THE LANGUAGES OF INDIA. 



By Archdeacon Josa. 



People speak of India as they would of any one country in Europe. 

 Because India happens to be a dependency of the British Empire, 

 therefore the enormous extent of the country, as well as the great 

 variety of languages spoken by the teeming millions of India, are for- 

 gotten. We are apt to imagine that our East Indians speak a barbarous 

 jargon. " Do you speak Hindustani?" is a question often asked by those' 

 who imagine that the bulk of our people, if not all, speak that language. 

 Jt may be news to some that upwards of 100 languages differing in 

 many cases radically one from the other, belonging to d fferent branches 

 of the great families of languages, are spoken in India. 



We propose, after giving a short account of the sacred language of 

 India, to enumerate and describe the chief languages spoken by the East 

 Indians of our colony. The religious tone, thought, and aspirations of 

 any race can onl\ be found out from its literature, and consequently from 

 its language. The language of the Vedas, to begin with, is called San- 

 skrit ('' carefully constructed "), but it is a Sanskrit peculiar to itself, 

 differing in a great measure from the more modern language. Hardly 

 any Brahmans are to be met with in India who understand the lan^uaoe 

 of the Vedas ; the greatest modern scholar of the ancient literature of 

 India was Professor Max Muller. The Sanskrit language ought to be 

 studied. She is the elder sister of most European languages. A m-eat 

 many words are identical in Sanskrit and in English. e.£ : 



The great similarity that exists between certain Asiatic languages 

 and those of Europe proses beyond a shadow of doubt that all these 

 languages have sprung from one tongue — sometimes called the Aryan. 

 This is now defunct. The Sanskrit approaches nearest to it. It stands 

 in the same relation to the religion of the Hindus as Latin does to the 

 religion of Roman Catholics. It is the language of the temple. There 

 are 10.000 distinct MSS: of Sanskrit literature, Hindi is the next 



