1866.] Objections to the modem style of official Hindustani. 173 



generally understood throughout the length and breadth of India, 

 than any equally polished specimen of Urdu. This statement, indeed, 

 may be called a mere ipse dixit, but its truth is susceptible of a very 

 easy test. However, as I have already said, Hindi so absolutely pure 

 and undefiled, finds few advocates ; and there can be no doubt that 

 the Baital Pachisi, where a judicious mixture of Persian terms has 

 been admitted, would be much more easily and widely intelligible 

 than the Preru Sagar. 



The only foundation for the belief that Hindi is an arbitrary name 

 for a group of vulgar dialects, which have little in common and could 

 not be reduced to one standard, is the practice of the early Missionaries, 

 each of whom set about compiling a dictionary for the district in 

 which he happened to be placed. But if we compare these local 

 glossaries together, we shall find that a very large proportion of the 

 words occur equally in all. To test this statement, I take down a 

 Panjabi dictionary which I have at hand, and open it at random : the 

 first word at the top of the page is palit } filthy, which is Sanskrit, and 

 the last word par-nuni, a maternal great grandmother, which is good 

 Hindi ; of the other forty-six words in the same page there are only nine 

 which are at all peculiar, though there are several divergencies from the 

 recognized mode of orthography. And the varietieSj so far as I can 

 judge, appear to be of two kinds : 1st, the most common of all natural 

 objects are known by several designations, of which one will be most 

 popular in this district, another in that ; while the other names will 

 remain in the back ground, perfectly well understood, though less 

 frequently on the tongue. As an example of what I mean : a tree 

 in Bengal proper is generally called gdchh,. in the N. W. Provinces 

 per, and in the Hills briksh ; but a native in any part of the Bengal 

 presidency who did not know the meaning of per would be a 

 phenomenon. 2nd, Agricultural implements,, or rather the component 

 parts of such implements, with the domestic articles of daily use, are 

 known in different quarters- of India by very different names. But 

 for the most part these things, being suggested by the peculiar wants 

 and habits of the district, have no foreign name whatever, and in 

 superfine Urdu can only be expressed by a periphrasis. Local 

 differences of these two kinds do not, in my opinion, at all impair the 

 integrity of the language. But unfortunately a good Hindi dictionary 

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