Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/881

Rh LANGUAGE.] HINDUSTANI into lilam) ; peril; &quot; a turkey,&quot; &c. &amp;lt;tc. Of French and Dutch influence scarcely a trace exists. English has con tributed a number of words, some of which have even found a place in the literature of the language ; e.g., Kammishanar (commissioner) ; jaj (judge) ; istant (assistant) ; daktar (doctor) ; ddkfari, &quot; the science of medicine,&quot; or &quot;the pro fession of physicians ; &quot; inspekiar (inspector) ; sosayafi (society) ; apll (appeal) ; apil karitd, u to appeal ; &quot; dikri or digrl (decree) ; digrl (degree) ; inch (inch) ; fut (foot) ; and many morp, are words now commonly used. How far the free use of Anglicisms will be adopted as the language progresses is a question upon which it would be hazardous to pronounce an opinion. The grammatical structure of the Hindustani differs in no essential particular from that of the Hindi from which it is sprung. . It is therefore of the rise and formation of this language, and of the stage to which it had attained when the new phase of the Hindustani was developed from it, that we shall now speak. Of the history and development of the Hindi or Hindu! language previous to the llth century of our era little or nothing is known. It is accepted as a fact by most scholars that Sanskrit ceased to be a vernacular in the 6th century B.C., when the Buddhist religion was founded, which for ten centuries drove Brahmanism into obscurity. From that time the Aryan people of India spoke popular dialects called Prakrits, 1 and it is from these that the modern Aryan tongues are mainly derived. These Prakrit dialects are generally grouped under five heads, viz., the MaharashtrT, SaurasenT, Magadhi, Paisaclri, and Apabhransa. Of these the SaurasenT, or dialect of Saurasena, the modern tract of Mathura and the surrounding country, is taken to be the parent of the Hindi, or at any rate of that phase of it with which we have to do. These Prakrits were, like the Sanskrit, synthetical and inflexional in their structure, and certainly continued to be so up to the 1st century of our era, the lowest stage to which in point of development scholars have been able to reach. At what precise period the synthetical structure of the Prakrit began to break up and to give place to the analytical formations of the modern speech it is impossible to tell. The gap of nine centuries has yet to be filled up. And unless future discoveries of Buddhistic literature should shed light on the subject, it is to be feared that the history of this period will ever remain unknown. The dawn of modern Hindi may be dated from the llth century. The earliest known writer in the language was Chand Bardal (c.1200), whose epic is in a dialect rude and half-formed, but as decidedly analytical as the Hindi of the present day. 2 Much of the old synthetical structure no doubt is still to be found in the work ; the particles and the auxiliary verbs are in a very crude and unformed state (as, for example, the use of an obscure ka for the modern genitive affix kd, which ka does not vary with the governed noun, and is frequently left out alto gether ; the total absence of the ordinary substantive verb hai, &c.); but these crudities and remnants of old Prakrit forms do not affect the general structure. Indeed, they are to be found in writings of a much later period, in works belonging to the 14th and 15th centuries, e.g., in the Adi 1 Prakrit is derived from the Sanskrit prakriti, &quot;nature,&quot; and signifies &quot;natural,&quot; &quot;not accomplished,&quot; &quot;vulgar.&quot; It is the col lective name of those dialects which are immediately derived from, or which stand in an immediate relation to, Sanskrit, or the polished or accomplished language &quot; of the Hindus. 2 It is this striking change from the synthetical structure of the Prakrit to the analytical of the HindT, coupled with an accidental resemblance in certain of the case-affixes to those of the Dravidian tongues, that has led some Oriental scholars to claim for Hindi a non- Aryan descent. But this view is ably combated by Mr Beames in his Comparative Grammar of the Aryan Languages of India, and by Professor Rudolf Hoernle, in his Essays on the Gaurian Languages. Gran tl&amp;gt;, the language of which exhibits, according to Trumpp, &quot;grammatical forms not firmly fixed, but rather in a state of transition.&quot; And although the forms assume greater fixity, and marked progress is observable in the works of later writers in the Braj Bhakha dialect, e.g., in those of Kablr, Sur Das, Nabha Jl, Kesava Das, and Bihar! Lai (whose poems are, as a rule, composed in very pure and elegant Hindi), we still find certain crudities and traces of Prakrit forms and organic structure, and these continue even in the language of the present day. To give a minute account of the grammatical formation, to indicate the various phonetic or glottic laws by the operation of which the vocables and grammatical forms of the Hindi are derived from those of the Prakrit or Sanskrit, is beyond the scope of the present article. We can but notice a few general laws, and exhibit results, so far as they have been ascertained. For closer acquaintance with the subject we must refer the reader to the Prdkrit- Prakdsa of Vararuchi, edited by Professor E. B. Cowell ; the Prakrit Grammar of Hemachandra. edited by Professor Pischel ; the Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India, by John Beames, B.C.S. ; and Essays on the Gaurian Languages, by Professor Rudolf Hoernle. Prakrit tolerates no compound consonant in the begin ning and no dissimilar consonant in the middle of a word. Two dissimilar consonants in a Sanskrit word are changed in Prakrit to two similar consonants, and occasionally one of these is elided and the preceding vowel lengthened. In the modern dialects this elision of one consonant and compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel is the rule. Prakrit either changes a medial surd mute consonant to the corresponding sonant one, or elides it altogether ; and it generally changes an aspirate mute consonant to the simple aspirate h. In fact the modern Aryan tongues stand to the Prakrit and the Sanskrit in a relation very similar to that existing between the Italian, (tc., and theEomance and Latin languages. Hindi &quot; is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans, it is a branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from which Sanskrit sprang when it first assumed its literary independence.&quot; 3 Vocables. The vocables may be classed under three heads : 1. Words which are pure Sanskrit, as raja, &quot;a king&quot; ; pita, &quot; father &quot; ; kavi, &quot; a poet &quot; ; ndgarl, &quot; of or belonging to a city &quot; ; karma, kdrya, &quot;work&quot;; krodha (vulg. krodh), &quot;anger.&quot; Net a few of this class of words Lave existed in the language for some cen turies ; some are to be found even in the oldest specimens of the literature ; but by far the larger number have passed into the language during the present century, and the introduction is still progressing. The form in whkh they appear is that of the Sanskrit nominative singular. 2. Words which are derived from the Prakrit, and have been considerably changed iu the process, though not so much as to obscure their origin, e.g., kdm, &quot;work,&quot; Prk. kamma, S. karma; kun, &quot;ear,&quot; Prk. kanna, S. karna ; ath, &quot;eight,&quot; Prk. at/ha, S. ashtha ; hath, &quot;hand,&quot; Prk. hattha, S. hasta ; ap, &quot;self,&quot; Prk. appa, S. dtmd ; bat, &quot;word,&quot; Prk. vattd, S. vartta ; dj, &quot;to day,&quot; Prk. ajja, S. adya ; age, &quot;before,&quot; Prk. agge, S. agre ; dg, &quot; fire,&quot; Prk. agcji, S. agni ; dudfi, &quot;milk,&quot; Prk. duddha, S. dugdha; phdgun, &quot; Feb. -March,&quot; Prk. phaggun, S. phdlgun ; buddhd, &quot;old, &quot;Prk. vuddho, S. vriddhah ; kahd, &quot;said,&quot; (Braj kahyau), Prk. kahido, kahio, S. kathitah ; rahd, &quot; remained,&quot; (Braj rahyau), Prk. rahido, rahio, S. rahitah ; thd, &quot;was,&quot; Prk. thio, S. sthitah. This is by far the largest class of words in the Hindi. And, as in the case of the first class, they are adopted in the form of the nomi native singular of the Prakrit. They are divisible into two classes, the first comprising such as have in their declension preserved traces of the old organic inflexion of the Prakrit declension, and the second those which have preserved no such traces. As regards these it may be observed that the terminations d, e, I, o, u, of the Prak rit are regularly reduced in the Hindi to their inherent simple vowels, viz., d to a, e and I to i, and o and u to u ; and these short vowels are, as a rule, made quiescent, so that a word ending in reality in a short vowel virtually terminates in a consonant ; and, not being pronounced, the final short vowel is frequently suppressed in writing also. 3 Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language, lect. ii. XL 106