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1872.] Hoernle — Essays on tlie Gaurian Languages. 
the Panjabi (or Gurmuklii), and the Kashmiri. They are divided into two 
groups by somo striking' grammatical peculiarities, of which I may here 
niention two, which will more immediately concern us in the following essays. 
One is the possession of an eighth case of agent (over and above the common 
seven Sanskrit cases) , formed by the post-position sr (or sf ; in the Naipali, ^j) ; 
a correlate of which is the absence of an organic past tense of the verb. The 
other is the adjective character 'of the genitive post-positions, which agree 
with the noun which they qualify, in gender, number, and case. These 
peculiarities are possessed by all Gaurian languages* except the Oriya and 
Bangali, which two latter, therefore, form a group by themselves ; the 
remainder making up the other group. 
The Hindi is the most extensively spoken of all the Gaurian languages. 
Its area consists of nearly 40,000 square miles, and extends from the River 
Gandak in the east to the Satlaj in the west, and from the Himalaya in the 
north to the Vindhya Mountains in the south. But a distinction must bo 
made between the high Hindi and the low Hindi, the mutual relation of 
which shows many striking resemblances to that between the high and low 
German. I take here the terms high and low in their ordinary sense, mean- 
ing by high the cultivated, the language of literature, and by low, the vulgar 
B poken dialects. The high Hindi is used almost exclusively for literature 
over the whole area, and is understood everywhere ; though it is perhaps no- 
where spoken in its purity by the people : at all events, it is spoken only by 
the higher and educated classes. The high Hindi does not differ from the 
Urdu in its grammar ; and in its vocabulary only so far, that it substitutes 
for all foreign (i. e., Persian or Arabic) words, others transferred to it directly 
from the Sanskrit. It arose gradually by the substitution of Sanskrit words 
partly for foreign words, partly for such Prakrit words as had become, in the 
course of time, obsolete or vulgar ; and the cause of this substitution was 
partly the revival of Hindil patriotism, partly the impetus given to Hindi 
literature through the introduction by the English of vernacular education 
and Christian missions. It is, therefore, a comparatively modem language. 
In fact, its formation and growth is still going on, as ipiy one who takes an 
interest in such matters may verify by personal observation. 
While the high Hindi is uniform and spread over the whole area of the 
Hindi, the low Hindi consists of many dialects differing more or less among 
themselves and confined to different provinces. But they may be divided 
into two great classes, of which the Braj Bhasha and the (so-called) Ganwari, 
respectively, are typical. The former class occupies the western, the latter 
the eastern half of the Hindi area. Roughly speaking, the boundary line 
tna .y be drawn at 80° Long. To the western class belong, besides the typi- 
cal Braj Bhasha spoken in the A'gra and Mathura Districts, the Dialects of 
