Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/77



The Vedic or the Chāndasa speech was very much changed when the Brāhmaṇas were composed; the language of the Brāhmaṇas again differs widely in many essential particulars from what is called the classical Sanskrit, as well as from the speech which has unfortunately come to be designated by the name Pāli. That the later Prākṛtas and the provincial vernaculars, differ similarly from one another, as well as from the earlier speeches, is a well-known fact. Even the scholars who are mere linguists, and have only made a comparative study of all the speeches of N. India, without any reference to the characteristics of the speakers thereof, have not failed to notice, that the changes and deviations from the norm cannot be wholly explained by those laws, which the philologists have formulated, to account for all sorts of linguistic changes and modifications. The orthodox philologists have however been forced to admit, either directly or by implication, that the influence of some people other than the original speakers of the Aryan tongues, must have been at work in bringing about the aforesaid changes, though no particular non-Aryan people has been pointed out, from whom this influence emanated. Looking to the fact that cerebral sounds prevail very much in the Dravidian speeches, it has been vaguely asserted that some Dravidian people, as speakers of the Aryan speeches, induced dentals to be changed into cerebrals. Mr. Stenkonow's remarks on this point, as appear in the IVth volume of the Linguistic Survey of India, are very correct in my opinion. Since such a change of a dental into a cerebral is not wholly