142 
[No. 2, 
G. A. Grierson— Essays on Bill an Declension. 
Direct, or # (sometimes written 3f), and oblique , 3TT. 
Examples are the following. 
Direct, ^-^ ^tstt ‘ this is the king’s house.’ 
<$* 3 - ^ ‘ 1 am the maid-servant of king Kans.’ 
Direct, m ^T<T ?TS^r> ‘matters of every kind were heard.’ 
Indirect, effT-357 TflT^TT 35 <fi^T ^7*3 «TT’€ ! t, ‘ there is no sin 
in (lit. of) the slaying of a deceiver.’ 
3fe<T»r 3 fT ■§■?: ifTvft 3TC, ‘ there are many books in the pandits’ 
house.’ 
In Maithili, also, there is a genitive in 3T (Mth. G. § 22). In the 
case of nouns this has lost all inflexion, but in pronouns we see the inflexions 
still remaining. E. g., the Relative pronoun obi. form plur. (used as 
an honorific singular) sjfvr (Mth. Gr. § 7t5) : hence, adding the sign of the 
genitive we get This has an oblique form 57f«T«ffT, used as a base 
of the other cases, but that it is really an oblique genitive is evident from 
the following example ( Vid. 39, 2). 
5?f5FRrr ‘at whose birth I went,’ in which is in the 
locative case, the postposition being poetically omitted. 
Again the gen. honor, of % (Mth. Gr.) is 35»f37 (3lF*r30> and its oblique 
form is ^T3iT, as in (Sal. 1), 
3TK*T, ‘ for the sake of him’, and (Sal. 21) 
^ ‘in his watch.’ 
It must be noted, however, that the oblique form 35T is more rare in 
Maithili than in Bhojpuri, for it has disappeared altogether in nouns. 
There is in fact, a distinct tendency in thetli Maithili to use, even in the 
case of pronouns, direct forms instead of oblique ones. E. g., in Sal. 1 we 
have 3nT«T beside the more correct 35*7357 3i77;*r, and so we have (Sal. 
10) 35*735 <3735 instead of the more correct 35*T35T % ‘ from his cry.’ 
The Song of Sallies is, it must be remembered, in very thetli language ; 
that is to say, in the language of the lowest people, and is in one or two 
places absolutely incorrect. 
A similar pronominal oblique genitive form in 3fT may be noted in 
all the other Bihari dialects, but, for want of a literature, it is difficult to 
give authoritative examples. 
To sum up this part of the explication; 1—Bihari has a genitive post¬ 
position 35 or 37, which has an oblique form ^ 57 . This oblique form has in 
the eastern and southern dialects fallen into disuse in the case of substan¬ 
tives, but still survives everywhere in the pronouns. • 
The question of genitive postpositions naturally leads to possessive 
pronouns. The following are the possessive pronouns in Maithili. As 
they will be treated of at length under their proper heading it is not 
necessary to give them for other dialects. 
