1864.] 



Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 



469 



and the fourth period which we may call the decline of the Moham- 

 madan power, no arrangements have as yet been made. 



" And here I may convey to the Society the gratifying intelligence 

 which has reached me within the last few days from Mr. Grote, that 

 Lady Elliot has at last placed in the hands of Mr. E. Thomas and our 

 late Secretary, Professor Cowell, the whole of Sir Henry Elliot's MSS. 

 with a view to their being published by our Society, with the assistance 

 which her Majesty's Secretary of State in Council has so liberally 

 offered us for that purpose, and that we shall thus have the means of 

 conferring an inestimable boon on the Oriental World, and at the same 

 time of erecting a noble and lasting monument to that accomplished 

 scholar and distinguished member of our own body, will, I am certain, 

 be most gratifying to all members of this Society who knew him when 

 living, or who honour and respect his memory." 



Communications were received — ■ 



1. From Lieutenant E. C. Beavan, Eevenue Survey ;— A few re- 

 marks on the Tusseh silkworm of Bengal. 



2. From Baboo Gopinath Sen, an abstract of the hourly Meteoro- 

 logical Observations taken at the Surveyor General's Office Observatory 

 in May last. 



3. From Babu Eajendralala Mitra, on the origin of the Hindvi 

 and its relation to the Urdu dialect. 



After a few introductory remarks, the author, in this paper, takes a 

 retrospective view of the principal changes which the Sanskrit has 

 undergone in its transition to the modern vernaculars of India. The 

 oldest vernacular, next to the Sanskrit, he says, was the GdtM dialect, 

 which prevailed at the time of Buddha's death in the fifth century 

 before the Christian era. This was followed by the Pali in the time 

 of As'oka, Emperor of India, and it changed into the different Pra- 

 kritas a little before the birth of Vikramdditya. Nothing is known of 

 the north Indian vernaculars for a thousand years after this, until 

 the time of Prithiraj of Kanouj in the tenth century, A. D. when the 

 Hindvi became the vernacular of the most civilized portion of the 

 Hindu race. The Hindvi has since that time undergone many 

 changes and been divided into several dialects, but it is substantially 

 one language, which, in its grammar, bears the closest analogy to the 

 Sanskrit. This the author proves by a detailed analysis of the inflec 

 tional and conjugation^ terminations of the Hindvi as well as of the 



