neighbourhood was adopted by degrees as the basis of a new phase of the language, in which, though the inflections of nouns and verbs remained purely and absolutely Hindi, and a vast number of the commonest vocables were retained, a large quantity of Persian and Arabic and even Turkish words found a place, just as Latin and Greek words do in English. Such words, however, in no way altered or influenced the language itself, which, when its inflectional or phonetic elements are considered, remains still a pure Aryan dialect, just as pure in the pages of Wali or Saudâ, as it is in those of Tulsi Dâs or Bihâri Lâl. It betrays therefore a radical misunderstanding of the whole bearings of the question, and of the whole science of philology, to speak of Urdu and Hindi as two distinct languages. When certain agitators cry out that the language of the English courts of law in Hindustan should be Hindi and not Urdu, what they mean is that clerks and native writers should be restrained from importing too many Persian and Arabic words into their writings, and should use instead the honest old Sanskrit Tadbhavas with which the Hindi abounds. By all means let it be so, only let it not be said that the Urdu is a distinct language from Hindi.[1] By means of the introduction of Arabic and Persian words, a very great benefit has been conferred on Hindi, inasmuch as it has thus been prevented from having recourse to Sanskrit fountains again and again for grand and expressive words. This resuscitation of Sanskrit words in their classical form—a process which has been going on in the modern languages for ages, and is still at work as vigorously as ever, just as the resuscitation of Latin words has always been and is still going on in French—has done a serious injury to some languages of the
- ↑ The most correct way of speaking would be to say "the Urdu dialect of Hindi," or "the Urdu phase of Hindi." It would be quite impossible in Urdu to compose a single sentence without using Aryan words, though many sentences might be composed in which not a single Persian word occurred.
