39 §
THE INDIAN VERNACULARS.
Non-Aryanelement inthe ver-naculars ;
less im-portantthanformerlysupposed.
Proportionof non-Aryanwords ;
in Sindhi,
These are the Tatsamas, ‘ the same as ’ in Sanskrit . Thedifferent vernaculars borrow such ‘ identical ’ words fromSanskrit in widely varying proportions. The strongest of thevernaculars, such as Hindi and Marathi , trust most to theirown Tadbhava or Prakrit element; while the more artificial ofthem, like the Bengali and Uriya , are most largely indebted todirect importations of Sanskrit words.
The third element in modern vernacular speech is theDesaja, or ‘ country-born.’ This represents the non-Aryan andother words not derived either from the Sanskrit or thePrakrits . At one time it was supposed, indeed, that themodern vernaculars of India were simply made up of theSanskrit of the Aryan settlers, modified by, and amalgamatedwith, the speech of the ruder non-Aryan races whom theysubdued. Modern philology renders this theory no longertenable. It has proved that Sanskrit played a comparativelyunimportant function in the formation of those vernaculars.It also tends to show that the non-Aryan element is lessinfluential than was supposed. Both in structure and invocabulary the modern vernaculars of India are the descend-ants neither of the written Sanskrit , nor of the aboriginaltongues, but of the Prakrits or spoken dialects of the ancientAryans.
In regard to grammatical structure, this position is nowfirmly established. But the proportion of aboriginal or non-Aryan words in the modern Indian vernaculars still remainsundetermined. The non-Aryan scholars, with Brian Hodgsonand Bishop Caldwell at their head, assign a considerable influ-ence to the non-Aryan element in the modern vernaculars . 1Dr. Ernest Trumpp believes that nearly three-fourths of theSindhi words commencing with a cerebral are taken from somenon-Aryan or Scythic language, which he would prefer to callTatar . He thinks, indeed, that there is very strong proof toshow that the cerebral letters themselves were borrowed, bythe Prakrits and modern Indian vernaculars, from some idiomanterior to the introduction of the Aryan languages into India .Bishop Caldwell states that the non-Aryan element, even inthe Northern Indian languages, has been estimated at one-tenth of the whole, and in the Marathi at one-fifth . 2
1 See Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson’s Aborigines of India , Calcutta ,1849; and pp. 1-152 of vol. ii. of his Miscellaneous Essays (Triibner,1880). Also the Rev. Dr. Stevenson’s paper in the Journal of the AsiaticSociety of Bombay.
2 Bishop Caldwell’s Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages ,