ON ETHNOLOGY. 
337 
in some cases of the Sanscrit itself, the Bengali lias preferred as usual the 
final e, approaching thereby very nearly to the Latin, which has preserved 
the same suffix in words like hide, unde, &c. 
In the nominative singular, a form in e occurs instead of the regular ter¬ 
minations ; as Vede kohen (the Veda says); m&nikc^mdmk (ruby); fropdle— 
gopdl (cow-herd). The same e is added also to words ending in d, but then 
it must be changed to y; as rdjdp=rdjd (king); pildij=pild (father). 
Although these forms ol the nominative may imply sometimes a contemp¬ 
tuous idea, yet they had not origmally this power, but must be considered 
as having retained the primitive form, corresponding with the termination o 
in Pracr'U and Pali. It is of importance to remark that the Bengali, having 
suppressed the final s of the ancient Sanscrit termination, has not lost, at the 
same time, the short a, and that instead of changing it into o, like the Pracrit 
and Pali, it shows a decided pretlilection for a final e, bearing thereby a close 
resemblance to the old ^Skkari dialect. As to the forms pitdy, nijdy, &c., 
where the fin^ y replaces an e, it ia true that this is in no way founded on 
either ^Sanscrit or Pracrit, but in comparing modern languages with the an¬ 
cient idioms whence they have arisen, we may often see that by a false ana¬ 
logy, certain common forms are adopted even for words, to which, owing to 
their different origin, they would seem irreconcilable. What 6j>eaks the 
most clearly in favour of our regarding this e, as a relic of the Sanscrit a, in 
the nominative as well as in the genitive, ablative and locative, is, that the 
adjectives of pure Bengali origin do not admit this c eiilier in the nominative 
or in the other cases. Sometimes c is used also instead of erd in the nom. 
plur., as sakate it kalhd kahila (all said this word); aneke tdhii jane (many 
know that). lu this case too I rather incline to consider e as the remnant of 
the ancient plural termination than to take it for the sign of the locative case, 
as Dr. Yates suggests, particid.yly us lie observes that in good Bengali it is 
only used in adjectives which indicate a number, when the noun is merely 
understood; as sahah, aneke, &c., where we find e as the termination of the 
plural already in SanBcrit. 
The termination of the nominative plural is d, as in Pali and Pracrit, but 
as tins case always occurs under the form of rdorerd {guru-rd, munrnhye-rd), 
one might suppose that there is in it a repetition of the Sanscrit termination, 
as in the Vedical forms stomnxas. It seems nevertheless more probable that 
the Bengalis, perceiving all the forma of the plural derived from a root in eV, 
i. e. of the genitive singular, compounded with the word dig, have taken this 
genitive for the Iwse of the plural, and have added to it the primitive sisn of 
the nominative plural, d. ° 
The most singular and at first sight barbarous feature of the Bengali de- 
clension, IS its lormation of the plural of masculine nouns by means of the 
syllable dtk, to which the terminations of the cases in the singular are added. 
Though I am not (juiie confident as lo tlie origin of this grammatical ele- 
propose a theory, which perhaps may not prove quite 
Dig signifies, in Sanscrit, a climate, and in the plural it is taken for the 
whole w'orlci. In this sense we find digvijayi, he who has conquered the 
four regions, or all the coimiries which lie between the N. S. E. W,, i. e. all 
the mankind. It is true that the worddiraA had not yet been 
used in Sanscrit in the sense of all the world, or mankind in general, but we 
find, nevertheless, an analogy in the word loka, the first signification of which 
is the world, and synonymous with dig; as, for instance, f<>ka-p(/la=sdik~pdla, 
the master of the world. The same word by metaphor comes to mean men. 
