1866.] The Arabic Element in Official Hindustani. 13 



that there is no such thing as a Hindi standard of speech which is at 

 once intelligible to all classes, in all parts of Hindustan. For a com- 

 mon standard you are driven to the Urdu, which has selected and 

 embalmed the purest and most widely used forms of the old Hindi. 

 Just as in England, if we threw aside our classical English tongue 

 with all its foreign importations, we should find ourselves in a chaos of 

 Hampshire, Somerset, Yorkshire, Lowland Scotch and other jargons ; 

 so would it be in India. Who that has not lived among the 

 people understands the following words, common though they are in 

 the mouth of the Hampshire peasant ? to brize, to dount, fessey, to hov } 

 frittering, mohin, rumwards, shrow, stabble, tuly, wivvery, ivosset, yape, 

 to yaw. Examples without number might be given by any one who 

 recollects the peasant-talk of his own county in England. No one in 

 his senses would recommend our generally adopting any of these 

 words, good old Celtic and Saxon though they be, and yet we are 

 asked in India to recommend and assist in a precisely similar process. 

 The fact is that the languages of modern times have all arisen from a 

 fusion of cognate dialects, just as most nations have been formed by 

 coalitions of kindred tribes. By throwing aside that which was pecu- 

 liar to themselves, and retaining all those words and inflections which 

 they possessed in common, modern nations obtained a national basis 

 of speech on which to engraft words borrowed from foreign sources ; 

 and thus were built up English, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, 

 and all the leading languages of our times. That the Grangetic tribes, 

 by a happy coincidence, have been able to follow the same course, and, 

 by fusing the rough Hindi dialects into one, to add thereto many ex- 

 pressive foreign words, is a circumstance which, far from being lament- 

 able or a sign of decay, entitles the language so formed, to rank among 

 progressive and civilized tongues. If the rudest of the peasantry 

 cannot understand the cultivated language of their educated compa- 

 triots, it is not therefore advisable to despoil the language of its legiti- 

 mate gains, to bring it down to the level of grihasths and gwalas. 

 Rather let the latter be educated till they do understand. The diffi- 

 culty which the peasant finds in understanding the Court language has 

 been immensely overrated, and is only due to his imperfect education. 

 The true remedy for the difficulty is not to be found in an insane 

 attempt to impoverish a fine and copious language, but in making it 

 more widely known to all classes in India. 



