OTP THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. 



. — ^ — 



Part I.— HISTORY, LITERATURE, &e. 



No. II.— 1880. 



A Collection of Hindi Moots, luith SemarJcs on their Derivation and 

 Classification.— By Dr. A. F. Rudolf Hoernle. 



This Collection was prepared by me some years ago and was originally 

 intended to form part of my Comparative Grammar of the Gaudian Lan- 

 guages, and to illustrate the Chapter on Roots. The present introductory 

 remarks give the substance of that chapter. 



The Hindi, like any other language, possesses roots. By this term 

 I here mean the constant element in any series of sense-related words. 

 Thus in the Hindi words hol-i " speech," bol-aliat " calling," hol-and 

 "speaking," hol-d "spoken," bol-ai "he speaks," &c. the constant ele- 

 ment hoi is the root ; the remainder are suffixes and vary according to 

 the meaning which is to be expressed by means of the root. 



A root may be determined iu Hindi, or for that matter in any Gaudian 

 language, by detaching the sufEx of the 3rd person singular present ai 

 (or e) from the word, when the remainder will be tlie root. Thus in hol-ai 

 "he sjicaks," kar-ai "he does," hitjh-ai "he understands," hoi, Icar 

 hujh are the roots respectively. 



For comparing Hindi roots with Sanskrit, this is the most con- 

 venient rule. For a large number of Hindi roots are not derived from 

 the pure Sanskrit root, but from that modified form of it, which is con- 

 fined to the present tense (or the so-called special tenses generally). 

 1'hus the Sanskrit root hudh " understands," takes the form hudhga in 

 the present tense, whence arises the Hindi form hujh. From the Sanskrit 

 hudh comes the 3rd person sing, present hmlhyate, in Hindi hujhai ; but 

 from it comes also the participle future passive hoddliavya "to be under- 

 stood" ; in Eastern Hindi this form is hujiiah or hujhih, Western Hindi 

 E 



