Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/111

EARLIEST EUROPEAN WRITERS 87 of them have traced its connections with Sanserit, and therefore I conclude their systems imperfect” (Preface, p. xix et seq.). Of course adherence to Sanscrit is in- dispensable in writing a Bengali grammar but Halhed’s work. more or less presents Bengali as derived exclusively from its parent, Sanserit. He remarks at some length on th: exceedingly corrupt state of the dialect of the time! and says that “a grammar of the pure Ben- gal diale:t cannot be expected to convey a thorough idea of the modern jargon of the kingdom. The many political revolutions it has sustained have greatly impaired the simplicity of the language, and a_ long communication with the men of different religions, countries and manners, has rendered foreign words 10 some degree familiar to a Bengal ear. The Mahome- tans have for the most part introduced such terms as relate to the functions of their own religion or the exercise of their own laws and government; the Por- tugese have supplied them with appellation of some European arts and inventions ; and in the environs of such foreign colony the idioms of the native Bengalese is tinetured with that of the strangers who have settled there. Upon the same principle since the influence of the British nation has superseded that of its former conquerors, many terms of British derivation have been naturalised into the Bengal vocabulary.” It cannot be doubted for a moment that the book holds a high place as one of the earliest of a series of ' There will be found a curious appendix to this book con- taining a petition replete with foreign expressions, showing how far modern Bengali had been forced to debase the purity of its dialect by the necessity of addressing itself to the Mohammedan rulers, Inthe Preface to his Vocabulary, Forster similarly speaks of studiously avoiding ‘Persian or Arabick pedantisms.”