1868.] Contributions to Persian Lexicography. 33 



In its relation to Persian the Isti'mal i Hind will of coui'se in most 

 cases appear as something faulty ; for the peculiarities may no longer 

 be a natural form of development, or a j*U= iaJ-s, hut the result of 

 ignorance, a <*1*jW fly* •kJ**. Nevertheless the Isti'mal i Hind is visible 

 in every Persian book written by Indians, from the works of their 

 excellent historians down to a common dinner invitation ( 4/eU.xiL.a ) 

 of the daily life. Even the works of a writer like Abulfaszl, " the 

 great Munshi," shew traces of it. Hence the truth of Mons. G-arcin cle 

 Tassy's remark that every Persian scholar ought to be acquainted 

 with Hindustani. If this be true for the Persian scholar, it is much 

 more true for the compiler of a Persian ■ dictionary ; for a good 

 dictionary ought to be based upon a thorough knowledge of the lan- 

 guage in all its forms of development, and must be a history of the 

 language as well as a vocabulary. 



But if we only understand by Isti'mal i Hind the influence of the 

 Hindi and Hindustani upon the Persian, we would almost identify 

 the term with " the usage of the Persian writers since the establish- 

 ment of the Mogul dynasty." This would be wrong ; for the Isti'mal 

 i Hind includes peculiarities which once belonged to the Persian, as 

 spoken in Persia, but which the modern Irani, in the course of its 

 progress, has entirely discarded. In early times Persian had become 

 the court language of Tiiran, and from Tiiran it was carried to India 

 by the waves of the Turanian immigrants and invaders. Hence on 

 the whole the Persian of India is Turanian. As Latin in the Middle 

 Ages, so was the Persian in Tiiran, and subsequently in India, 

 the language of the learned. The works of the pre-classical and 

 classical periods were studied and imitated, and peculiarities have 

 thus been preserved which have long since disappeared in the Irani 

 Persian. The difference between the pre-classical and the modern 

 Persian is, of course, not so great, as between Latin and any of the 

 Romanic languages, because the pre-classical Persian had already 

 attained that logical simplicity to which our modern European lan- 

 guages happily tend ; and though representing the growth of the 

 Pei'sian language during nine centuries, it is scarcely greater than the 

 difference between the English of Fletcher and Beaumont and the 

 English of our century. The Persian language has been compared to 

 a bare tree, stripped of all its leaves. This stripping ^process, however, 

 5 



