Page:Assamese-Its formation and development.djvu/11

PREFACE The following pages, representing an effort at drawing up a preliminary sketch of the principal sounds and forms of the Assamese language, were accepted as a thesis for the Ph.D. degree of the Calcutta University, 1935. Assamese has been very little studied abroad. It has not even been mentioned in the existing comparative grammars of the N.IA. languages. In a work on pure linguistics, it was for the first time noticed m Dr. S. K. Chatterji's The Origin and Development oj the Bengali Language, 192(i. But that great work being mainly devoted to the examination of the growth and structure of the Bengali language. Assamese forms have been brought in here and there for the sake of comparison or amplification of some points. Assamese forms have also been similarly treated in Gnerson's Modern Indo- Aryan Vernaculars (Supplement, Indian Antiquary, 1931-1933). .Even by itself Assamese has been very insufficiently examined. The first grammatical notice of Assamese was taken by Rev. N. Brown, m his Grammatical Notes on Assamese Language, 1848. The>e notes were primarily meant for the American Baptist Missionaries, and were accordingly short. Prof. Nicholl summarised the main features of spoken Assam- ese in his work Manual of the Bengali language including Assamese Grammar, in 1894. Two native grammarians, Hem Chandra Barua and Satyanatha Bara, wrote two grammars in Assamese ; but good as these vernacular grammars are in' their own way, they are elementary and meant for school boys, and are scarcely of any use to advanced students of historical grammar. In 1936, as these pages were being made ready for the press, was published Mr. Kaliram Medhi's Asamiya Vya- karana dru Bhasatatva, written in Assamese. It is an ambiti- ous work and is supposed to be written on historical princi- ples. But though it contains a mass of early Assamese forms, the mode of approach to the subject is far from scientific and it does not place this publication under any obligation. A.-b