336 
G. A. Grierson —Suffixes in the Kdgmiri Language. [No. 4, 
/ 
On Pronominal Suffixes in the Kdgmiri Language. 
By G. A. Grierson, Ph. D., C. I. E. 
[ Read December, 1895.] 
To most students of the Indo-Aryan Vernaculars, the question of 
pronominal suffixes has not been a familiar one. They were known to 
exist in Sindh!, and the few scholars who had studied Ka^mlrl, remember¬ 
ed them as the chief difficulty of that language ; but elsewhere in India 
they have not been met with in any Aryan speech. They were equally 
strange to the Dravidian languages, and the only language on this side of 
India, which uses them freely is Saontali. On the other hand, to any one 
who has studied Persian, or the Semitic languages, they are familiar. In 
Hebrew they occur frequently. LJ.g>, in'the Genesis i. 11, in the phrase 
‘ the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,’ the words ‘ after his kind ’ 
are represented by the one word Vmind ,. in which V is merely 
a preposition. The word mind , is compounded of the word mm, ‘fashion/ 
and the pronominal suffix 6, ‘ his.’ So also in Arabic, in the well-known 
phrase f XJt pZAfi l alaikum as-saldmu, 1 on you be peace,’ the hum of 
‘ alaikum ,’ ‘ on you,’ is a pronominal suffix. Again, in Persian, iJ** 3 ^**^ 
pursidamash, means ‘ I asked him,’ and the termination ash, ‘ him,’ 
is a pronominal suffix. All these pronominal suffixes differ from 
the full form of the pronouns when used separately. The Hebrew for 
‘ he ’ is nt ze h nofc the Arabic for ‘ you ’ is fllf ’antum, not hum, 
and the Persian for ‘ him ’ is Ij jj u-rd , not ash. 
As not only Persian, but the two other Iranian languages which 
border the North-West of India, viz., Pashtu and Baloci, use these 
pronominal suffixes, it has been assumed by many philologists that 
their use by Sindln and Ka^mirl, the two extreme north-western lan¬ 
guages of India, was borrowed by them from their neighbouring Iranian 
cousins. Others have suggested Arabic influence, brought to bear by 
religion on these two Musalmau nationalities. I‘think that I shall be 
able to prove that neither of these two theories is true, but that there 
is a North-Western family of Indo-Aryan languages, closely connected 
with those of the East of India, which use pronominal suffixes of 
purely Indo-Aryan origin. 
