178 Objections to the modem style of official Hindustani. [No. 3, 



gradually penetrates through every class of society. For example, all 

 Hindi words ending in an unaccented vowel which would be clearly 

 marked in Nagari, lose their termination in Persian writing, where all 

 the vowels, final or medial, are more or less obscured. Thus, pati, so 

 frequent in proper names, as Nirpati, Dhanpati, Brihashpati, is 

 abbreviated into pat. Again, the Sanskrit v or to is generally 

 corrupted by the defect of the Persian alphabet into o ; thus we have 

 deo, Baldeo, deota for deva, Baldeva, devatd. Hence too arises the 

 uncouth word Dooar rendered familiar by the disturbances in Bhutan, 

 which, if correctly spelt, is only the common Hindi dwiir. As for the 

 short vowel w, it admits an alternative error, being either dropped 

 altogether, or written with the long ivao. The Sanskrit compound 

 consonants again cannot be clearly indicated, and in consequence we 

 get the corruption kariya for hriyd in the common phrase for funeral 

 rites, hriyd harm. It is highly desirable that some scheme should be 

 started which would enable the two systems of writing to exercise a 

 mutual check npon each other ; the Nagari completing the deficiencies 

 of the Persian, and the Persian acting as a short-hand auxiliary of the 

 Nagari. And there would be no practical difficulty in such an 

 arrangement, if only it were once clearly recognized that the vernacular 

 is a composite language, in its essential structure Hindi, but in its 

 component elements Hindi and Persian in equal proportion. The 

 division of the vernacular into Hindi and Urdu was a most unfortunate 

 invention of the munshis of the College of Fort William at the 

 beginning of the present century, and has never been generally 

 recognized by the natives. I do not think that any one, who had not 

 been specially brought under English training, would dream of calling 

 his native tongue Urdu ; and, as I have before stated, Hindus and 

 Musalmans alike, till very recent times, used one dialect for popular 

 composition, though the Hindu, from early association and perhaps also 

 from the nature of his subject, which would often be mythological, 

 would naturally, though not inevitably nor uniformly, use more 

 Sanskrit words, and the Musalman, from the nature of his religion, 

 more Persian words. It is now high time that these fanciful distinc- 

 tions should be again merged into one, and the language of the 

 country, according to universal analogy, be known by the name of 

 Hindustani. I cannot see any good to be gained by the retention of 



