OF TUE UUMAN FAMILY. 399 



CHAPTER II. 



SYSTEM OP RELATIONSHIP OF THE TURANIAN FAMILY— Continued. 



Ganra Language of North India — Its Dialects — Grammatical Structure Turanian — Vocabulary mostly Sanskritic — 

 Gaura System of Relationship — A Ciassificatory System. 1. Hindi Form — Kxplanation in Detail — Original 

 Characteristics in which it agrees with Polish and Bulgarian — Nomenclature of Relationsliips— Source of same — 

 Turanian Characteristics in the System — Absence of Others — Severe Ordeal through which it has Passed. 2. 

 Bengali Form — Agrees with the Hindi. 3. Gujarathi Form — Agrees with the Himii. 4. Marathi Form — It also 

 agrees with the Hindi — Evidences of the Stability of the System — First Hypothesis : Whether it is an indepen- 

 dent Variety of the Ciassificatory System — Second Hypothesis: Wlietber it was originally Turanian, and modi- 

 fied under Sanskritic Influences iuto its present Form — The latter the most satisfactory — Reasons for placing the 

 Gaura System in the Tuiauian Connection. 



The Sanskrit grammarians divided the colloquial languages of India into two 

 classes, each containing five dialects, of which those of South India were called the 

 "five Draviras," and those of North India the "five Gauras." Later researches 

 have led to the correction of this arrangement, which was found to be erroneous 

 both in classification and in the number of dialects. There are nine dialects, as we 

 have seen, of the Dra vidian language, and there are, also, seven of the Gaura. The 

 latter are the Hindi, with its daughter the Hindustani, the Bengali, the Uriya, the 

 Panjabi, the Marathi, the Gujarathi, and the Sindhi. To these Dr. Caldwell pro- 

 poses to add the Cashmirian, and the language of Nipal.' 



In their formation the dialects of the Gaura language have a history somewhat 

 remarkable. Wlien the Sanskrit branch of the Aryan family entered India they 

 found the countries bordering the Indus and the Ganges in the possession of rude 

 aboriginal tribes, speaking a language or dialects of a language radically difiierent 

 from their own, and probably exceeding them several times in number. These 

 tribes, whose dialects may have originated the present dialects of North India, 

 were conquered by the Sanskrit speaking invaders. As conquerors they imposed 

 upon the aborigines their religious system, their laws, and to some extent their 

 usao-es and customs ; and by the device of caste they furtlier sought to keep them- 

 selves forever pure and unmixed in blood, whilst they retained the natives of the 

 country in a position of political and social inferiority. But the former failed to 

 wrest from the latter tlie grammatical structure of their language along with their 

 civil liberties. In the final result the grammatical forms of the aboriginal speech 

 conquered the polished and cultivated Sanskrit, ajul gave its own structure to the 

 new dialects, which were destined to become the vernacular idioms of botli invaders 

 and invaded. The Sanskrit, in the course of time, became a dead language, and 

 was superseded throughout North India by the Gaura speech. 



' Pr4vidian Comp. Gram. Intro., p. 21. 



