1864.] 



On the Origin of the Hindvi Language. 



501 



use of two thousand years the ho in the past tenses of the Braja Bhasha 

 appears in its primitive form of lha in Bhaye, Bhayethe, Sfc. The 

 conjugated form of the ho in the Prakrit a was homi, and in the Hind- 

 vi him. In the definite present this again is intensified by the addi- 

 tion of the past participle hotd before it. 



The past tense is formed by the past participle hotd with the aid of 

 the Sanskrita sthd u to remain" changed to thd, the personal dis- 

 tinction being indicated by the alteration of the terminal vowel. The 

 perfect is formed by the union of the present participle with the pre- 

 sent tense, hua-hon. This duplication of the verb in the perfect tense 

 is peculiarly Aryan. It occurs in Sanskrita, Greek, Latin, Zend, Anglo- 

 Saxon and Gothic, and is by itself a strong proof in favour of the 

 Sanskrita affiliation of the Ilindvi. In the pluperfect the thd again 

 occurs as an inflection, the verb remaining in the form of the present 

 participle hud. For the future tense the auxiliary is the root gam 

 u to go" in the form of get or ge added to the verb in the indicative 

 present. This paraphrase is peculiar and not common in any other 

 Sanskritic vernacular. Its analogue in the English may be traced in 

 such phrases as I am going to do. 



In the case of other verbs ho becomes an auxiliary for the perfect, 

 the other tenses being conjugated in the same way as ho ; it is not 

 necessary, therefore, to adduce examples. 



Nor is it necessary to dwell longer on the subject of the grammati- 

 cal forms of the Hindvi. What has been said will, I trust, be sufficient 

 to shew the strong affinity which it has to the Sanskrita, and the rela- 

 tion it bears to the Prakrita and the other Aryan vernaculars of India. 

 There are, we admit, breaks in the chain of our evidence, but they are 

 not of such a character as to render the whole untrustworthy. At 

 any rate it will be seen that the Hindvi as it stands, could not have 

 proceeded from any other known language except the Sanskrita, and 

 this sort of negative evidence, in the absence of positive proof, has 

 been recognized in judicature, and may with every reason be adopted 

 in history. 



It has been said that inasmuch as the earliest seats of the 

 Brahmans in India at the time of their advent were occupied by the 

 aborigines, and the two races freely coalesced together, their vernacu- 

 lars must have, from a very remote period, assumed a mixed character. 

 But the Veda* give us no reason to suppose that any such extensive 



