1870.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 193 



Bengal, and being driven on constantly by Bengalis in their rear, 

 finding the eastern regions closed to them by fierce non- Aryan tribes, 

 it must have been to them a great relief to find on the south that 

 long narrow strip between the Hills and the Sea which they reach- 

 ed across the forests of Midnapore and Hijli. This land they named 

 the " outlying strip" (^<r out, eff^r a strip*), or ^f^fi^r ^. If the 

 above suppositions be admitted, as I think they will readily be, it 

 follows that the Uriyas could not have, as our Pandit assumes, 

 borrowed their language from Bengali, because at the time they 

 passed through Bengal, it was uninhabited, at least by Aryans ; and 

 the Bengalis were behind them, and did not come into Bengal till the 

 Uriyas had left it. It is certain that as early as the 8th century, 

 Hemachandra knew the TJtkali, or Odra to be a separate form of 

 Prakrit from the Gauri or Bengali ; and we need not at present seek 

 a higher antiquity than this to establish an independent language. 



I am not, however, desirous of laying much stress on the his- 

 torical side of the argument ; that derived from the internal struct- 

 ure of the language seems to me conclusive. 



In the first place to mention is to refute the argument that be- 

 cause in any modern printed work in Uriya sixty words out of a 

 hundred are identical with Bengali, therefore they are not two, 

 but one language. The same argument might with equal justice 

 be applied to Marathi. 



That unnecessary parade of learning which goes among us by 

 the name of "pedantry," has never struck the Indian mind as 

 offensive or objectionable. On the contrary, the more long and 

 learned words an author can cram into his work, the greater his re- 

 putation. In the search for these sesquipedalia verba, the seven 

 nations of the Aryans have divided into two camps. In the 

 one camp are to be found those who draw from Sanskrit, in the 

 other those who have recourse to Arabic and Persian. The former 

 are the Bengali, Uriya, and Marathi; the latter the Hindi, f 



# In classical Sanskrit we have only ^fwfT fem, but the masculine must 

 also have been in use, as is shewn by numerous forms in the modern lan- 

 guages. 



f I use the word Hindi advisedly, to signify that great language which, when 

 borrowing largely from Arabic is called also Urdu, which some misguided 

 people would wish to regard as a separate language. 



