1887.] Address. 67 



materials furnished to him by Captain Tanner of the Survey Depart- 

 ment during the Afghan war. He was of opinion that these dialects, 

 together with the Kashmiri, and the Romani of the gypsies, formed a 

 special group among the languages of the Indian branch of the Aryan 

 family. This opinion was not generally accepted ; and, in the discussion 

 that followed, Mr. Leland, the greatest living authority on the Romani 

 language, suggested that there was a race at the present day in the 

 Panjab that called themselves ' Rom ' and spoke Romani. This state- 

 ment was not supported by those present acquainted with the dialects 

 of the Panjab, but I may mention that, in the Mahabharata, a tribe of 

 Romanas is mentioned who inhabited a country to the north-west of the 

 Panjab and are possibly one with the Rums of Wamastan. Mr. Macauliffe 

 then gave an account of the discovery of a manuscript giving interesting 

 details of the life of Baba Nanak, founder of the Sikh religion. 



Linguistic Survey. — Mr. Grierson brought to the notice of the Congress 

 the necessity for a scientific survey of the Indian dialects, a project in 

 which I heartily concur. I entirely agree with him that the literary or go- 

 vernment language of any tract is widely different from the language actu- 

 ally spoken by the people, and that the polite language learned by Euro- 

 peans, and by natives who desire to converse with Europeans, is totally 

 distinct from that used by the same natives in their homes. I have 

 had frequently practical experience of this difference, and it was only 

 after some years of isolated residence in an out-of-the-way district and 

 continued converse with the people themselves that I was able to get 

 rid of the bad start with the bungalow he zabdn and the kachahri he 

 zaban and make myself understood by them. Except for philological 

 purposes, I am heretic enough, however, to be glad to see some ap- 

 proach to unity, through this ' bungalow cum court ' language, though 

 sorry to feel that this unity is reached on such a mongrel and entire- 

 ly unsatisfactory basis. I trust that I may safely say that the project 

 of an accurate survey of Indian dialects put forth by Mr Grierson and 

 supported by the distinguished members of the Oriental Congress will 

 have the warm and hearty support of this Society also. 



Anthropological Survey. — And now 1 must refer to the survey of the 

 people themselves as to their physical characteristics, institutions, laws, 

 and social rules that is actually in progress under Mr. H. Risley's gui- 

 dance. The scheme has been framed from the first so as to serve two 

 distinct purposes, the one in the main administrative, the other principal- 

 ly scientific, and I understand that this distinction will be maintained 

 in publishing the results. For administrative uses, it is proposed to 

 embody, in the form of an ethnographic glossary, a descriptive record of 

 all that is known, or can by systematic inquiry be ascertained within a 



