1866.] Objections to the modem style of official Hindustani. 177 



to be decidedly preferable to their foreign substitutes. The only- 

 reason for displacing them is the insane desire of inventing a language 

 for India with every Indian element eliminated. This principle is 

 carried to such an extent, that if a foreign substitute cannot readily 

 be found, the native word is dressed up in foreign fashion ; thus for 

 chachera, a perfectly regular derivative, we are presented with the 

 mongrel malformation, chachd-zdd. And even one step beyond this : 

 a dead set is made against the unfortunate letter j, which, as the 

 Hindi representative of z, is considered decidedly vulgar, and occasion- 

 ally banished even from Persian words, where till the present day no 

 z had ever been known to intrude. Thus we have fauzddri for 

 faujddri. When this is the case, it is no wonder that the z should be 

 exclusively adopted in those instances of not very unfrequent occurrence, 

 where there is some authority for its alternative use. Thus we have 

 jdnu, perfectly good Sanskrit, and zunu, equally good Persian, for a 

 knee ; or to take a word of every day occurrence, zdt is no doubt 

 unimpeachable Persian, but jdti is the original Sanskrit, and therefore 

 the proper form for retention in the language of India. Yet I feel 

 sure that an ordinary munshi would shudder to say jut ; though it 

 stands to reason that, as caste prevails solely amongst Hindus, the 

 popular word to denote it must be of home origin. Zdt again is 

 a word which stands by itself, without association or connection ; 

 while jdt at once refers us for its explanation to the cognate forms, jan } 

 janm } jannd, &c. 



3. The adoption of this Persian dialect as the language of the 

 countiy involves the necessary abandonment of the Nagari character. 

 With reference to its original purpose the Nagari alphabet is the most 

 scientific that human ingenuity has ever elaborated, but it is utterly 

 inadequate for the representation either of Arabic or Persian. On 

 the other hand the Persian character, as ordinarily written, is almost 

 equally destructive of Hindi phraseology ; and it is interesting to 

 watch the gradual inroads which it is making on vernacular speech. 

 The court munshis, who, as a rule, have never read a page of any 

 Hindi book, pronounce every word according to its Persian orthogra- 

 phy, which in many cases is a very imperfect representative of the 

 original Hindi form ; and as they are consiclei'ed the depositaries of 

 learning, their example is imitated, the mistake is perpetuated, and 



