1874.] F. S. Growse —The Etymology of Local Names in N India. 329 
fore, narrow and irregular as they had grown up piece by piece in the 
course of centuries, and with even the churches on their old sites, though 
the latter had become useless in consequence of the change in the national 
religion, which required one or two large arenas for the display of pulpit 
eloquence rather than many secluded oratories for private devotion. When 
a similar calamity befell an Indian city, as it often did, the position of the old 
shrines was generally marked by rude commemorative stones, but the people 
made no difficulty about abandoning the exact sites of their old homes, if 
equally eligible spots offered themselves in the neighbourhood. 
The same diversity of conservative ideas runs through the whole char¬ 
acter : the Hindu quotes the practice of his father and grandfather and 
persuades himself that he is as they were, and that they were as their fore¬ 
fathers, unconscious of any change and ignoring the evidence of it that is 
afforded by ancient monuments, both literary and architectural. The former 
he prizes only for their connexion with the sect to which he himself belongs; 
whatever is illustrative of an alien faith he consigns to destruction without 
any regard for its history or artistic significance ; and in an ancient build¬ 
ing, if it has fallen into disuse, he sees no beauty and can take no interest; 
though this can scarcely be from the feeling that he can easily replace it 
with a better, a conviction which led our mediaeval architects to destroy 
without compunction any part of an earlier Cathedral, however beautiful in 
itself, which had become decayed or too small for later requirements. In all 
these matters, England is far more critically conservative ; believing in noth¬ 
ing, we tolerate every thing; and profoundly distrusting our own creative 
faculties, preserve as models whatever we can rescue from the past, either in 
art or literature. 
These reflections may seem to wander rather far from the mark; but 
they explain the curious equipoise that prevails in the Indian mind between 
a profound contempt for antiquity and an equally profound veneration for 
it. The very slight regard in which ancient sites are held is illustrated by 
the use of the terms ‘ Little’ and ‘ Great’ as local prefixes. In consequence of 
the tendency to shift the centre of population, these seldom afford informa¬ 
tion as to the comparative area and importance of the two villages so dis¬ 
tinguished : most frequently the one styled ‘ Little’ will be the larger of the 
two. In some cases the prefix ‘ Great’ implies only that when the common 
property was divided among the sons of the founder, the share so designated 
fell to the lot of the eldest ; but ordinarily it denotes the original village 
site, which has been wholly or at least partially abandoned, or so diminished 
by successive partitions that it has eventually become the smallest and least 
important of the group. 
The foregoing considerations will, I trust, be accepted as sufficiently 
demonstrating the reasonableness of my general position that local names 
