A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.72

v1.c4.72

§ 8. Hitherto I have been writing as though the proportion of the three classes of words were the same in all the languages. This is, however, so far from being the case that it is necessary to enter on some details to show how the matter really stands. The point is one on which it is very difficult to come to a definite conclusion. It is characteristic, though little to our credit as a nation, that after a century of rule in India we should have produced so few good dictionaries of this group of languages. In Hindi we have Shakespear and Forbes, but neither of these works is more than a very copious vocabulary, and both are derived almost exclusively from the written language.¹ In Bengali Dr. Carey’s huge quartos are a Sanskrit dictionary in Bengali characters, and Mendies’s is merely a vocabulary. Sutton’s Oriya dictionary is meagre, incorrect, and full of Bengali and Sanskrit words, instead of pure Oriya. The Ludiana missionaries’ Panjabi work is a meritorious and accurate performance, but it can scarcely be called a dictionary, and the same may be said of Captain Stack’s vocabularies of Sindhi. Shahpurji Edalji’s Gujarati dictionary is a very inferior and scanty contribution to our knowledge, and I am driven, by comparison with works written in that language, to doubt its accuracy in more than one instance. By far the best of the whole set is Molesworth's Marathi dictionary. This is really deserving of the name. The words are classed and distinguished, as literary or colloquial, full examples are given to show the way in which they are used, and meritorious, though sometimes mistaken, attempts at derivation are also supplied.