APPENDIX. XXIU 



sufficient portion of that time in which my daily duties had a claim never I trust post- 

 poned by me, I resolutely abandoned my plan. It is not by way of proving myself to 

 have actually contemplated such a performance, it is to submit the undertaking to 

 the judgement of others that I state the outline of it. A notion has been entertain- 

 ed that the Hindi is a jargon accidentally compounded of many tongues. In speak- 

 ing of the Hindi, I refer to what I conceive to be the basis of the present Hindus- 

 tani. This latter dialect has had various adulterations engrafted upon it in different 

 parts of India, while the frame work is intact, bearing all the character of originality. 

 History informs us that Behram Gor issued an edict putting down the use of the 

 vernacular language of Persia and ordering the Deri, the antient form of the present 

 Persic, to be used in it's stead. I am not acquainted with the Parsi ; but I am told 

 by the best authorities here that it is a language altogether distinct from the Persic. 

 Now it is clear that the wildest despotism never could think itself capable of extirpat- 

 ing the colloquial medium of a whole people and of substituting for it terms of com- 

 munication utterly unintelligible to the multitude : yet, had the Parsi been the former 

 language in use throughout the greater part of Persia, it's suppression and the intro- 

 duction of the Deri would have been the violent measure which I have represented. 

 This consideration led me to reflect whether the Hindi might not have been the lan- 

 guage originally prevalent in Persia. When I pursued the thought, numerous cor- 

 roboratory circumstances appeared to support the belief; so that I now persuade my- 

 self the Hindi is the language which spread itself from Iran, eastward to India 

 and westward over a great part of Europe. I forget whether it be Lipsius or Sca- 

 liger who remarks an affinity between the Persic and the German. He would have 

 perceived a stronger indication of connection had he pursued the earlier type (the 

 Hindi) through dialects more strictly Gothic. I do not mean the Gothic of Ulphilas's 

 Gospels, which is Mceso-Gotliic and evidently corrupted by the adoption of idioms 

 from the borderers on tie Roman frontier, but I allude to that branch of the language 

 which kept itself clear from the concourse of various tribes and tongues existing in the 

 Southern Realms. With my confessedly superficial knowledge of both Persic and Hin- 

 di, I should have had hesitation in referring to those languages before so many who 

 are thoroughly proficient in them, did 1 not assure myself it would be perfectly com- 

 prehended that an individual working at a language to satisfy himself on particular 

 points in its substance and structure may reach that object howsoever deficient he 

 may be in the ordinary application of the tongue. The strongest ground of convic- 



