119 
1883.] G. A. Grierson— Essays on Declension and Conjugation. 
bricks in mortar, partly in mud ; on the outer face the earth sloped River- 
wards as if tipped in from the wall; it had behind it a sort of floor roughly 
laid, small khoa over a large quantity of oyster shells and brick rubbish. 
Essays on Biliari Declension and Conjugation.—By G. A. 
Gbieesoit, B. C. S. 
A. Inteodttctoey. 
The dialects of the Bihari* language present many interesting facts 
to the student of philology. Hitherto only two of these dialects have 
been thoroughly investigated, and each of these in one special form. Dr 
Hoernle’s Grammar treats of the Bhojpuri dialect as spoken near Banaras, 
where it is by no means free from the influence of its neighbour the 
Baiswari, and the present author’s Maithili grammar treats mainly of the 
standard dialect of the centre of Mithila. The Magadhi dialect has not 
been treated of in any form, but it will be found a most useful object of 
study, as showing the stepping-stone between the somewhat archaic forms 
contained in standard Maithili, and the more phonetically attrited forms 
which we find in Bhojpuri. The last language, extending to nearly the 
centre of Hindustan, and spoken by a warlike energetic race may be consi¬ 
dered as the most phonetically advanced of the three Bihari dialects. Its 
people have no literature to which their speech can be referred, and with the 
energy peculiar to their race they have disembarrased themselves to a large 
extent of the somewhat cumbrous grammatical forms of their ancestors, 
and have succeeded in wearing down periphrases and compounds into new 
words bearing no outward sign of their origin. The inhabitants of Mithila, 
on the contrary, intensely conservative from beyond historic times,f and 
possessing a literature dating from the fourteenth century, have changed 
their language but little during all this period. As Maithili was born at 
the time when the Gaudian languages first emerged from the Prakrit, so 
it has remained to the present day, and the herd-boy, as he tends his 
buffaloes in 1882, speaks the same language as that in which the old master- 
singer Vidyapati sang of the loves of Radha and Krishna to king S'iv Singh 
five centuries ago. It is to Maithili therefore that we must look for the 
earliest forms of Bihari declension, and if we do we shall rarely be disap- 
* This is the name which I have adopted here and elsewhere for the “ Eastern 
Hindi language” treated of by Dr. Hoernle in his Gaudian Grammar. 
t At the marriage of Sita, which took place at Janakapura in Mithila, Earn is said, 
in Maithil tradition, to have cursed the haughty Maithil Brahmans, who refused to 
hold any account of the foreign prince from Audh. The curse runs, 
