Page:The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshee.djvu/23

 LIFE OF ANANDABAI JOSHEE,

The country which we call India, better known by the more familiar name of Hindustan, stretches from the Himmaleh Mountains to the Indian Ocean, and from the empire of Burmah to Af- ghanistan. It is eighteen hundred miles long, and fifteen hundred wide.

In the last half of the seventeenth century, under its great Mogul emperor Aurung-Zebe, Hindustan was divided into thirty-three provinces, which very nearly correspond to the thirty-three States recognized under the present British su- premacy. To this great country, so divided, thirty- three different languages are popularly ascribed. These have a common foundation in the Sanscrit, but differ in their construction to such an extent that those who are native to the country are unwilling to call them dialects. Hindustanee, which is everywhere spoken, originated at the time of the Mahometan conquest, and was called by the Moguls Urdu Zab^n, or " camp language."