248 
G. Dutt —Further Notes on the Bhojpuri dialects. [No. 3, 
the annual inundation of the river carries with it, add little to the fer¬ 
tility of the soil; the hanks of the river contain dens of thieves, dacoits, 
pirates or temporary straw-huts of cultivators forming straggling 
villages which are abandoned as soon as the flood arrives. The cli¬ 
mate is very unhealthy, and the well-water has a peculiar property of 
producing goitre; whilst the river-water is from time immemorial notori¬ 
ous for generating this disease. In the famine of 1896-97, when I had 
to make a regular reconnoitre of this part, I was shocked at the 
horrible picture of human calamity, much like Ezekiel’s denouncement 
against the ancient Egyptians, with which Providence has cursed the 
people of the part marked in the census map as circle 6 to 10, where 
more than 75 per cent, of the villagers have large protruding goitres 
and hardly a single family which has not at least one of its members, 
a consummate idiot, deaf and dumb both, whom they call Bank in 
their vernacular. Not much trade is carried on by the river, and there 
is scarcely a single Bazar worth the name on its bank. This deplorably 
backward state of the tract is, it seems, as ancient as civilisation is in 
the other tract. Mr. E. E. Pargiter in his identification of the King¬ 
dom of Videha places this tract as forming the Western portion of its 
territory, and quoting the story of Mathava in the S'atapatha Brahmana 
in support describes it thus: ^ The Gandak flows through the middle 
of the country ; it has always been .liable to shift its course greatly; its 
numerous channels intersect the country, and its floods would have ren¬ 
dered the soil extremely marshy.” “ A further consideration of these 
facts, will, I think, throw some light on this passage from S'atapatha 
Br. Videha in ancient times, like most other parts of India, has 
been more or less covered by forest, the remains of which survive at the 
present day along the foot of the Himalayas in the tract called Tarai, 
and was no doubt inhabited by aboriginal tribes such as inhabit the 
Tarai now. The deadly malaria of such a forest is well-known, and 
only aboriginal tribes have been able to live in its climate. To this must 
be added the effect, which the periodic floods from the Gandak during 
the rainy season must have produced in the rank vegetation of such a 
region. Very swampy and uncullivable would be the moderate expres¬ 
sions to apply to it. No Arya could have ventured within it, and the 
only way in which Aryas could have colonised it was by filling and burn¬ 
ing the forest down wholesale, and opening out the soil to the purify¬ 
ing rays of the sun. That is what (it seems to be implied) Mathava 
must have done” (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXVI, 
Part I, No. 2, 1897). 
Such being the case, the glotological principles of Phonetic decay 
and emphasis are prolific in this busy southern part of Gogra-Gaugetie 
