Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/890

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English education has naturally had a vast influence on modern vernacular literature, though not wholly a beneficial one. More than a half of the new works issued within the last thirty years are translations or adaptations from English ; the journals, the great popularizers of new ideas, take their matter chiefly from English newspapers ; the courts, where Urdu has since 1832 become the official language, contribute to the spread of the stiff and difficult phraseology of the Acts of the legislature, as different from the natural idiom of the people as can well be imagined. Literature in India has always owed much to the fostering influence of Government. It has been seen how the schools of Dehli and Lakhnau rose and declined with the fortunes of the Mughal empire and the kingdom of Oudh, and how that of Calcutta similarly owed its existence to British initiative. At the present day the patronage of the rulers of India is no less influential in determining the course of literary activity. Poetical composition is little practised, both because of the exhaustion of its themes and the little appreciation which it meets with from Europeans. More solid studies, politics, science, philosophy, morals, history, and especially controversial theology, are the topics now in favour; and, though much that is published is of the slightest possible intrinsic value, the resources of the lan guage are being gradually cultivated and enlarged to meot the needs of the day. There is thus no reason to doubt that Hindostan will in time possess a body of literature worthy of the flexible and expressive speech of its people, and reflecting faithfully the standard of culture which it owes to its Western rulers.  HINGANGHÁT, a town in the Wardha district, Central Provinces, India, 21 miles S.W. of Vardha, in 20 33 30&quot; N. lat., and 78 52 30&quot; E. long., with a population in 1877 of 9415. It is a main seat of the cotton trade, the Hin- ganghat cotton produced in the rich Wardha valley being esteemed one of the best indigenous staples of India. The principal native traders are Marwarfs, many of whom have large transactions and export on their own account; but the 