1904.] G. Dutt —Further Notes on the Bhojpuri dialects. 247 
There are scattered over throughout the length and breadth of Saran 
District ruins which the villagers point out as belonging to the time of 
the Chero Rajas. These Clieros I have noticed were aboriginal tribes 
whom perhaps the Rajputs of Kanauj had overthrown. Kanauj was a 
seat of civilisation in days of yore, and its Brahmins colonised and civi¬ 
lised an extensive tract of Upper India, viz. —Guzrat, Bundelkhand, 
Rohilkhand, Gwalior, North Bihar and Bengal. The Sarajupari 
Brahmins so abundant in Gorakhpur, Saran and Champaran belong to 
the Kanaujia Branch, and seem to have come with their king and 
colonised these parts. 
Now the present Bhojpuri dialect which is spoken in Gorakhpur 
(and, may be, further up to Rai-Bareilly), Saran, Shahabad and a portion 
of Champaran, is no doubt a mixture of the Kanaujia and the Magadhi 
dialects. These small bodies of invaders found after settling at Bhoj- 
pur a very ancient and powerful dialect, the Magadhi, predominant 
in the conterminous district, and they gradually adopted its voca¬ 
bulary. “ This is a general rule,” says Mr. Sayce, “ that whenever two 
nations equally advanced in civilisation are brought into close contact, 
the language of the most numerous will prevail.” Such is the origin 
of the Bhojpuri dialect. A glance at the translation of the Parable of 
the Prodigal son into the Kanaujia dialect, given in Dr. Grierson’s Book 
of Specimens, will show how the vocabulary and idioms of this dialect 
are yet intact in the Bhojpuri dialect. I would invite special atten¬ 
tion to the words xr*rf% and which are found in no other 
dialects of Bihar except Bhojpuri. 
I now invite special attention to the peculiar dialect spoken in the 
Ceranel and Kacmar Pergannas in the Saran District, which is an ad¬ 
mixture of the Magadhi dialect 
The southern and the eastern parts of District Saran, i.e ., the 
Gogra-Gangetic Yalley and the Gandak Yalley, present such an admir¬ 
ably striking contrast that it seems as if nature has equipoised her gifts 
of good and evil to this district. The Southern Yalley bears an excel¬ 
lent healthy climate ; its soil is far more fertile than that of any part of 
the district, its banks are stud with places of bustling trade and com¬ 
merce, and it is inhabited by whatever classes of sturdy cultivators, 
traders and men of intelligence and education the district can boast of. 
The B. and N.-W. Railway line which intersects this tract, and may 
verily be said to have thereby classified, as it were, the intelligent and 
indolent portion of the population, has added an impetus to civilisa¬ 
tion which “ the fair Saraju’s fertile sides ” have been enjoying 
since the days of Yalmiki and Kalidasa. The Gandak Yalley exhibits 
quite a diametrically opposite picture. The sandy sediments, which 
