500 



On the Origin of the Hindvi Language. 



[No. 



more than six or seven in all. Still compared to nouns of their 

 respective languages, the verbs assume a much greater variety of 

 forms, and therefore their conjugational affixes offer the most ready 

 materials for tracing their origin. This test applied to the Hindvi 

 fails entirely to detect in it the smallest amount of a Scythic or 

 Dravidian element. No doubt the niceties of the Sanskrita conjuga- 

 tion, the ten classes, the three voices, the ten moods and tenses, have all 

 disappeared in the Hindvi, as they have more or less in all other modern 

 vernaculars, whether Indian or European ; but what is left to us is purely 

 Sanskrita and not foreign, and we may fairly conclude therefore that 

 what has disappeared was likewise Sanskritic, and that the whole 

 system owes its origin to a Sanskrita source. The process has been that 

 of decay and regeneration, and not of development and expansion. 

 History does not afford us an instance of a language growing out of a 

 rude state, developing new forms and gradually acquiring symmetry and 

 perfection, such as the Latin out of the Spanish or the Italian. It is 

 the perfect that wears out and readjusts its members when the first 

 arrangement ceases to be expressive. Hence it is that we find in the 

 Hindvi, as in all other vernaculars, the original inflections losing their 

 power and significance and yielding their places to verbs and participles, 

 which in their turn wear out and assume the form of inflections. It 

 is easy to suppose that the verbs which will most frequently adopt 

 this auxiliary character are those which indicate " to be/' "to exist," 

 fs to live," " to go." These in Sanskrita are as, bhu, sthd and gam, 

 and they therefore constitute the principal auxiliaries in the conjugation 

 of the Hindvi. 



The bliu of the Sanskrita becomes in the first person singular of 

 the present tense bhavdmi. In the Gatha the process which converts 

 bhu into bhava is partially carried out, and the word becomes bhomi. In 

 the Prakrita the bhu changes to ho and huba and those forms continue 

 in all the Aryan Indian vernaculars. Some think the transition of bhu 

 to ho to be unnatural and therefore assume it to be a non-Sanskrita 

 word, but, besides the authority of Vararuchi who nineteen hundred 

 years ago wrote down in his grammar the rule # that " in Prakrit bhu 

 should be changed to ho, and huba, 11 we find that notwithstanding the 



# Bliuho ho hubcm. Delius Radices PrdlcriUccB, p, 1, B and h were inter- 

 changeable even in the time of the Yedas and in the Srauia Sutra o£Aswalayana, 

 the same word is written at option both gribMta and grihita. 



