Plate VIA BhuiyÄr(Mirzapur district)
Plate VIA BhuiyÄr(Mirzapur district)
Plate VI
A BhuiyÄr(Mirzapur district)
It is a moot point whether Sanskrit was in PÄnini's time a spoken vernacular. It is more probable that it was, what it still remains in most parts of Hindu India, a second and literary language, used much as Latin was used in medieval Europe. The spoken form of the archaic language found in the older Vedas developed into PrÄkrit, which existed side by side with Sanskrit as the spoken dialects of Italyexisted side by side with literary Latin. As the Italian dialects developed into the modern languages of Europe, so the PrÄkrits gave birth to the Aryan modern languages of India. Thus the latter were not in any accurate sense derived from Sanskrit, but only shared a common origin with it[4]. It remained, however, as a standard of literary perfection and was destined to play an important part in the enrichment of many of the modern languages of India, when contact with western culture brought about what may fairly be called a literary renaissance. This was particularly the case with Bengali. Its medieval literature was all but confined to rhymed hymns and tales. English education led to a revival of Sanskrit studies. From England Bengal learnt that it was possible to write prose in many varied forms, in novels, essays, histories, journalism, and so forth. The medieval literary language, derived from the PrÄkrit, had grown insufficient for the expression of anything but the simplest devotional or amatory emotion, and Bengali borrowed freely from the rich treasury of Sanskrit.
In the "Midland," then, were various forms of PrÄkrit, side by side with the sacred and literary Sanskrit. Round the Midland, on the west, south,and east lay territories inhabited by other Indo-Aryan tribes. This country included what is now the PanjÄb, Sind, GujarÄt, RÄjputÄnÄ and the country to its east, Oudh and BihÄr. The tribes inhabiting this semicircular tract had each of them its own dialect. But it is important to note that the dialects of this "Outer Band" were much more closely related to one another than to the spoken language of the "Midland." It was this circumstance which suggested Dr Hoernle's ingenious theory, already mentioned, of the second and separate invasion of Aryans into the Midland over the mountainous passes of Gilgit, too high, arduous, and difficult to be traversed by the families and herds of the nomad newcomers.
In course of time the population of the Midland grew in numbers and valour and pressed closely on the food supplies of the tract. It was already the centre of a vigorous and widely influential civilisation. It contained the imperial cities of Delhi and Kanauj, and the sacred city of Mathura (ΜόδουÏα ἡ τῶν θεῶν, as Ptolemy calls it). This crowded, vigorous, and martial population was bound to expand. It spread into the eastern PanjÄb, RÄjputÄnÄ, GujarÄt and Oudh, carrying with it its language. Hence, as Sir George Grierson points out, we get in this "Outer Band" mixed languages, of the Midland type near the "Midland" centre, but fading into local dialects as we go further west, south, and east. Finally as theMidlanders crowded into the territories of the Outer Band, the inhabitants of these took refuge among the Dravidians of the south and east, and so gave birth to dialects which ultimately became MarÄthi in the south and OriyÄ, Bengali and Assamese on the east, all of them characteristic languages of the "Outer Band."
I am borrowing so freely and unscrupulously from Sir George Grierson that it is a relief to pause for a moment to interpose a very diffident suggestion of my own. Vocabulary, and even idiom, have become a dubious guide to the constituent elements of the "Outer Band" languages which have almost entirely destroyed the original vocabularies of the Dravidian or Mongolo-Dravidian races who use them. But it is just possible that accentuation, rhythm, metre may furnish some clue to these vanished dialects, which may have bequeathed a characteristic tone of voice to their Aryan successors. Bengali, for instance, has a very peculiar initial phrasal accent which strongly distinguishes it from the etymologically cognate speech of BihÄr, much as the characteristicaccent toniqueof French distinguishes it from Italian and Spanish. Native scholars in Bengal are, I am glad to say, beginning to work at the Dravidian elements in their expressive and copious language, and will, I hope, soon investigate the Mongolian elements, whether of idiom or pronunciation, in the Bengali of the north-eastern part of the province.
To return to Sir George Grierson, he holds that the present linguistic condition of northern India is this:—there is, firstly, a Midland Indo-Aryan language which holds the Gangetic DoÄb. Round it on three sides is a band of Mixed languages, in the eastern PanjÄb, GujarÄt, RÄjputÄnÄ and Oudh. With these Sir George includes the Indo-Aryan languages of the Himalayan slopes north of the Midland, which have been introduced in comparatively recent times by immigrants from RÄjputÄnÄ.
The PrÄkrits.Before I leave the Aryan languages of India, I must give a brief summary of what Sir George Grierson says of the PrÄkrits, the spoken speeches which have always, implicitly or explicitly, been distinguished from the artificial and literary Sanskrit. The Primary PrÄkrits of the Midland and Outer Band (of which latter no record survives) were of the same type as the Latin known to us in literature. They were synthetic and inflected languages. These gradually decayed (or developed) into what Sir G. Grierson calls the Secondary PrÄkrits. These are still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations of consonants are avoided, "till in the latest developments we find a condition of almost absolute fluidity, each language becoming an emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on an occasional consonant." These Secondary PrÄkritslasted from the days of the Buddha (550B.C.) to about 1000A.D.
One at least of these Secondary PrÄkrits, PÄli, has obtained world-wide fame as the language of the Buddhist scriptures. Thus crystallised, it underwent the same fate as Sanskrit and became more or less what we call in Europe a "dead" language. In the Midland was a great and famous PrÄkrit called Sauraseni, after the Sanskrit name, Surasena, of the country round Mathura. In BihÄr was MÄgadhÄ«; in Oudh and Baghelkhand was Ardha-mÄgadhÄ« or "half MÄgadhÄ«"; south of these was MahÄrÄshtri, which is best known to students of the ancient Indian drama as the vehicle of the lyrics with which the plays are studded. Kings, sages, heroes and other noble characters speak Sanskrit. Inferior personages use Sauraseni.
The Secondary PrÄkrits themselves degenerated into what Indian grammarians call Apabhramsas, "corrupt" or "decayed" tongues, which were used for literary purposes and finally became the parents of the great Aryan languages of the present time.
For comparison with the preceding table of the Dravidian languages, I give below the census table of the Aryan languages as recorded in 1901:—
Of all these modern languages, their idioms, their characters, their literature, I do not venture to give even a summarised account. Those who have any curiosity to learn more about them cannot do better than consult Sir George Grierson's work onThe Languages of India, until it, in its turn, is superseded by the book he is now writing from the materialscollected in hisLinguistic Survey. But everyone who has readThe Newcomeswill want to know what HindustÄni is, especially as it is one of the languages prescribed for the study of probationers for the Indian Civil Service and is taught at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Dublin. In the strictest sense HindustÄni is the dialect of western Hindi spoken between Meerut and Delhi. It was much cultivated, as a literary dialect, by both Hindus and MusalmÄns. The latter wrote, and write it, in the Persian character, and have added a large number of Persian and Arabic words. In this Persianised form it is known as UrdÅ«, "a name derived from theUrdÅ«-e mu 'alla, or royal military bazaar outside the imperial palace at Delhi, where it is supposed to have had its origin." Under Muhammadan rule UrdÅ« was almost as much thelingua francaof India as English has come to be in modern times.
Another point is worth noting here. The Aryan languages of northern India are, in a very real sense, Hindu languages. Perhaps I shall make myself clearer by asserting that the languages of Western Europe are Christian languages. For historical reasons, their religious phraseology has a Christian connotation and allusiveness. But in the west, the distinction between things secular and things religious has become so familiar that the Christian element in our speech is not recognisable in our ordinary talk. In HinduIndia, on the other hand, almost every act of a man's life has some religious or superstitious significance, and hence all the Aryan languages in the mouths of Hindus are markedly different from the shape they assume when spoken by MusalmÄns. In the case of western Hindi we have the recognised Muhammadan dialect of UrdÅ«, but in other languages too there is a Muhammadan dialect orpatois, even if it has no separate name. A curious exception, however, occurs in eastern Bengal, where the bulk of the population is MusalmÄn. In this region the Muhammadans are comparatively recent converts from the lower aboriginal or Mongoloid castes, whose Muhammadanism sits very lightly on their habits and consciences, and so far as my own experience goes, there is little difference between the speech of the lower MusalmÄns and their friends and cousins the ChandÄls and other indigenous castes.
Finally, I must say a few words about the Indo-Chinese and Mon-Khmer languages. I spent most of my official life among people speaking these languages, and find, somewhat shamefacedly, that Sir G. A. Grierson makes me responsible for sundry vocabularies compiled in my distant youth. Naturally, I feel a personal interest in the people of the north-easternborder, and am tempted to enlarge on their qualities of speech and character. But I have left myself little space, and the Mongoloid races of the frontier are hardly Indian in any proper sense of the word. Moreover, though their total number is not great, they speak many languages. The Census of 1901 recognises 119 such languages. The most important of them all is, of course, Burmese, which is spoken by about seven and a half millions of people. There are nearly 900,000 Karens in Burma, and about 750,000 Shans. The Meithei (now Manipuris) mentioned above are 272,997 in number. The Boro or Kachari people of the Assam valley, a most attractive and delightful race, number somewhat less than 250,000. The other languages of this type have mostly a much smaller number of speakers than these. But mention should be made of 250,000 Mons, Palungs and Was in Burma, and 177,827 KhÄsis in Assam, since these constitute the only members of the Mon-Khmer family still found within the limits of British India.
These people, speaking Indo-Chinese languages, surround India proper on the north and east in a crescent-shaped curve, mostly in the valleys of lofty and rugged mountains. From the eastern mountains projects into the midst of the modern province of Assam a range of hills, dividing the valley of the Brahmaputra from that of Sylhet, which is wateredby the Surma. Readers of Sir W. W. Hunter's delightful little book onThe Thackerays in Indiawill not need to be told where Sylhet is, or what sort of a place it is. This range of hills is inhabited by the Garos on the west, and the Nagas on the east, both Tibeto-Burman races. Between them, on one of the most beautiful plateaus in the world, are the KhÄsis, once, as I have said elsewhere, regarded as being as isolated and unique as our European Basques, but now proved to be, linguistically at least, connected with the Mons in Burma, and many races and tribes in Further India and Australonesia.
All these Indo-Chinese people seem to have come originally from north-western China, following the beds of great rivers in their travel; down the Chindwin, the Irrawaddy, and the Salween into Burma, down the Brahmaputra into Assam, and up the Brahmaputra into Tibet. There seem to have been at least three waves of migration. First, in prehistoric times, there was a Mon-Khmer invasion into Further India and Assam. Next, also at an unknown date, was a Tibeto-Burman invasion into the same regions and Tibet. Next the Tai branch of the Siamese-Chinese entered eastern Burma about the sixth centuryA.D.A fourth Tibeto-Burmese invasion, that of the Kachins, when in Lord Dufferin's time, the British annexed Upper Burma.
I think I have now said enough to show how thelanguages of India are distributed. It only remains to give a brief and cursory account of the Indian Religions. This is a subject on which big books might be, and have been, written. But, even in so small a book on the Peoples of India it seems necessary to give some account of their religious divisions.
[4]As in Europe, the modern Aryan languages differ from one another chiefly in survivals from the indigenous earlier speech which preceded each of them.
[4]As in Europe, the modern Aryan languages differ from one another chiefly in survivals from the indigenous earlier speech which preceded each of them.
(1)Animism.At the base of all the religions, perhaps at the base of all religions all over the world, lies a mass of primitive beliefs, not perhaps yet consciously classed by the holders of them as distinctly religious, which are called by the question-begging name of Animism. By this statement, I mean merely that many of the more ignorant and simple folk who profess and call themselves Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muhammadans, or Christians, are in fact at the animistic stage of intellectual evolution. The religious impulse is there, but has not become specialised. There is no religious theorising, but merely communal and transmitted beliefs about the nature of things in general. Perhaps I had better quote Sir H. H. Risley's definition of Hinduism as it exists in India. "It conceives of man," he says, "aspassing through life surrounded by a ghostly company of powers, elements, tendencies, mostly impersonal in their character, shapeless phantasms of which no image can be made and no definite idea can be formed. Some of these have departments or spheres of influence of their own: one presides over cholera, another over small pox, another over cattle disease; some dwell in rocks, others haunt trees, others, again, are associated with rivers, whirlpools, waterfalls, or strange pools hidden in the depths of the hills. All of them require to be diligently propitiated by reason of the ills which proceed from them, and usually the land of the village provides the means for their propitiation."
If this definition, that of a kindly and experienced student of primitive thought and emotion, be correct, there is already an attempt at analysis and classification. But the analysis is feeble, the classification very elementary. The differences which seem obvious to the civilised man, who inherits the analytic inventions and investigations of long series of ancestors, are not yet realised. There is practically no distinction between things animate and inanimate, since all may be maleficent and must therefore, on occasion, be propitiated. There is no sense of things subter-human, human, and superhuman. Still less, of course, is there any recognition of the difference between things religious and things secular. Grown men face the factsof life as children do, and receive the impressions life conveys to themen masse, without making much effort to sort them out. In our own case, we learn to classify from our elders, and classification, literary, scientific, social, religious, is a large part of what we call education. How does primitive man begin to sort out the facts of life, to remember them in classes, to discriminate between human beings and other animals, to place animals above inanimate things, himself above animals, and, finally, the gods above himself? The history of the evolution of Hinduism throws some light on this evolution as it occurred in India.
Meanwhile, it is worth noticing that the Census returns of 1901 returned the Animists of India at only about 8½ millions, or less than 3 per cent. Those who returned themselves as Hindu or MusalmÄn were so recorded, whatever their degree of mental and social culture. An attempt has been made in the Census of 1911 to distinguish between true Hindus and Animists who call themselves Hindu. How far the attempt was successful, I do not know. I can well believe that it was not welcomed even by educated and intelligent Hindus. Many years ago, I remember a highly educated Hindu in Bengal telling me that there is no distinction between Animists and Hindus; that an Animist is merely a Hindu "in the making" as it were. But perhaps that assertiononly amounted to an admission that the Hindu mind is averse from the kind of intellectual evolution by conscious analysis and classification which is dear to Western imaginations. Yet the history of Hinduism and its branches shows that such an evolution has taken place.