Page:Linguistic Survey of India Vol 1 Part 1.djvu/7



PREFACE.

In this Volume it has been my object to present a summary of the results of the Linguistic Survey of India, so far as it has been under my charge, in a form convenient for reference alike to professed students of language sad to the lay reader.

The deseriptive portion falls into two sections. In the first, which I have named the Introduction, I have given an account of previous attempts to set forth the languages of India, and of the procedure followed in the present Survey. Some of what is stated in this section will also be found scattered through other volumes, but here it is all brought together in one collected account

The second section la an attempt to bring under one view the results of the Survey and the lessons to be derived from then. Much of it has been lased on the Chapter on the Languages of India contributed by me to the Indian Census Report for the year 1901, but this has been brought up to date, and a good deal has been added to it. That chapter may, in fact, be looked upon as » first draft of this section of the volume. Written as it was nearly a quarter of a century ago, there have been found many opportunities for additions and improvements.

These two sections are followed by two collections (Majora and Minora) of Addenda and Corrigenda for the whole Survey. The first (Addenda Majora) consists of the more important additions, and, especially, of accounts of languages for which materials became available after the volume referred to had gone to press. Only in this way have I been able to bring the earlier volumes up to date. The Addenda et Corrigenda Minora mainly include additions of detail, corrections of misprints and of mistakes of my own, and the like. These latter are issued loose and are printed in such 코 way that they can be readily cut up and inserted in their proper places in the several volumes of the Survey.

To the whole, three Appendixes have been added. The first is a classified list of all the languages of India, in which the statistics of the Survey have been compared with those of the Census of 1921. The second Appendix is a list of those Indian languages of which gramophone records are available in this country and în Paris, and the third is an Index of all the names referring to languages of India that I have been able to collect. I hope that the last will be found a useful work of reference for anyone who may desire to identify a name with which he is not familiar. It also forms an Index to the contents of Volumes I to XI of the Survey itself

A second part of this volume is now in the press. It is a comparative vocabulary of 168 selected words in about 868 different languages and dialects, and will, I hope, be found useful by students of languages.

A third part is being prepared by the competent pen of Professor Turner of the School of Oriental Studies. It will be Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, for the special use of philologists. It will appear in due course, and will complete the Survey.

It is with a feeling of gratitude for having been remitted to finish a work extending over thirty years that, after writing this Preface, the pen will be laid down. Without any pretended modesty I confess that no one is more than myself aware of the deficiencies of