[96 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [June, 



Uriya. 

 Sing. Mu achhain {vulgo aclihi) Mui achhi 



Tu achha Tiii acliliis 



Se achhai Se dchhe 



PL Amhe achlum Ami aclihi 



Tumhe achha Tumi achha 



Semane achhanti Tini achhen 



I suppose the Beugali pandits will deny my right to put down the 

 first three forms aclii, dchhis and dchhe as real singulars, but my 

 time for fighting them on that point has not yet come ; any how, 

 it is easy to see that in achhai, achhanti, respectively we have pure 

 Prakrit and Sanskrit forms in perfect preservation, whereas the 

 Bengali has in its dchhe and dchhen gone many steps further down 

 the ladder of corruption. In the Uriya forms achhain, and achhun 

 we have better representatives of the quasi-Sanskrit forms acchami 

 and achhamah (for the classical asmi and asmah) than in the Bengali, 

 which has only an ill-defined feebly terminated aclihi for both 

 singular and plural. In fact Bengali is singularly behind all the 

 other six languages in its verbal terminations, which are not suffi- 

 ciently definite or clearly marked, and rejoice in short indistinct 

 vowels. 



The Uriya verb in its general scheme approaches more closely to 

 the Hindi, and holds a respectable place among its sister languages, 

 not being too luxuriant like the Gujarati, nor too scanty like the 

 Panjabi ; and with a regular system of terminations, in which respect 

 it is superior to the Marathi and Sindhi, in neither of which do 

 any two tenses exactly harmonize, and in which the troublesome and 

 unnecessary element of gender is introduced. As might be expected 

 from the comparative peace that Orissa has enjoyed, and its long 

 immunity from foreign aggression, the verb has preserved tones and 

 traces of much greater antiquity than any other language of the 

 group. 



This air of antiquity which is so striking and pleasing a feature 

 of the language, is well illustrated by the pronouns which may be 

 compared to advantage with any of the others. Thus amhe is pure 

 Prakrit, and retains the /?, which has been dropped in Bengali. 

 The Hindi here inverts the position of the h, and drops the final e. 



