A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.340

v1.c4.340

It is difficult to prophesy the future of this group, so much depends upon political changes which no man can foresee. It may, however, with much probability be surmised that the immense extension of roads, railways, and other means of communication, will result in the extinction of Panjabi and the dialects of Rajputana, and the consequent general adoption of one uniform language, the Persianized form of Hindi, from the Indus to Rajmahal, and from the Himalayas to the Vindhyá. The language wil then be spoken by upwards of one hundred millions of human beings; and from its vast extent and consequently preponderating importance, it cannot fail greatly to influence its neighbours. Gujarati will probably be the first to be assimilated; in fact, the difference is even now but slight, and the relation between it and Hindi is similar to that between Icelandic and Norwegian. Gujarati, separated by political circumstances from the rest of Hindustan proper, has retained archaic words and forms which have died out from the mother-speech, but no violent changes would be required to re-assimilate it. Sindhi on the west, Bengali on the east, will resist absorption much longer: the former owing to its fundamental divergence of type; the latter by virtue of its high cultivation and extensive literature, though it may be mentioned that Hindustani is already much spoken and generally well understood over a great part of Bengal. Oriya and Marathi may probably continue to hold their own to a more distant time, though in both provinces the number of persons, even among the lowest classes, who are acquainted with Urdu is already considerable, and is daily increasing. In short, with the barriers of provincial isolation thrown down, and the ever freer and fuller communication between various parts of the country, that clear, simple, graceful, flexible, and all-expressive Urdu speech, which is even now the *lingua franca* of most parts of India and the special favourite of the ruling race, because closely resembling in its most valuable characteristics their own language, seems undoubtedly destined at some future period to supplant most, if not all, of the provincial dialects, and to give to all Aryan India one homogeneous cultivated form of speech,—to be, in fact, the English of the Indian world.