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470 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society.. [No. 4 



auxiliary verbs, and pronouns. The Hindvi among the Mohammadans 

 has become the Urdu. Its grammar is strictly Hindvi, but its vo- 

 cables are partly Hindvi and partly Persian and Arabic. Thus the 

 Urdu, which is also called the Hindustani, is nothing but Hindvi with 

 a variable proportion of foreign elements. Inasmuch, however, as 

 such foreign admixture does not alter the genealogical affinity of a 

 language, the author contends that the Hindustani is an Aryan and 

 not a Semitic dialect. He next enters into an examination of the 

 capability of the Iioman characters to represent the phonology of the 

 Hindvi and the Urdu, so as to supersede the use of the Native alpha- 

 bets, and comes to the conclusion that the introduction of these cha- 

 racters into the Mofussil Courts, for the writing of Native dialects 

 would be troublesome, impolitic, mischievous, and in no way conducive 

 to the good of the people;— troublesome, inasmuch as they cannot be 

 used for the Native languages without a multitude of diacritical marks 

 which, in Lepsius' Standard Alphabet, affect no less than 160 letters, 

 and which can never be attended to in rapid writing ; impolitic, because 

 it will create disaffection among the people who cannot but look upon 

 the supersession of their ancient and superior alphabet by an imperfect 

 one utterly unsuited to their wants, as highly oppressive ; and mischie- 

 vous, because it would lead to frequent and serious mistakes in the 

 judicial records of the country. The great want of India was a lingua 

 franca and not an universal alphabet, which last, without a common 

 language, would be a name and an idea, but of no possible practical 

 good. 



Captain Lees said : — " I did not anticipate it would be necessary 

 for me to say anything this evening ; but as no other member of the 

 Society has risen, I cannot allow the meeting to separate without 

 an expression of opinion that our special thanks are due to Babu 

 Rajendralala Mitra, for the excellent paper he has just read, on a very 

 interesting subject. It will hardly be credited by the members of 

 this Society, who may be supposed to be better informed on this 

 subject than the outside public, that notwithstanding the Hindustanee 

 language is the lingua franca of India, and understood from Peshawur 

 to Cape Comorin, and notwithstanding that the English have had 

 India now for upwards of a century, the Essay that we have just 

 heard read, is the first scientific paper of the kind that has ever been 

 written in India. Dr. Trumpp's paper on the dialects of India, to 



