Page:The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (Volume 1).pdf/10

xii Comparative Grammar of the Bengali Language,’ with a specimen of my work embodied in a thesis on ‘the Sounds of Modern Bengali’ as a preliminary to the investigation of Bengal Phonology. My programme and my thesis were approved by the adjudicators, the late Principal Rāmèndra Sundara Trivēdī and Mahāmahopādhyāya Paṇḍit Haraprasāda Śāstrī, M.A., C.I.E. For the University Jubilee Research Prize for the following vear the subject was announced as ‘Comparative Philology with special reference to the Bengali Dialects,’ and this allowed me an opportunity to put into shape my notes on the dialects of Bengali, while winning me the prize. The three years’ work as Premchand Roychand student consisted of a monograph on the Persian element in Bengali, a study of the Bengali verb and verb-roots, and a study of the language of the Old Bengal Caryā poems, combined with further notes on Bengali Phonetics.

In 1919 I was selected for a Government of India linguistic scholarship for the scientific study of Sanskrit in Europe. My three years’ stay in Europe, during 1919-1922, at the Universities of London and Paris, has naturally enough been of the greatest value for me in my work. It enabled me to come in touch in London with scholars like Dr. L. D. Barnett, with whom I read Prakrit, and who supervised my work in London; Dr. F. W. Thomas. who as lecturer in Comparative Philology at University College guided me in my study of Indo-European Philology; Professor Daniel Jones, under whom I studied Phonetics, who was not only my «śikṣā-guru» but also a warm friend and helper; besides Sir E. Denison Ross, Director of the School of Oriental Strides, and most sympathetic of men, and Professor R. W. Chambers (of University College), and Messrs. E. H. G. Grattan and Robin Flower (also of University College}, whose classes respectively in Persian, Old English, Gothic and Old Irish I attended; and in Paris, I had the privilege of sitting at the feet of a master like Professor Antoine Meillet for different branches of Indo-European linguistics, and of studying Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan philology under Professor Jules Bloch, besides meeting other eminent scholars like Professors Sylvain Lévi, Paul Pelliot and Jean