1887.] Dr. Hoernle on the 7th International Congress of Orientalists. 133 



" As the tracts ruled by each Government are very large, a multiplicity 

 of court languages would be a manifest inconvenience, but that is no 

 reason why the European official should not learn the vernacular patois 

 or language (I care not what it is called) of the district committed to 

 his care. This has hitherto been a practical impossibility to the average 

 official for whose aid no grammars or dictionaries existed, and for this 

 purpose, I undertook the preparation of the Bihari grammars, which 

 have, I believe, been found useful. The Magistrate need no longer have 

 recourse to an interpreter, and can now, after a minimum expenditure 

 of labour, converse with a witness in the latter's mother tongue. 



" So much, for the practical side of the question. I believe that similar 

 vocabularies and sets of grammars for the whole of India would be not 

 only equally practically useful, but would also be of assistance to students 

 of philology in Europe, and to missionaries. The Hindustani* hitherto 

 studied, though a useful lingua franca, is but a camp jargon, and Urdu 

 and Hindi, which are founded on it, are mere inventions of the closet, 

 and nowhere vernaculars. They are hence nothing but misleading to the 

 European student. 



" Secondly, the relics there are of the past history of the languages of 

 India. 



"Here I must confine myself to Hindustan, for I do not pretend to 

 have any acquaintance with the older literatures of other Indian lan- 

 guages. In my paper on the mediaeval literature of Hindustan which I 

 propose to read at this Congress, I hope to be able to show that, from 

 the 13th century down to the present day, there is a rich mine of litera- 

 ture awaiting the labour of the student. This literature is of every 

 variety, commentaries on Sanskrit works, histories, (with dates), epic 

 poems, collections of sonnets, huge anthologies, treatises on medicine, 

 mathematics and grammar, in short, every subject with which we are 



* I use these terms here in the sense in which natives use them in the part 

 of India where my lot has been cast. By Hindustani, I mean that useful lingua 

 franca, understood by every one all over Northern India, borrowing something from 

 each of many languages, but nowhere a vernacular. By Urdu, I mean that form 

 of Hindustani which has been elaborated by Musalman pedants in their books, which 

 is overloaded with Arabic and Persian words, and understood only by learned 

 Muhammadans. Similarly, by Hindi, I mean the Pandit-ridden form of Hindustani 

 which is overloaded with Sanskrit words, and understood only by learned Hindus. 

 Urdu differs from Hindi not only in its vocabulary, but in its idioms, and, above all 

 in the collocation of its words. This last, and not the vocabulary, is considered by 

 Hindu scholars the true discriminating test. This Hindi is often called Jabani by 

 natives. In talking to Europeans, natives will sometimes use Hindi for the language 

 of Stir Das, and Tul'si Das, but they rarely do so amongst themselves, preferring the 

 terms Braj, Baiswari, and so on. 



