The History of Indian Literature c9.12

c9.12

the curtailment or loss of terminations. Not unfrequently, however, they present older forms of these than are found in the written language, partly because the latter has rigorously eliminated all forms in any way irregular or obsolete, but partly also, no doubt, from the circumstance that grammar was cultivated principally in the north or north-west of India, and consequently adapted itself specially to the usage there prevailing. And in some respects (*e.g.*, in the instr. plur. of words in *a*?)¹⁹⁷ this usage may have attained a more developed phase than appears to have been the case in India Proper,∗ since the language was not there hampered in its independent growth by any external influence; whereas the Aryans who had passed into India maintained their speech upon the same internal level on which it stood at the time of the immigration,† however considerable were the external modifications which it underwent.