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240 tracts; how therefore two different varieties of the Māgadhi speech could come together to form the Oriya speech, may be easily imagined. We should be very care­ful therefore in referring to the archaic forms of Oriya, to trace the history of our words. The reason why Oriya abounds with archaic forms, may be stated in the words of Mr. Beams: "Oriya is the most neglected member of the group [of the Aryan languages], and retains some very archaic forms. The repulsive and difficult character in which it is written, the rugged and mountainous nature of the greater part of Orissa, and its comparative isolation from the world at large, have combined to retard its development." It is not the place where I can show that many letters of the Oriya script owe their origin distinctly and definitely to their corresponding Bengali forms—brought into use on the soil of Bengal at a comparatively recent time; ঘ, ছ, ঢ and স্থ are some of these letters; these letters only seemingly differ from the Bengali letters because they are written in a mode wholly peculiar to Orissa; that this mode of writing has made the Oriya letters unattractive to the foreigners, may be known from the following remark of Mr. Beams as appears in his Comparative Grammar of the Aryan Vernaculars: "The Bengali is the most elegant and easiest to write of all the Indian alphabets, Oriya, is of all Indian characters the ugliest, clumsiest and most cumbrous"—(Vol. I, p. 62).

We can very well assert on the strength of the facts adduced in this as well as in some other lectures, that the Eastern Māgadhi vernaculars were very much alike and did not much differ from one another, when they first came into being by being differentiated in different provinces; consequently we may refer to many archaic forms, retained alike by Oriya and Assamese, to trace the history of our words. Written vernacular literature of this very