80 Annual Address, [Feb. 



The limits of these two raRiii families Dr. Grierson defines as 

 follows. The Central main family is bounded on the north by the 

 Himalayas, on the west by, rouglily speaking, the river Jhelam, and on 

 the east by the Kosi. Tiie western and eastern boundaries are very 

 wide, and include a good deal of debatable ground in vvhicli the two 

 main families meet and overlap. If these limits are narrowed so as to 

 include only the pure languages of the Central main family, the western 

 boundary must be placed at about the meridian of Sirhind in Patiala,** 

 and the eastern at about the meridian of Allahabad ia the North- 

 Western Provinces. The southern boundary is well defined. It runs 

 east and west through a point about two-thirds of the wny across the 

 Central Provinces. On the west, the Central m^iin family merges into 

 Sindhi through Marwari and Bao^ri, into what Mr. Bomford names 

 *' Western Panjabi " through Panjabi, and into Ka^miri through Gujari, 

 Dogri, and other hill languages, so that the area covered closely corres- 

 ponds with that of the ancient madhya dega or Middle Country, the name 

 of which is significant. We learn from the Mahabharata that Krsna, 

 being defeated by Jarasandha of Magadha, fled from Mathura to Gujarat, 

 where he founded a colony. At the present day Gujarat is the only 

 place where the Central main family has burst through the suirounding 

 wall of non-Central languages. Tlie language is a pure Central one. 

 Panjabi contains many unrecorded forms, for which the only explanation 

 is that to the west of Sirhind, or, we may say, to the west of the Saras- 

 vati, the country was originally inhabited by tribes belonging to the 

 non- Central family, who were conquered or absorbed by members of 

 the Central family, whose language gradually superseded theirs just 

 as Hindustani is now gradually superseding Paiijabi. Panjabi is a 

 Central language, but it contains many forms which can only have 

 survived (if they were not imported) from an original non-Central 

 dialect. 



On the eastern side, the wider boundary includes Bihari. Most of 

 the Bihar dialects probably belong to the non-Central main family. 

 Hitherto they have been grouped with languages like Avadhi and 

 Baisvari, which also probably belong to the Central main family. 

 Provisionally, till the linguistic survey is complete, Dr. Grierson is 

 inclined to clnss the true Bihari dialects, viz.^ Purbi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, 

 and Magadhi, as non-Central languages, belonging, like Baqgali, to the 

 Eastern group, and Baisvari and Avadhi and others as an Eastern 

 group of the Central family. 



*2 Sirliind also means the head of Hindustan, aud is still the recognised race- 

 boundary point. 



