1864.] 



On the Origin of the Hindvi Language, 



51E 



cised we cannot say they are French. No Frenchman would 

 for a moment recognise them as such. English rhetoricians, no 

 doubt and very justly, condemn them, but still they admit them 

 to be English and quote them as specimens of English. Following 

 them, we may call the Urdu, Persianised Hindvi, but still Hindvi and 

 not Persian. In the four Mahomedan Bengali books, from which 

 extracts are given below, the number of foreign words appear to be 

 quite as large as in the ordinary run of Urdu books, and yet those 

 books are described by their authors to be Bengali, and translated 

 from the Persian and Urdu expressly for the people of Bengal. Vir- 

 tually their language is as much the Urdu of Bengal, or Bengali 

 Urdu, as the Urdu is the Hindvi Urdu, or the Urdu of the North- 

 West. If they be taken for distinct languages, I see no reason why 

 the anglicised Hindvi in which Englishmen in India say ? 

 El E2 HI E3 E 4 H 2 



" hearer couchkd samne almari me pantaloon ralzkho" 

 a new language. In it we find no less than four European and only 

 two Hindvi words. Similarly the Bengali of our courts, which contains 

 twenty per cent, of English words, would have a fair claim to a 

 distinct rank. The language of Young Bengal again is a patchwork 

 of English nouns and Bengali verbs, and yet nobody has thought of 

 calling it a distinct language. And if they are not distinct languages, 

 but corruptions and dialectic varieties of one language, the Urdu can 

 hold no higher position. 



The colloquial Urdu of the masses contains a smaller admixture 

 of foreign words than the written Urdu, and Capt. Lees is of opinion 

 that it is a distinct dialect independent of the Urdu of our books ; 

 to it he applies the term Hindustani. But the principle of this sub- 

 division is open to grave objection, Pressed to its legitimate end, it 

 would justify our dividing every living language into not only two 

 distinct dialects, the written and the colloquial, but to as many dia- 

 lects as there are orders and ranks of people. 



Extract from the Surur Sidtdni, p. ] 1. 



F5 F4 



H4 



H 3 H2 HI F 3 



F2 F 1 



oHb^ sjj 



LilJ 



jSjAj) <l*> J.JJ (fvs-iuxfc 



fiWlr jf <H^*^ 



H13 H12 



Hll 



H10H9 F7 H 8 F 6 . 



H 7 H 6 H 5 



e>H^ ^^^ 



cr^ 



U£ ^L& ycj^ U5" als^f 



3 v"% 



