INTRODUCTION. ix 



I must here acknowledge my indebtedness to P. Horn's Grundriss der neupersis- 

 chen Etymologie , to Professor W. Geiger's works on P^Sto and Baloci, and to the sec- 

 tions of the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie that come from the pens of these emi- 

 nent scholars. The amount of my indebtedness is shown by every page of my vocabu- 

 lary, and without their help I could never have attempted the present work. 



In spite of the warning conveyed by Leech in the last paragraph of the passage 

 quoted above, I think that I have been able to show that Ormuri, while it has in 

 some respects developed on independent lines , is in the main a close relation of the 

 languages and dialects of Western Eran. It is particularly interesting as retaining 

 almost unchanged the one Medic word— a jraKa— quoted by Herodotus, — a word which 

 has suffered much wear and tear in every other Eranian language. It is interesting, 

 too, that in some respects Ormuri shows remarkable points of agreement with the 

 Pisaca languages of our Indian North- West Frontier. May we assume from this that 

 the Pisaca languages once occupied an area much wider than their present habitat, 

 and that Ormuri absorbed these peculiarities after the arrival of its speakers in what 

 is now Afyanistan, but before the Afyau conquest ? 



This is not the place in which to raise questions of ethnology ; but the facts 

 regarding the relationship of Ormuri to other Eranian languages suggests an interest- 

 ing field of investigation to students of that science. Ormuri is an isolated West 

 Eranian language, spoken by a small tribe in the heart of the Afyan country, with 

 the speech of which it has only the most distant connexion. It is a veritable fly in 

 amber, and, though Ormurs may be neither rich nor rare, we are still entitled to 



' wonder how the devil they got there.' 



The first two notices of Ormuri and the Ormurs appeared, as we have seen, in 

 the pages of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The Linguistic Survey of 

 India, ' the onHe begetter of these insuing ' pages, owes much to the same Society 

 for the encouragement accorded to its conception, and for advice and guidance 

 freely given to it in its earlier years. It is therefore with peculiar satisfaction that 

 I see this investigation pubhshed as one of the Memoirs of the body with which it 

 has been my pride to be associated for now just forty years. 



George A. Grierson. 



