THE MODERN VERNA CHEARS.
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valleys of the Indus and its tributaries. Like the Sindhi, itcontains few Tatsamas, i.e. words borrowed directly from theSanskrit .
Gujarati occupies the area immediately to the south of f3) ; Guja-Punjabi; while Hindi is conterminous with the Punjabi on
the east. These two languages rank next to Punjabi inrespect to the paucity of words borrowed directly from theSanskrit . They are chiefly composed of Tadbhava, i.e. wordsrepresenting the Prakrits or old spoken dialects. Marathi ( 5 ) Mara-is spoken in the Districts to the south and east of the Gujar- thl ’athi frontier; Bengali succeeds to Hindi in the east of (6)Bengali;Bengal and the Gangetic delta; while Uriya occupies the ( 7 ) Uriya.Mahanadi delta and the coast of the Bay of Bengal fromnear the mouth of the Hugh to the northern Districts ofMadras. These three last - named vernaculars, Marathi ,
Bengali , and Uriya , are most largely indebted to modernand artificial importations direct from the Sanskrit .
With the exception of Sindhi, the modern vernaculars of Vernacu-India have each a literature of their own. Some of them,
larliterature.
indeed, possess a very rich and copious literature. This subjectstill awaits careful study. The lamented Garcin de Tassy has Garcin deshown how interesting, and how rich in results, that study may Tass >'-be rendered. His history of Hindi literature, 1 and his yearlyreview of works published in the Indian vernaculars, form aunique monument to the memory of a scholar who workedunder the disadvantage of never having resided in India .
But the unexhausted literary stores of the Indian vernacularscan only be appreciated by personal inquiry among the nativesthemselves. The barest summary of the written and unwrittenworks in the modern Indian vernaculars is altogether beyondthe scope of the present work. I can merely indicate thewealth of unprinted, and in many cases unwritten, workshanded down from generation to generation, arranged ingeographical areas. The chapter will then conclude byselecting for description a few authors from three of themost advanced of the vernaculars—namely Hindi , Marathi ,and Bengali . It will not touch on the Persian or Musalman literature of the Delhi Empire.
As regards the isolated vernacular of Orissa , the present Vernacu-writer has elsewhere given an analytical catalogue of 107 Uriya lar Wlltelsauthors, with a brief description of 47 Uriya manuscripts of in Uriya ;
1 Histoire de la Lilterature Hindouie et Hindoustanie , par M. Garcin de Tassy , 3 vols. large 8vo, 2nd ed. (Paris , 1870-71.)