JOURNAL 



ASIATIC SOCIETY, 



No. V. 1864. 



On the Origin of the Hindvi Language and its Relation to the Urdu 

 Dialect. — By JBabu Ra'jedstdrala'la Mitra. Corresponding Mem- 

 her of the German and the American Oriental Societies. 



[Read 12 August, 1864.— Revised 10th October, 1864.] 



The history of our vernacular dialects, like that of our social and 

 political condition during the Hindu period, remains yet to be writ- 

 ten. It is not remarkable, therefore, that considerable difference of 

 opinion should exist as to their origin. Our Sanskritists take every 

 thing to be Sanskritic. Those of our philologers who have devoted 

 much of their time to the dialects of the south of India, cannot, from 

 habit and long association, look at an Indian dialect from other than 

 a Turanian stand-point. And most of our Persian and Arabic scho- 

 lars, in the same way, observe every thing through a Semitic me- 

 dium. Hence it is that the Hindvi has been sometimes called a 

 Sanskritic, sometimes a Turanian, and sometimes a Semitic dialect. 

 The balance of opinion, however, now preponderates in favour of the 

 theory which assigns to it a Sanskrita origin. It has been shewn that 

 the affinity of its roots is unmistakeably Aryan, that its phonology 

 and laws of permutation are peculiarly Sanskritic, and that the num- 

 ber of Sanskrita vocables traceable in it, amount, at the lowest com- 

 putation, to 90 per cent. The discussion on the subject has, how- 

 ever, not yet been brought to a close. Even at the last meeting of 

 this Society, my learned and respected friend, Capt. Lees, in his valua- 

 ble essay on the Romanising of Indian Alphabets, stated that the 

 Hindustani had not an alphabet of its own, and was therefore a fit 



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