A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.76

v1.c4.76

In the case of Hindi and Gujarati (which is after all little more than a dialect of Hindi) we find considerable similarity to that of Sindhi and Panjabi. In Hindi there are more Tadbhava words than in any other language, and it is in this respect the most useful and instructive of all of them to the philologist. The Hindi area was, as is well known, overrun by Musulmans as much as any part of India; but there and in Gujarat the final settling down of foreigners in the country did not take place till the end of the twelfth century, more than four hundred years later than in Sindh and the Panjab, and the language, starting as it did from a tolerably pure form of Prakrit, had time to carry out a system of regular and legitimate modifications of Sanskrit words, which it would be unfair to call corruptions.¹ Such a large number of Sanskrit words underwent developmental changes, and became thus fit and useful elements of practical daily speech, that the demand for new words to express novel ideas was reduced to a minimum. It must be remembered also that such new ideas came from the Musulman invaders, who, with the idea, also brought in a word of their own to express it; so that, except in the case of the old Hindu poets, who, as their verses turned chiefly upon points of the Brahmanical religion, had occasion frequently to recur to Sanskrit, there was in the nation at large no general demand for the Tatsama class of words.