17-1 Objections to the modern style of official Hindustani. [No. 3, 



is up to the present day a complete desideratum ; nothing of the kind 

 has ever been attempted ; and I should be delighted to see some 

 Pandit come forward, with sufficient zeal, patriotism and learning, to 

 undertake such a task ; a dictionary, I mean, which would comprise 

 all the words used by Tulsi Das in the Ramayana, by Chand the 

 Bard of the last Hindu kings, by Bihari Das the author of the Satsaiya, 

 and the other classical Hindi poets. I am convinced that such a work 

 would not only be of the greatest interest to a philologist, but would 

 incontestably prove that Hindi is an independent language, elaborated 

 by a series of able writers and guided by a definite standard, which 

 from time to time has varied in degree, but never in character. 



Having so far cleared the ground, I will proceed to defend the 

 position taken up by those who protest against the continuance of the 

 present Kachahri boli, and still more against its recognition as the 

 literary language of the country. In the first place, it is a recent inno- 

 vation, which had positively no existence whatever fifty or sixty years 

 ago. Mr. Beames incidentally speaks of Urdu writers three or four cen- 

 turies back, but I must confess that I have never heard of them. The 

 Mahommedans subdued the country, but never succeeded in destroying, 

 the language of the conquered people, nor does it appear that they made 

 the attempt. As late as Akbar's reign and for many years subse- 

 quently, the popular dialect of both classes was the same ; and if a 

 Musalman took in hand to write on any subject of general interest,, 

 especially if his taste led him to adopt a poetic form, his composition 

 was couched in Hindi. Several of the poems in the Sabha Bilas may 

 be mentioned as specimens, in which the only Persian word that 

 occurs is the name of the writer. If a more ambitious historical 

 narrative were attempted, he discarded the vernacular altogether, and 

 wrote in classical Persian, precisely in the same way as European 

 scholars, till a very recent date, wrote all their more important works 

 in Latin. Arabic too, was continued as the language of the law-courts, 

 as Norman-French in England, simply as a matter of convenience to 

 conform to the phraseology of the original codes ; and this eventually 

 was modified into Persian with the retention of a large proportion of 

 Arabic words and phrases. Of course, as time passed on, many foreign 

 words were incorporated into the popular dialect ; even in the 

 Ramayana of Tulsi Das we find at least two, jawdb and bakshish, and, 



