiri has few dialects. In the valley there are slight changes of idiom from place to place, but the only important variety is Kishtwārī, spoken in the hills south-west of Kashmir. Smaller dialects, such as Pogul and Rāmbanī of the hills south of the Banihāl pass, may also be mentioned. The language itself is an old one. Pure Kashmiri words are preserved in the Sanskrit Rājataṛaṅgiṇī written by Kalhaṇa in the 12th century, and, judging from these specimens, the language does not appear to have changed materially since his time.

General Character of the Language.—Kashmiri is a language of great philological interest. The two principal features which at once strike the student are the numerous epenthetic changes of vowels and consonants and the employment of pronominal suffixes. In both cases the phenomena are perfectly plain, cause and effect being alike presented to the eye in the somewhat complicated systems of declension and conjugation. The Indo-Aryan languages proper have long ago passed through this stage, and many of the phenomena now presented by them are due to its influence, although all record of it has disappeared. In this way a study of Kashmiri explains a number of difficulties found by the student of Indo-Aryan vernaculars.

In the following account the reader is presumed to be in possession of the facts recorded in the articles and , and the following contractions will be employed: Ksh. = Kashmiri; Skr. = Sanskrit; P. = Piśāca; Sh. = Shīnā.

A. Vocabulary. The vocabulary of Kashmiri is, as has been explained, mixed. At its basis it has a large number of words which are also found in the neighbouring Shīnā, and these are such as connote the most familiar ideas and such as are in most frequent use. Thus, the personal pronouns, the earlier numerals, the words for “father,” “mother,” “fire,” “the sun,” are all closely connected with corresponding Shīnā words. There is also a large Indian element, consisting partly of words derived from Sanskrit vocables introduced in ancient times, and partly of words borrowed in later days from the vernaculars of the Punjab. Finally, there is a considerable Persian (including Arabic) element due to the long Mussulman domination of the Happy Valley. Many of these have been considerably altered in accordance with Kashmiri phonetic rules, so that they sometimes appear in strange forms. Thus the Persian lagām, a bridle, has become lākam, and the Arabic bābat, concerning, appears as bāpat. The population speaking Kashmiri is mainly Mussulman, there being, roughly speaking, nine Mahommedan Kashmiris to less than one Hindu. This difference of religion has strongly influenced the vocabulary. The Mussulmans use Persian and Arabic words with great freedom, while the Hindus, or “Pandits” as they are called, confine their borrowings almost entirely to words derived from Sanskrit. As the literary class is mostly Hindu, it follows that Kashmiri literature, taken as a whole, while affording most interesting and profitable study, hardly represents the actual language spoken by the mass of the people. There are, however, a few good Kashmiri works written by Mussulmans in their own dialect.

B. Written Characters. Mussulmans and Christian missionaries employ an adaptation of the Persian character for their writings. This alphabet is quite unsuited for representing the very complex Kashmiri vowel system. Hindus employ the Sāradā alphabet, of Indian origin and akin to the well-known Nāgarī. Kashmiri vowel sounds can be recorded very successfully in this character, but there is, unfortunately, no fixed system of spelling. The Nagari alphabet is also coming into use in printed books, no Śāradā types being yet in existence.

C. Phonetics. Comparing the Kashmiri with the Sanskrit alphabet (see ), we must first note a considerable extension of the vowel system. Not only does Ksh. possess the vowels a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, r, ē, ai, ō, au, and the anunāsika or nasal symbol ~, but it has also a flat ă (like the a in “hat”) a flat ĕ (like the e in “met”), a short ŏ (like the o in “hot”) and a broad å (like the a in “all”). It also has a series of what natives call “mātrā-vowels,” which are represented in the Roman character by small letters above the line, viz. ᵃ, ⁱ, ū, ᵘ. Of these, ᵃ is simply a very short indeterminate sound something like that of the Hebrew shᵃwā mobile, except that it may sometimes be the only vowel in a word, as in tsᵃh, thou. The ⁱ is a hardly audible i, while ū and ᵘ are quite inaudible at the end of a syllable. When ⁱ or ᵘ is followed by a consonant in the same syllable ⁱ generally and ᵘ always becomes a full i or u respectively and is so pronounced. On the other hand, in similar circumstances, ū remains unchanged in writing, but is pronounced like a short German ü. It should be observed that this ū always represents an older ī, and is still considered to be a palatal, not, like ᵘ, a labial vowel. Although these mātrā–vowels are so slightly heard, they exercise a great influence on the sound of a preceding syllable. We may compare the sound of a in the English word “mar.” If we add e to the end of this word we get “mare,” in which the sound of the a is altogether changed, although the e is not itself pronounced in its proper place. The back-action of these mātrā–vowels is technically known as umlaut or “epenthesis,” and is the most striking feature of the Kashmiri language, the structure of which is unintelligible without a thorough knowledge of the system. In the following pages when a vowel is epenthetically affected by a mātrā–vowel the fact will be denoted by a dot placed under it, thus kạrᵘ. This is not the native system, according to which the change is indicated sometimes by a diacritical mark and sometimes by writing a different letter. The changes of pronunciation effected by each mātrā–vowel are shown in the following table. If natives employ a different letter to indicate the change the fact is mentioned. In other cases they content themselves with diacritical marks. When no entry is made, it should be understood that the sound of the vowel remains unaltered:—

The letters u and i, even when not u-mātrā or i-mātrā, often change a preceding long ā to å, which is usually written ō, and ạ̄ respectively. Thus rāwukh, they have lost, is pronounced råwukh, and, in the