Page:The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (Volume 1).pdf/9



In 1921 the University of London accepted my thesis on ‘the Origin and Development of the Bengali Language’ for the degree of ‘Doctor of Literature.’ The present work is substantially the same thesis, but it has been entirely re-written and in some portions re-arranged, and has also been considerably augmented by the inclusion of some new matter.

The idea of systematically investigating the history of my mother- tongue first struck me over twelve years ago when I was at college in my native town of Calcutta reading for the Master of Arts examination in English with Old and Middle English and History of the English Language and a little Germanic Philology as my special subjects. The modern methods of linguistic investigation which I saw applied to English filled me with admiration and enthusiasm; and as the problem of Indo-European is equally connected with my own speech, my interests naturally began to turn wistfully in that direction. From Morris and Skeat, Sweet and Wright, and Jespersen and the rest, and from Helfenstein and Brugmann,—masters of Indo-Aryan philology like Chlenbeck and Wackernagel, Whitney and Pischel, Beames and Bhandarkar, Hoernle and Grierson and others were naturally approached aad studied for guidance and light; and I began also to look round myself, to observe facts in the words as written and as actually spoken. A few years of haphazard reading and observation, and taking notes, and stumbling on in this way, while working as Assistant Professor and Lecturer in English and in Comparative Philology in the University of Calcutta; and then in 1916 I presented as a three years’ research programme for the Premchand Roychand Studentship of the Calcutta University a scheme for ‘an Essay towards an Historical and