200 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [June, 



degrees, the long vowel and the open syllable become more and 

 more prominent, till they reach their extreme developement in 

 Bengali. Now in this scheme, Uriya holds exactly the place we 

 should expect. Lying in the same parallel of longitude as Behar, its 

 phonetic system precisely corresponds with that of eastern Hindi, 

 and is consequently less prone to long vowels than Bengali. North 

 and south have no influence in this matter, it is only west and east 

 that we have to consider, and Orissa though south is also entirely 

 west of the Bengali area. A few examples may be given : 



Skr. vnf good, becomes in all the languages Vf^r ; as in H. P. M. 

 and S. V^TT Gr. *T%r, *ft ^f but B. *?T^T- Here U. has *?^r as in H. 

 and the rest. 



Skr. ^y^ hungry. Here as compensation for the loss of the ^r, 

 the efr is aspirated to % and the preceding vowel lengthened into 

 u in all the languages except P. and S., which exhibit vm\ and ^TffT 

 respectively. Uriya here has a guna form ^"RT, concerning which 

 I shall speak below. 



Skr. ^K to sting. All the other languages retain the short vowel, 

 though they cerebralize the initial ^, Bengali alone lengthens it 

 to ^"fo. Uriya in ^?i^f retains the vowel in its proper quantity. 



Skr. ^"H, Prakr. ^r ; as compensation for rejecting one ?r, the 

 other languages lengthen the vowel and have ^Trf P. and S. stick 

 to the short vowel and have ^r?r. 



So in <T^ a tent, the derivation of which is obscure, Bengali 

 alone has ?TTO. Uriya agrees with the others in retaining the 

 short vowel. 



fft^T bitter, becomes in all *f\^T except P. S. and G. which have 

 f?r^*lT f<T^T and ftr^ respectively. 



In another point, Uriya is in a different camp from Bengali. 

 The three southern languages Grujarati, Marathi and Uriya de- 

 light in guna vowels, in places where the other languages use the 

 pure vowels. 



Again the Uriya agrees with Marathi in preferring a dental 

 to a cerebral, whereas the western languages and peculiarly 

 Sindhi cerebralize the Sanskrit dental unnecessarily. This pecu- 

 liarity rests upon very deep bases and would take a long time to 

 work out. Thus U. U. and M. have wr cold, whore the other 



