538 Epitome of the Grammars of the [June, 



IIT. — Epitome of the Grammars of the Brahuiky, the Balochky and the 



Panjdbi languages, with Vocabularies of the Baraky, the Pashi, the 



Laghmani, the Cashgari, the Teerhai, and the Deer dialects. By 



Lieut. R. Leech, Bombay Engineers, Assistant on a Mission to Kabul. 



Grammar of the Brahuiky Language. 



This language is spoken throughout the Khanship of Khaldt, the 

 boundary line of which may be drawn through Harrand, Shall, Kokak 

 and Kech, and the district called Garamsel ; the handwriting is Per- 

 sian, as well as the letters of the alphabet with the exception of a 

 peculiar I something near the Devanagari ~E&, and a £ pronounced with 

 a strong emission of the breath from the roof of the mouth. The 

 Brahuees say that their original country is Halab {Aleppo), and that a 

 great number emigrated to Balochistdn, about 20 generations ago, 

 under a chief of the name of Kambar, from whom there arose the 

 tribe called Kambrdnees, now the first in consequence, and in which 

 the Khanship is made hereditary. 



Alphabet. 



The system of Romanizing adopted is that now generally followed, 

 formed on the Italian pronunciation of the vowels. Besides the Nagari 

 consonant the Brahuiky makes use of the Arabic £ and & and in using 



that character the / is sometimes pronounced like the last n in the French 

 non, or the Sanskrit anuswara. The cerebrals are marked by a dot under 

 them. 



Gender. 



There is no termination to express the gender in this language ; but a 

 separate word narrangd is prefixed for the masculine and mddaghd for the 

 feminine, as narranga chuk, a male bird, mddaghd chute, a female bird, and 

 these are only used in order more particularly to define the object, which 

 is never at first mentioned but in the common gender. 



Declension of Nouns. 



As I consider the word case to mean state, I can no more allow the 

 words ° of a horse" to be the case or state of the word " horse" than I 

 would consider one and twopence to be the case or state of a shilling. 

 There is I think accordingly only one case in English, which is the original; 

 and only two in Hindustani, ghord the original or nominative, and ghore 

 the inflected state prepared for the addition of the post positions*. 



There is only one case for nouns in Brahuiky, which is the original or 

 nominative as huli, a horse. 



A noun is joined to another to form one compound idea in the following 

 ways. 



To denote possession nd is introduced between the two words as hulind 

 hurra, a horse's colt. 



* The author we think mixes up the notion of grammatical case with inflection. 

 The casus or accident in which the noun or name of a thing may be placed quoad 

 other things, as whether it be the agent, the instrument, the object, the possessor, 

 or the deprived, may be as legitimately expressed by prepositions or postpositions as 

 by inflections. We do not however feel at liberty to alter the text. — Ed. 



