Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/218

 210 KHE in shahr' and ábád,' sparsely sprinkled over the map, show the traces left by the Moslem invasion of Sayyads and Koreshis in a still later age. It has been asserted by an authority, whose philological attainments command the highest respect that these terminations in Indian town-Dames are ordinary mutations of the Sanskrit pouri.* I cannot pretend to com- pete in philological attainments with Mr. Growse, but surely my derivation direct from the Turanian roots-aul, oram, wara, ur, uri-is more pro- bable than the forced and far-fetched Sanskrit derivation from one single root supported only by the theory of a grammarian, which may or may not have been put in practice in an unlettered age. Further, if these towns do not represent the various Turanian equivalents for the Sanscrit nagar or pur, the Persian shahr or abad, the English ton—where are they to be found? What traces of their nomenclature survive? The Turanians it is not denied colonized India; they were the great builders of antiquity; they held Oudh before the Arian invasion; they must have built cities; the towns whose names end as abovementioned are in every case so ancient that their origin is lost in obscurity; their antiquity corresponds with the Turanian age; no other urban traces of that age are found; they bear the district traces of Turänian origin; in fact history, tradition, and etymology are in harmony. If, again, these terminations are Sanskrit corruptions of pour; if it is possible, in the lapse of time, to elide the p and change the v into e why have not the oldest towns like Hastinapur, built two thousand years before this grammarian flourished, yielded to its séductions; and why, in the case of more modern towns, do not we find the change half effected, and a place sometimes called Mádhopuri sometime Maholi ? Why do not we find some trace of the change--some middle place in the transition stage? If, again, the termination is Sanskrit, how does it occur in Tanjore, Travancore, Cuddalore, Cannanore, in districts where Sanskrit never has conquered, never perhaps invaded the domain of Telugu and other Turanian tongues. The very variety of the termitations leads fur- ther to the inference that they are derived from different synonyms used by branches of the great Turanian family of nations which border Hindus- tan from the Brahmaputra to the Sutlej. It is not consistent with the inflexible and highly developed Sanskrit that pur should metamorphose itself into a dozen Protean shapes, commencing with wära and ending with ori and oli. Mr. Growse, in a communication with which he has favoured me, main- tains the theory that these terminations are corruptions of prer. He remarks that Hastinapur might have been preserved from the change by its being .Yet an application of the rules of the ancient Prakrit granamarian Vararu- chi, will in many cases, without any wonderful exercise of iogenuity, mufflce to discovet the original Sanskrit form and explain ite corruption. Thua Maholi is for Mádhopuri; Parsoli for Paragu-ráma-purt (Parsa being the ordi- nary colloquial abbreviation for Parasurama), Dhano-Sinha for Dbarta Sioha, Bati, for Bahula-rati, and Kbaice for Khadira. It would seem that the true explanation of these common endlogs-oli, auli, auri, awar, has never before been clearly stated. They are merely corruptions of puri or pura, combined with the prior member of the compound, as explained by Vararachi in Sutra 1, 2, which directs the elision of certain COQBOURDEA, including the letter 1. where they are simple and non-ioitial, the term " tron-initial" being expressly extended to the first letter of the latter beinber of A compound," Growze's Mathava, page 6,