147 
1872.] Iloenile — Essays otl the Oaufian Languages. 
5 but the latter is Prakritie, whereas the former is purely Sanskritic ; 
again or 3TT>q work are Sanskritic, but ^TTW or 3fT3f are Prakritie ; again 
written is Sanskritic, but f%*gT or is Prakritie, &c. &c* 
All such nouns I shall call the Sanskritic elements of the Gaurian. It 
needs no proof to show that this Sanskritic element is the most modern 
part of the Gaupan ; modern, that is, not absolutely, but relatively to the 
other elements ; for the presence of some of the Sanskritic element dates 
from some centuries. But a very slight examination of the Hindi liter- 
ature will show that this Sanskritic element is least present in its oldest 
specimens, and that it increases in proportion as the date of the literature 
approaches our own times. In the High Hindi it preponderates very large- 
ly, and, as I have already remarked in the introductory essay, its intro- 
duction is still progressing. 
Now what happens when we see a Sanskrit word naturalised, as it 
were, in the Gaurian (High Hindi) ? It is simply taken in the form 
of the Sanskrit nominative sing. In this form it remains stereotyped in the 
Gaurian and serves as the Gaupan Inflexional base for all cases, the nomin- 
ative, as well as the oblique ones ; e. g., wise is in Hindi fsHTW, gen. 
3TT. This inflexional base is nothing but the nominative sing, of the 
Sanskrit word (or rather base) Again soul is in Hindi 'sjriJTr (with 
gen. ^T(Str 3>r) which is merely the Sanskrit nominative sing, of the base 
The same word occurs in Hindi also in the Prakritie form '3?PT (for Prakr. 
in the sense of an honorific term of address. It follows from this as 
the distinctive principle of the (Hindi-class) Gaurian, f that they have 1, 
lost the power of forming organic inflexions of a noun (as the Sanskrit and 
Prakrit do.) 2. That they leave their inflexional bases unchanged and 
indicate their inflexion by post-positions, and 3, that they use as their bases 
the nouns in the nominative singular belonging to a former and now 
fossil state of the language {viz., to Sanskrit or, as we shall presently see, to 
Prakrit) ; having thus become unconscious of the already inflected nature 
of its nouns. 
It has been now shown that the Prakritie element of the (Hindi-class) 
Gaurian contains all those norms which admit of an oblique form , and 
* These are only a few of the more broad and general criteria. There are others 
also; e. g., in the High Hindi (not in the low Hindi of Alwar) every lingual nr of the 
Prakrit (which, as is well known, not only retains all Sanskrit lingual tn but changes 
even every single, dental «T of the Sanskrit into the lingual p ) is changed into a dental 
•f oven in those cases whore the Prakrit represented the original Sanskrit nr Hence 
every Hindi word containing a lingual nr must be Sanskritic ; e. g., to do is 
Prakritie, but to do and Bfrprp cau3 ° are Sanskritic; ear is Prakritie, but 
ear Sanskritic, &c. 
t I. e. t of the Gauj*ian after its fall development as a distinct and separate lan- 
guage ; leaving out of account, therefore, the Prakritie element, which represents a 
state of the Gaurian, when it was not yet distinct from Prakrit. 
19 
a 
