492 



On the origin of the Jlindvi Language. 



[No. 5, 



Ing to these changes, justly says, they < take place gradually, but 

 surely, and what is more important, they are completely beyond the 

 reach or control of the free will of man/ No more could As'oka 

 and his monks devise them for religious purposes, than change the 

 direction of the monsoons or retard the progress of the tides. It is 

 said that Marcellus, the grammarian, once addressed the emperor 

 Tiberius ? when he had made a mistake, saying, ' Caesar, thou canst 

 give the Eoman citizenship to man, but not to words ;' and mutatis 

 mutandis, the remark applies with just as much force to As'oka as to 

 Tiberius. There can be no doubt that As'oka was one of the mightiest 

 sovereigns of India. His sway extended from Dhauli on the sea 

 board of Orissa to Kapur-di-Giri in Afghanistan, and from Bakra in 

 the north-east to Junagar in Guzerat. His clergy and missionaries 

 numbered by millions ; they had penetrated the farthest limits of 

 Hindustan proper, and had most probably gone as far as Bamian on 

 the borders of the Persian empire. Eeligious Enthusiasm was at its 

 height in his days, and he was the greatest enthusiast in the causa 

 of the religion of his adoption. He devised his edicts to promote that 

 religion ; had them written in the same words for all parts of his king- 

 dom ; and used exactly the same form everywhere : but with all his 

 imperial fpower and influence, he could not touch a single syllable of 

 the grammar which prevailed in the different parts of his dominions. 

 In the north-west, the three sibilants, the r above and below compound 

 consonants, the neglect of the long and short vowels, and other dialec- 

 tic peculiarities, rode rough-shod over the original as devised by him 

 and his ministers and apostles in his palace, and recorded in Allaha- 

 bad and Delhi ; while at Dhauli nothing has been able to prevent the 

 letter I entirely superseding the letter r of the edicts. Had the lan- 

 guage under notice been a " quasi religious," or a " sacred dialect," it 

 would have been found identically the same in all parts of India, for 

 the characters used in the Delhi, Allahabad, Dhauli and Junagar 

 records are the same, and if uniformity had been sought, it could 

 have been most easily secured. But popularity was evidently what 

 was most desired, and therefore concessions were freely made in 

 favour of the vernaculars of the different provinces at the expense of 

 uniformity. Unless this be admitted, it would be impossible to ex- 

 plain why the word Raja of Delhi, written in the same characters, 

 should in Cuttack change into LAja. Had the language been a sacred 



