speaking Hindustani, if you have two words to choose between, one Hindi or Sanskrit, and the other Persian or Arabic, it is better and less artificial to use the former; and the Arabic and Persian words already in use in Urdu are for the most part wrongly used, and are often very corrupt forms of the genuine words. There are thus two arguments: the first, a political; the second, scientific. I will examine the political or historical argument first. But I must premise that I consider the whole question as one for the student rather than the statesman. Dr. Fallon, a vigorous partizan of the Hindi school, writes, somewhat complacently, thus:* "The Urdu language needs direction; but the natives have neither taste nor learning for such a work. The task must be performed by European scholars, and the Government of the country." I would ask the author whether, in all the range of his comprehensive reading, he has ever met with an instance of a language having been created or guided by foreign scholars, or licked into shape by a Government. Is language, like law, a political creation? Does it not rather grow up in the homes of the people? Is it not hewn out of their rough untutored conceptions? Does not its value consist in its spontaneous and unconscious growth? Are not its very irregularities and errors, proofs of the want of design that attends its formation?

Or again, can a stranger guide the native mother in choosing how to talk to her child? If it be difficult for foreigners to influence a language in a country where women enjoy the same freedom as men, how much more hopeless is the task in a country like this, where the mothers of the people are inaccessible and invisible?

No, we cannot influence the speech of this people; they have formed it for themselves; they have, before we came on the scene, chosen Arabic and rejected Hindi. It is not true to say that they prefer Hindi, and that we have forced on them Arabic. It is not correct to say that pedantic munshis have created for the use of the European officer a dialect unknown to the majority of the people, and the use of which severs him from them, and gives the keys of communication into the hands of a single class. The use of Arabic and Persian words pervades every class. I, and many other officers, know that

*English-Hindustani Law and Commercial Dictionary by S. W. Fallon, Introductory Dissertation, p. xviii. ad fin.

when we go alone and unattended into a native village, we can converse readily with the commonest people; and I have found the Arabicized style, which I, from deliberate preference, always employ, quite intelligible to the ryot and the bunnia. This people formed their own language, and we may rest assured they will continue to develop it in that direction which they feel to be best. It is true that Hindi is the speech of the lower classes, but how many Arabic words have invaded even the lowest Hindi, because the national feeling has adopted Arabic as a sign of cultivation. The scholar may lament that it is so, just as some scholars lament the disuse of Saxon words in English, but the lamentations of the scholar do not hinder the progress of the language.

แ Hindi is more native to the soil, and lies closer to the hearts of the people than Arabic or Persian, and its use is therefore preferable to that of the last named languages." This is the political argument of the Hindi school. Dr. Fallon* puts it thus: "Hosts of Persian and Arabic words have been introduced by natives of the country (the italics are mine) who affect a foreign tongue, and make transfers in the mass out of worthless books imperfectly understood. The true vernacular is overwhelmed, thrust aside, and scornfully ignored." And again," The vocabulary of the Indian Courts of Judicature is not absolutely without a few Hindi phrases. Still, a very large proportion of good Hindi is systematically excluded by ignorance or bad taste, or, worse still, from corrupt design. Words which are continually in the mouths of the people, the current speech in which men in town and country buy and sell and transact business, the mothertongue of the peasantry and indeed of the great bulk of the nation is repudiated for a foreign, high-sounding phraseology. But a people's Vocabulary is not so to be set aside. The few have seldom yet succeeded in substituting their language for the language of the many. Beaten off from the courts and public offices, native Hindi still lives in the busy mart, and in the familiarities of social and domestic life. In the pithy sayings, proverbs, and national songs of the country, dwells a spirit and an influence beside which the foreign and less familiar speech seems feeble and flat. These Hindi phrases have deep roots in the habits and associations of the people. They come

* Dissertation pp. xii. xiii,

home to the feelings and the understanding of the highest and the lowest. They possess a living power, universality and force of expression, which can never belong to the Arabic and Persian platitudes that are thrust in their place."

Now all this is very good and very eloquent, but it rests on false assumptions. It assumes that what is true of some classes of the population is true of the whole. It puts aside entirely all the rank and education of the country-it puts the peasant on a pedestal, and requests us to accept the barbarous and antiquated jargon that falls from his lips as the model of our speech, and as the vehicle for the expression of intricate philosophical argument, close legal reasoning, delicate and refined discussion on art, science and politics.

A second erroneous assumption is, that we have to thank our law courts for the abundance of Persian and Arabic terms in use in Hindustani. The fact, however is, that our native clerks use nine-tenths of these words, simply because they have been used for five centuries past as legal terms, and use has conferred on them a conventional meaning, which no other words possess. The native press, in discussing matters of a purely unofficial character, uses the same phraseology. The style of Abul Fazl and the Sih Nasr-i Zahúri is the model of all native composition. And this arises not from pedantry or affectation; the reasons of it are to be sought, first, in the circumstances in which the early Musulman invaders found themselves; and, secondly, in the constitution of native society from those times to this.

Who, then, were the founders of the Urdu language? They were a mass of Turks, Tartars, Persians, Arabs, and Syrians; with whom were amalgamated many of the middle and lower classes of Hindus; principally, perhaps, the adventurous trader, who goes anywhere to gain money, and the idle scum who are always attracted by an army. If we further ask what were the materials from which this heterogeneous mass could compound a lingua franca, we find, of indigenous dialects, Sanskrit and Hindi; of extraneous ones, Arabic and Persian, and various Turkish dialects. They had to introduce a new religion, a new government; systems of policy and organization new to India; rules of etiquette; the social habits and refinements of a town life; new articles of clothing, furniture and luxury; philosophical terms; terms to express new processes in the mechanical arts.

To what source should they turn for words to express these ideas? The Brahmin and the Rájput stood aloof from the casteless strangers. Sanskrit therefore was probably very little heard in the camps of the Ghori or the Khilji, and still less in those of Timur or Baber.

Words of Sanskrit origin, but more or less mutilated, were heard from the lips of the lower classes, who also used a vast number of Hindi words, i. e. words either of Sanskrit origin or not, but so far altered from their original as to become new words.*

Let us now go through some of the words which we may suppose offered themselves to the invaders as native terms to express their new ideas, and I think it will be seen that none of these words were really available.

In the first place the new religion was Islám. To express the religious duties of that pugnacious creed in anything but Arabic was profanation not to be thought of. Hence the introduction of masjid, namáz, rozá, kitab, id, and the words of this class were unavailable, for even putting aside the profanation, words of Sanskrit origin could not express, because they did not contain, the requisite ideas. If any one doubts this, let him think how far the Sanskrit and Hindi words written below represent the Arabic or Persian.

Masjid

Namáz

Rozá

Kitáb

'Id

Sanskrit-mandirum, deválayam ;

Hindi-dewala, math, mandar, shiwála, ṭhákurbári.
S. prárthaná, nivedanam ;

H. pújá, páth.

S. upavása, upasanam, abhojanam, langhanam;

H. upás, langhan.

S. pustakam, grantham ;

H. pothi, pustak.

S. parvva, utsava, yátrá;

H. parab, tyohár or tehwár.

Now it is at once evident that the adoption of any of these words, deeply tinctured with the hues of the Brahminical creed, would at once have been fatal to the genius of Mahomedanism. These Sanskrit words therefore retained their place in the language with reference to

An example will make the distinction clearer: Rájá I should call a Sanskrit word, because it retains its form unaltered; bilmháná I call a Hindi word because its connection with the Sanskrit avilamba is, though undoubted, yet not at first sight apparent.

the belief of the Hindu, while for the new Muslim population, the purely Muslim words were retained; and as nothing was displaced to make way for them, they were a clear gain to the language, enabling it to keep pace with the new religious development of the nation at large. Secondly, words relating to the government of the country. The mass of little kingdoms each headed by its petty rájá, a puppet whose strings were pulled by his Brahmin ministers, was to give way to the rule of one supreme "father-king," padshah ;* who should parcel out his dominions into satrapies or subás; and these powerful satraps again would divide their provinces into districts; and the rulers of districts would portion them out into counties, and so on. Divisions of caste were to be ignored, all men were free and equal, on condition of paying their taxes duly. The sovereign acknowledged himself to be under no obligation towards his subjects. He was an absolute despot whose business was to rule, as his people's was to obey. He was, however, expected to be accessible to the meanest of his subjects at certain times, and on the whole to do justice, though after a somewhat random fashion. How utterly inapplicable to such a system and to such a ruler would be the Sanskrit title of rájá; what a crowd of ideas and memories of another order of things would such a title bring with it. Would it not lower the great "fatherking" to the level of the petty knights he had just destroyed? But the word rájá, though inapplicable to the sovereign, was not discarded; it remained as the title of a high order of nobility, as it is to this day, and the Persian terms indicative of sovereignty are therefore positive additions to the language.

It is unnecessary to go in detail through the long list of words. relating to government introduced by the invaders. It is evident that a people's language can have no words for ideas or things which do not exist in the country. Especially was this the case in India. Excluded from all but the scantiest commerce with the outer world, India had long believed herself to contain the whole of the inhabited earth, or at least to be the centre and greatest part of it. Like China in the present day, India thought herself "the central flowery land," and had but dim notions of certain "outside barbarians" who led a miserable life on the confines of space. When the new era of a vigor* I assume Padshah to be "pidr-shah," father-king, like Atubeg or Abimelech.