132 Dr. Ilocrnle on the 7th International Congress of Orientalists. [April, 



on receiving the same consideration in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, 

 which they had extended to the Indian delegates at Vienna. 



The following is Mr. Grierson's note, referred to in the above report. 



" In laying on the table a copy of ' Bihar Peasant Life,' and a com- 

 plete set of the ' Grammars of the dialects and sub-dialects of the 

 Province of Bihar,' I would ask to be excused for drawing attention to 

 the fact that they are a first attempt at a systematic survey of the lan- 

 guage actually spoken in a given tract of British India. 



" A glance at any one of these books will show how radically the real 

 language, — the mother- tongue of all classes, rich and poor, educated and 

 uneducated alike — in Bihar, differs from the so-called Hindi and Hindu- 

 stani languages which have hitherto been the only languages of Northern 

 India known to students. 



" I would now urge the necessity there is of making a systematic 

 attempt at finding out what are the actual languages spoken at the 

 present day throughout India, and what relics there are of their past 

 history. 



" Firstly, the actual state of affairs at the present day. We have the 

 Neo- Aryan languages of India at present roughly classified into Marathi, 

 Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindi, Bengali, Asami, Oriya, Kashmiri and 

 Singhali, to which by a process of fission Bihari has lately been added 

 as a younger sister. As having, in a manner, attended at the birth of the 

 last named, I naturally take an interest in her condition, but that does 

 not prevent my seeing that what is the case with her is in great measure 

 the case throughout all India, and specially in Hindustan. That is, that 

 the literary or Government language of any tract is widely different from 

 the language actually spoken by the people. In some cases this is only 

 a question of dialect, but in others the polite language learned by Euro- 

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

 distinct both in origin and in construction from that used by the same 

 natives in their homes. In the course of future years, no doubt, through 

 the agency of railways and the printing press, the literary language will 

 in many cases become the norm of home-conversation, but at present 

 that is not the case. The fact is, and it is one that should be faced, that 

 nowhere in Hindustan is the language of the village the same as the 

 language of the court and of the school. This is true to a certain extent 

 all over the world, but in India the difference between the two languages 

 is peculiarly great. Before a poor man can sue his neighbour in the 

 court he has to learn a foreign language, or to trust to interpreters, who 

 fleece him at every step ; and before a boy can learn the rule of three he 

 has to learn the foreign language in which it is taught. In some parts 

 of Hindustan this difficulty exists in greater degrees than in others, but 

 it is always more or less present. 



