A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.34

v1.c4.34

§ 5. Of the three classes into which all the languages have been divided in the preceding section, Tatsamas are the least interesting to the student. This class consists of pure Sanskrit words which had long been dead and buried, so to speak, when in comparatively recent times they were resuscitated and brought into use by learned men, partly to supply real wants, but still more to show off their own learning. They have not been current in the mouths of the people long enough since their new birth to have undergone any of those processes of change to which all really living words in every language are constantly subjected; and a great many of them, especially in Bengali and Oriya, are not likely ever to be used colloquially. They ought certainly to be excluded from dictionaries.