THE NON-AR VAN ELEMENT.

399

Such generalizations are not now accepted by the most The realeminent students of the Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Mr. Beames s t ™i P ° rtlonstrongly expresses his view that the speech of the conquering unknown.Aryans completely overmastered that of the aboriginal tribes.

The early grammarians were wont to regard as Desaja, or non-Aryan, all words for which they could not discover a Tatsamaor Tadbhava origin. But the more delicate processes ofmodem philology have reduced the number of this class, andtend still further to diminish it. The truth is, that until acomplete examination is made with the new lights, both of thevocabulary and of the structure of the Indian vernaculars, nofinal conclusion can be arrived at.

Dr. Hoernle thus sums up the existing knowledge in regard Presentto the group of Indian vernaculars on which he is the highest P°authority: ‘ That there are non-Aryan elements in the Bihari, question.

I have no doubt. Considering that the Aryans immigratedinto India , and absorbed large masses of the indigenouspopulation into their ranks, it would be a wonder if no portionof the aboriginal languages had become incorporated into theAryan speech. But what the several constituents of thataboriginal portion are, and what proportion they bear to theAryan element in the vernacular language, it is impossible atpresent to form any scientific opinion. And what is more,—itis impossible to say whether the assumed aboriginal portion otthe Aryan speech was Dravidian, or some other language, suchas Kolarian or Tibeto-Burman .’ 1

Introd. p. 57 (ed. 1875). Lassen held that the aboriginal tribes not onlyintroduced ‘peculiar varieties into the Prakrit dialects,’ but also ‘occa-sioned very great corruptions of sound and form in the Indo-Aryan lan-guages’ (Indische A Iterthumslsunde, ii. 1149). But the more recent inves-tigations of Beames, Hcernle, and Grierson render these dicta doubtful.

1 Letter from Dr. Rudolf Hoernle to the author, dated 28th May 1885.

Dr. Hcernle continues—‘ Attempts have been made now and then ( e.g . inThe Indian Antiquary) to show that some particular selected words of theNorth Indian languages are really Dravidian. But these, even supposingthey had been successful, would not enable any one to pronounce anopinion on the general question of the proportion of non-Aryan words inthe Gaudian languages. As a matter of fact, some of these attempts,notably those referring to the genitive and dative post-positions (ha, ke, ki,etc.), have been conspicuous failures. It is now, I think, generallyadmitted that these post-positions are thoroughly Aryan. The truth is, thatthe way in which the question of the non-Aryan element in the vernacularsshould be approached has been hitherto almost entirely misconceived. Alittle consideration must convince any one that whatever aboriginal ele-ments there may be in the vernaculars, they must have been incorporatedinto them before the present vernacular times, that is, in the period whenSanskrit and Prakrit flourished. The question therefore properly stands