JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY, 



Part I.— HISTORY, LITERATURE, &c. 



No. I.— 1866. 



Outlines of a Plea for the Arabic Element in Official Hindustani. — By 

 J. Beames, Esq., 0. S. 



[Received 17th April, 18G5.] 



It is the fashion at present to lavish a good deal of abuse on the 

 language generally employed in our law courts in this country. 



This unfortunate variety of human speech is condemned as barbar- 

 ous, a medley of heterogeneous elements, a pedantic, clumsy, unintelli- 

 gible jargon, and the rest. After seven years' daily experience and 

 use of it, I venture to take up the cudgels in its behalf. I consider it 

 as the most progressive and civilized form of the great and widespread 

 "language of the horde." Not only is it compendious, eloquent, ex- 

 pressive and copious, but it is the only form in which the legitimate 

 development of the speech of the Gangetic tribes could show itself. 

 Those who condemn it, in a spirit of short-sighted pedantry and affec- 

 tation, must, if they are prepared to abide by the logical consequences 

 of their opinion, condemn also those languages of modern Europe, 

 which, by virtue of following the same course as the Urdu, have suc- 

 ceeded in overstepping the narrow limits of their birth-places, and 

 becoming the common property of half the world. To object to the 

 free use in Hindustani of words derived from Arabic and Persian, is as 

 absurd as to object to. the free use of Latin and Greek derivatives in 

 English. As a merchant, by skilful trading with borrowed capital, 

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