Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/179

Rh descends from some other old Indian dialects than the dialect met with in the Vedas." As to this part of our proposition, that the growth of various Prākṛtas has been partly due to diverse ethnic influences, a good deal has already been said, and something more will have to be said later on; I may however notice here, what Mr. A. H. Keane has observed, regarding the cause of wide diversity existing among the speeches of various groups of Aryan origin (both Asiatic and European), after considering all the groups on a comparative table at p. 412 of his Ethnology. His words are: "The profound disintegration which is shown in this table and which is immeasurably greater than in the Semitic family, is mainly due to the spread of Aryan speech amongst non-Aryan peoples by whom its phonetic system and grammatical structure were diversely modified." That for the very reason, the Chhāndasa speech in its turn, has transformed itself into various dialects in different provinces of Northern India, is what has all along been emphasized.

As in all sober and serious investigations into the causes of phenomena, we have to determine the natural causes and not their supernatural seemings, we have to push on in the matter of our enquiry an intensive study of actual facts, and should not seek to explain things by what might have dropped from the skies—by importing some imaginary patois-speaking hordes from elsewhere. If even the explanation, we offer, prove inadequate, there will not be any justification in setting up the figments of our imagination in the name of theories, to solve our difficulties.

We have to first direct our attention to the character of the language of the Vedas, called Chhāndasa. I use the word Veda in a very restricted sense here; in this restricted sense the word Veda, indicates the mantra literature,