1874.] F S. Growse —The Etymology of Local Names in N. India. 335 
Thus the mystery is solved, and Karnaul is at once seen to be Karna-pur; 
Karauli, Kalyan-puri; Taroli, Tara-puri ; and Sujauli, Sujan-puri. 
This practical application of the Prakrit Grammarian’s rule was first 
stated in my ‘ Mathura, a District Memoir,’ published towards the close of 
last year. In my own mind, it was so firmly established as an indisputable 
fact, and possessed in its’ extreme simplicity at least one of the great merits 
of all genuine discoveries, that I stated it very briefly and thought it unne¬ 
cessary to bring forward any collateral arguments in its support. But I 
find that I much under-rated the strength of inveterate prejudices ; for with 
the exception of one reviewer in a London scientific journal, all other critics 
seemed to regard my theory as the mere outcome of unpractical pedantry. 
I have therefore on the present occasion taken great pains to omit nothing, 
and I cannot believe that any one who will submit to the trouble of follow¬ 
ing my argument as I have now stated it, will still maintain “ that the direct 
derivation from the Turanian roots aul , ur, uri is more probable than the 
forced and far-fetched Sanskrit derivation from one single root supported 
only b}^ the theory of a grammarian, which may or may not have been put 
in practice in an unlettered age.” The writer of the remarks I quote, would 
seem to imagine that language was the invention of grammarians ; on the 
contrary, they are powerless to invent or even change a single word, and 
can merely codify the processes which are the result of unconscious action on 
the part of the unlettered masses. When Sujan-puri is converted in popular 
speech into Sujauli, it is not because in one rule Vararuchi has directed the 
elision of the initial p, and in another rule the elision of the final n ; but 
because a Hindu’s organs of speech (as the grammarian had noticed to be 
the invariable case) have a natural and unconscious tendency to the change.* 
This tendency is still existing in full force, and my observing it to be so in 
another local compound first suggested to me the identification of uri with 
puri. Thus the beautiful lake at Gobardhan with the Mausoleum of the 
first of the Bharat-pur Bajas is called indifferently Kusum-sarovar, or 
Kusumokhar ; and at Barsana is a tank, called either Bhanokhar or Brikh- 
bhan ka pokhar, after Badha’s reputed father Brikh-bhan. Both in Kusu¬ 
mokhar and Bhanokhar it is evident that the latter part of the compound 
was originally pokhar, and in the same way as the initial p has been there 
elided, so also has it been in Sujauli and Maholi. The explanation of the 
last mentioned word ‘ Maholi’ is one of the most obvious and at the same 
time one of the most interesting results of my theory. It is the name of 
the village some four miles from Mathura, which has grown up in the vicini¬ 
ty of the sacred grove of Madhu-ban, where llama’s brother Satruglma de- 
* Thus the A'gra shop-keepers who have converted Blunt-ganj into Belan-ganj, 
have probably never heard of Yararuchi, hut they have certainly, though unconsciously, 
followed his rules. 
T T 
