146 On the Arabic Element in Official Hindustani. [No. 3 



speaking Hindustani, if you have two words to choose between, one 

 Hindi or Sanskrit, and the other Persian or Arabic, it is better and 

 less artificial to use the former ; and the Arabic and Persian words 

 already in use in Urdu are for the most part wrongly used, and are 

 often very corrupt forms of the genuine words. There are thus two 

 arguments : the first, a political ; the second, scientific. I will 

 examine the political or historical argument first. But I must premise 

 that I consider the whole question as one for the student rather than 

 the statesman. Dr. Fallon, a vigorous partizan of the Hindi school, 

 writes, somewhat complacently, thus : # " The Urdu language needs 

 direction ; but the natives have neither taste nor learning for such 

 a work. The task must be performed by European scholars, and the 

 Government of the country." I would ask the author whether, in 

 all the range of his comprehensive reading, he has ever met with an 

 instance of a language having been created or guided by foreign 

 scholars, or licked into shape by a Government. Is language, like law, 

 a political creation ? Does it not rather grow up in the homes of the 

 people ? Is it not hewn out of their rough untutored conceptions ? 

 Does not its value consist in its spontaneous and unconscious growth ? 

 Are not its very irregularities and errors, proofs of the want of design 

 that attends its formation ? 



Or again, can a stranger guide the native mother in choosing how 

 to talk to her child ? If it be difficult for foreigners to influence a 

 language in a country where women enjoy the same freedom as men, 

 how much more hopeless is the task in a country like this, where the 

 mothers of the people are inaccessible and invisible ? 



No, we cannot influence the speech of this people ; they have formed 

 it for themselves ; they have, before we came on the scene, chosen 

 Arabic and rejected Hindi. It is not true to say that they prefer 

 Hindi, and that we have forced on them Arabic. It is not correct to 

 say that pedantic munshis have created for the use of the European 

 officer a dialect unknown to the majority of the people, and the use 

 of which severs him from them, and gives the keys of communication 

 into the hands of a single class. The use of Arabic and Persian 

 words pervades every class. I, and many other officers, know that 



* English-Hindustani Law and Commercial Dictionary by S. W. Fallon, In- 

 troductory Dissertation, p. xviii. ad fin. 



