Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/25

Rh pursue the scientific method in their inquiry, for they ask us to enter into the "play-room for their individual fancy," and accordingly we cannot always get into the domain of philology any classified fact or system "independent of the individual thinker" (vide "Grammar of Science," p. 10). Grierson's fanciful theory regarding the origin of Indian dialects may be adduced as a fitting example of this sort of philological vagaries. As the theory of this oriental scholar appears in an essay contributed by him to such a work of authority as the "Imperial Gazetteer of India," a brief discussion of it seems called for. To show up obscurantism is to pave the way to the true scientific method of inquiry.

I set forth first of all the propositions which Grierson has asked us to accept on his authority and from which he has drawn all his conclusions. They are:—

(i) Modern Aryan languages were not derived from Sanskrit. "Some pastoral tribes (long before the Vedic days) found their way across the Hindukush" and spread their languages over the whole of Northern India as far as Dibrugarh in the extreme east of Assam, and Canara to the south of Bombay. All the modern vernaculars have their origin in the "patois of these pastoral tribes."

(ii) The latest comers of the Indo-Aryans settled themselves in the so-called Midland by forcing the earlier immigrants "outward in three directions—to the east, to the south and to the west." The latest comers would not necessarily be on good terms with their predecessors, who quite possibly opposed them as intruders, nor did they speak the same language." One particular Indo-Aryan