•19 
1904.] Gr. Dutt —Further Notes on the Bhojpnri dialects. 
Valley, and a3 we gently glide down from the south-west corner of 
the district to the south-east, touching the different places of trade 
and. commerce till we reach Patna, the centre and fountain-head of all 
trade, we observe how, as a natural sequence, words are gradually 
clipped and shortened to suit “ rapid speaking and the common desire 
to save time and trouble” which characterises the trading class. 
To illustrate this I would refer to my previous paper, Diagram 0, 
p. 204, of Journal No. 3 of 1897. The people of Andor, Caubar, 
Narhan, Manjhi, and Bai will say aJTrTTf^T or «TT?T3Tf*r, which the 
people of Ballia District will change into Jlft ; the people of 
Cirand and Kacmar will shorten it into which again the 
people of Patna will further slice into crfa The dialect too 
looks as if it is an article of trade, each trading-place husking the 
chaff, and making it more refined. 
But these principles of Phonetic decay and emphasis have little 
sphere of action in the dull and stagnant population of the Gandak 
Valley and the great bulk lying north of the Railway line. Except¬ 
ing Mirganj Bazar, situated 12 miles north of the Railway line, 
there is hardly any considerable mart in this extensive region of 
Doldrum (which forms about f of the district) notwithstanding the 
fact that Saran is an importing district and its over-population main¬ 
tained chiefly on imports even in the very best season. Education here 
is at a discount that I am tempted to quote here a passage from my 
official report on the Famine operation of 1896-97 :— 
“ My grain officers experience considerable difficulties in getting a 
single scribe out of a dozen villages containing several hundred in¬ 
habitants who could endorse a signature in the documents on behalf of 
the illiterate mass gathered round the camp for the takkavi grain ; 
if, perchance, one was caught hold of, every letter had to be dictated to 
him over and over before he could scribble in his unintelligible alpha¬ 
bets of an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runic inscriptions which are 
said to exist in the deserts of Tartary.” 
We therefore observe in this tract (excepting the small trans- 
khanna tract) an uniform monotony in the dialect, slightly broken 
only at the verge of other conterminous districts, the vocabulary of 
which has been imported to some extent. There is hardly any ob¬ 
servable dialetical difference in the main portion of the Perganahs of 
Kuadi, Sipah, Paclak, Dangsi, Bara, Barai, Madhal, etc. Nothing is 
in their dialect to distinguish a man of one Perganah from the other, 
if he does not live on the border of any other district. 
