34 Contributions to Persian Lexicography. [No. 1, 



is going on in every spoken language, and shews that the copious and 

 beautiful forms of languages like Sanscrit, Gothic, Greek, and many 

 modern savage languages, are as many illogical incumbrances. The 

 sequences of events and the order of things which the imitative 

 genius of the modern languages expresses by the order of the 

 words, are expressed in the ancient languages by the annexation of 

 words and particles rather than by a logical order of the words, as if 

 the speaker was afraid that the hearer could only understand those 

 ideas for which there was an audible equivalent. Whilst many are 

 apt to look upon stripping off the leaves as a matter of regret, I would 

 consider it as a step towards delivering the human mind from the 

 fetters of form. Perhaps I tread upon contestable ground. But a fact 

 remains ; it is this, that of all nations whose languages are preserved 

 to us, the Persians are the first Arians that pitched the tent of speech 

 on the elevated tableland of logical thought. 



Simplified then as the Persian language is, further change in termi- 

 nations being impossible, the growth, as in modern English, is only 

 visible in the pronunciation, the spelling and the meanings of words. 

 For the study of this development a comparison of the works of the 

 older writers with those of the modern, is essential ; and as the 

 Persian written and studied in India has hitherto been imitating the 

 pre-classical and classical Persian of the early invaders, the importance 

 of the Isti'mal i Hind is easily recognised. 



The following peculiarities are said by native writers to be common 

 to the Persian of Turan and India. 



a. Many words end in the Turanian Persian in ^J (kaf), whilst the 

 Iranian has a ^ (gaf) ; as <*&? a kind of partridge, in Tiir. ti^ • 

 *_££-*> mishg musk, in Tiir. i£L&wo mushh ; w_<.<£| a tear, in Tiir. i£Li| ; 

 vX-i^w a drop, in Tiir. i^ti^. Similarly, iX«}J a doctor, *J«*>j jeal- 

 ousy, i_&&J-a>., &c, in Tur. with a final kaf. 



b. Also in the beginning of certain words ; as c^l-i^, in Tur. 

 coU.S' (as every Muhammadan in India pronounces) ; J-J^-*^ coriander 

 seed, in Tiir. y^^*£. 



This difference between the Turanian iJ and the Iranian >~3 becomes 

 very apparent in Dictionaries arranged according to the first and last 

 letters. Thus in Suriiri iX£| stands in the <_5*»;IJ ofc" £* uiJ| JLai, 

 whilst in the Madar in the (jrjI-J olS" £* tJU| J.^. 



