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The language, to quote Dr. Fallon once more, "in which men buy and sell and transact business" is not Hindi; it is Urdu. If man and ser and chitánk are Hindi, kímat and nirakh, mál, saudá, and saudagar, jins, rakm, bazár, and dukán are Persian. If hát is Hindi, ganj is Persian. Sarak, bail, and gáṛi are Hindi, but pul, saráí and manzil are Persian. And so it runs through all the scenes of common Indian life; you hear everywhere simple Persian words as frequently as Hindi in the mouths of all classes of the people. I appeal to the experience of all who know well the rural districts of this country for confirmation of this assertion.

We may then safely state that to the higher classes throughout the country, to the Mahomedan rustic, to the townsmen in all districts, Urdu is as familiar and as well known; nay, more familiar, than pure unadulterated Hindi. It remains only to discuss the question as regards the Hindu peasant. And it is in this connection that the want of uniformity between the various Hindi dialects requires to be brought out in a stronger light. Hindi is not one, but many. If we follow the advice of our purists, and try to talk and write only pure Hindi, we abandon the possibility of retaining one universally intelligible language and fall back into a chaos of a dozen or more different dialects. In advocating the use of Hindi in preference to Arabicized Urdu, Dr. Fallon's school mean by Hindi those portions of Urdu which are of Indian origin; they mean the dialect which uses wuh, yih, iská, uská; which says honá, hotá, huá, karná, kiyá; that dialect which has been incorporated into Urdu: the Hindi, in short, of Delhi and Muttra. But ten miles from Delhi itself I have heard wáká for uská, yáká for iská. If we are to reject such forms as these and use only the Delhi Hindi, we are quite as far from reaching the heads and hearts of the mass of the population as ever. The great Bhojpuri dialect, for instance, is spoken throghout eastern Oudh, Gorackpur, Benares, Shahábád, Sarun and Tirhút, and is more unlike the Delhi Hindi than Dutch is unlike English. I would ask a Delhi or upper Doab rustic to interpret the following from the evidence given in court in a dacoity case by a peasant of Champáran. "Okerá dwáre gárdhá sunilin, sagare log dháwalan, tún dúi sau jana jamilan, ghare samágelan, sagará dhan, chípá, loța, dhán, cháwal sathi lút lelan, dheri toralan, phin niksalan, áru mushál bhig delan, te bhagalan, t'hom a' P'shádwa chahet gelin, t'ekho chor pakaráil gel.”

This is pretty simple, especially when written down clearly on paper, but when heard from the mouth of the witness, mumbled and half pronounced and spoken with the rapidity of a steam-engine, it is not so easily caught. It means: "We heard a noise at his house. Every one ran [there] There two hundred men were collected. They entered the house. They looted all the property, platters, lotás, rice [of three sorts]; dhán, [unhusked]; cháwul, [husked]; súthi [a species of Bhadai rice]. They broke the granary; then they came out, threw away their torches and fled. Then I and Parshád pursued, and one thief was caught."

Does Dr. Fallon wish us to fall back on this dialect, for instance, with the certainty that by using it we render ourselves unintelligible to one-half of India? or are we to use some other dialect, unintelligible to this half? Or again is each Englishman to use the dialect of the district where he finds himself, and have to learn a new dialect at each change of station?

If in reply I am told that the language meant by Hindi is the dialect of hai and huú, kartá and kiyá; and not that of bhá and bháil, karat and karalan,* nor that of che and child; nor that of húndá and hoya; nor that of cho, chá and chi ;§ and that a certain amount of necessary Persian words is allowable, I would ask where are we to draw the line in Hindi between what is classical and what is provincial, and in Urdu between what Arabic words are allowable and what are not ?

Remarks on some ancient Hindu Ruins in the Garhwál Bhátur.—By Lieutenant AYRTON PULLAN, Assistant Surveyor, Great Trigonometrical Survey.

[Received 6th June, 1867.]

While engaged in surveying a portion of the dense forest that skirts the foot of the Himalayas between Garhwal and Rohilcund, I discovered a very remarkable temple and a number of carved slabs scattered through the jungle. These ruins have hitherto escaped notice, owing to the dense jungle in which they lie hidden. The

* Bhojpuri.
+ Tirhút.
§ Rajputana and Harrowti.

Panjabi.

admirable preservation in which the temple still is, and the beauty of the carving on it, and the surrounding fragments, have induced me to make sketches of the most remarkable portions. I send herewith zincographs from my sketches, trusting that with the following brief account, they may prove interesting to the Asiatic Society.

In January last, while in the Chandipáhár Seváliks and near the site of an ancient but now ruined village called Mandhal, almost six miles east of Hurdwar, I found among the grass the carved figure of a Bull; following up my discovery I came upon a small temple of exquisite carving and design, the figures on the frieze in fine altorelievo and the whole arrangement of the façade perfect.

Round the temple, which was eight feet in height and six or eight feet square, were scattered a number of carved slabs, a group of wrestlers, Ganesh with his elephant head, and some gods under canopies so very Buddhist, as to remind me of "Sákya Thubhá" on the drawings of the monks of Zauskar and Ladakh.

The temple itself stands on a platform or "chabutará," twenty feet square, and at each side is a trench or drain which was probably intended to carry off the water, and leave the flat square dry for worshippers. Beautifully executed heads terminate the trench at the four corners: on the south a woman's head and bust, at the west a lion, at the north a ram; the east corner is broken and defaced. These heads in form and execution brought to my mind most vividly "the Gargoyles" on the gothic Cathedrals of Europe.

Scattered about were two or three large capitals and shafts of pillars, evidently belonging to a building of far larger dimensions than the small one now standing. The frieze and doorway faces the south; the northern door is much plainer, but I would draw attention to one of the pillars shewing a stag under a tree which is identical with the stag and tree on a silver coin found by me two years ago near Betrut in the Saháranpur district, and attributed to the Mahárájá Amojdha; the coin is now in the possession of Bábu Rajendralála Mitra of Calcutta. Inside the temple lies a square carved slab, cracked by a fall, bearing a fine three-headed deity. This three-headed god occurs on most of the slabs throughout the Terai, and is conspicuous on the lingam found near Lál Dháng. * These zincographs may be seen in the Library of the Asiatic Society. ED.

Whether the stag and tree, common alike to temple and coin, gives a clue to the builders; whether it suggests a stream of Hindu civilization driven by persecution into the untrodden forests of the Terai, like "the pilgrim fathers," seeking in the wilderness quiet to worship God after the fashion of their ancestors; or whether it may perhaps go to prove that in time past the deadly fever-smitten Terai was not deadly, but a cultivated country filled with villages and inhabitants; these points I leave for antiquarians to decide.

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About eight miles further east in the Lúní Sot, a narrow stony ravine running down from the Himalayas, I found some more slabs, one with a beautiful female head, and two or three large pillar shafts and cornice-mouldings, similar to those at Mandhal. After a long search I could find nothing further; but an old Brahmin who had a cattle "got" in the ravine, told me that twenty years ago several fine figures, slabs, &c. were carried away to Jayapur and Gwalior by wood-cutters from Central India.

Four miles further east, I came on the ruins or rather indications of a city (the place is now known as Pánduwálá) near the police jungle chauki of Láll Dháng. Here after an hour's search I at length lighted on the object of my visit; I found the ground beneath the tall tiger grass and tangled bamboos covered for a couple of square miles with heaps of small oblong red bricks, interspersed with carved slabs of stone; but the most singular and beautiful relic was the last to reward my search; this was a stone "lingam" of most exquisite work, half buried in the ground, but when excavated, standing three feet high and carved on three sides.

Forty or fifty small chirágs were turned up by my servants, while excavating the "lingam." The people at Láll Dháng told a similar story to the Brahmin at Lúní of figures and slabs that had been carted away to the plains at different times. At Pánduwálá I observed three or four evident indications of foundations of houses, and in one place a half-choked canal of good stone work, which had brought water doubtless to the people of the buried city from the cool hollows of the Bijinagar "Sot." A large stone, six feet in circumference by three in diameter, also lay near the foundation of one of the houses of bygone Pánduwálá. At Mawakot, a Boksar village in the Terai, eighteen miles east of

Pánduwálá, I found some more slabs, some of the three headed divinity and one bearing a very curious figure. An old Brahmin, a resident of the village, told me that it represented "Jangdeo Kumár." The mailed figure with his armed supporters seemed almost an ancient gothic knight, but the curious tracery of fishes surrounding the warrior, somewhat destroyed the illusion. I found nothing more worth recording during my stay in the Terai, but I came on continued indications of what once had been here a chipped and broken cornice near a cattle "Got." stuck up on end by the ignorant Paharis as a "Deotá," there a great slab of hewn stone lying alone among a clump of bamboos in the middle of the forest. That these remains extend through the whole length of the Rohilcund and Kumaon Terai, I should think there is little doubt. I was told that at Rámnagar in the Kumaon Terai, there were some very fine slabs and carved stones, but I was unable to make my way there.

My remarks on these interesting relics are of necessity meagre, but I hope that my drawings may induce some of the antiquarians of the Society to throw some light on these ruins in the wilderness. I can find no mention of these ruins in Batten's work on Gurhwál and Kumaon, although that writer mentions the Dwáráháth frieze and carvings in Kumaon. I believe I am the first European who has seen the Mandhal temple, or indeed any of these ruins, as none of the district or forest officers had ever heard of their existence, until I mentioned them.

Notes on ancient Remains in the Mainpuri District.-By
C. HORNE, Esq. B. C. S.

[Received 8th June, 1867.]

Asauli. This large village is within two miles of Mainpuri to the north east and can be best approached by the old cemetery, from which it is perhaps three-fourths of a mile distant.

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