HINDUSTANI,1 or URDU, is a dialect of the Hindi, one of the seven languages of Aryan stock spoken at the present thy in North India, the others being the Paujabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, 'Marital, Bangali, and Oriya. The area over which it is spoken in North India may be said to be co-extensive with that. of the Hindi, which is estimated at about 250,000 square miles, extending from the river Gandak in the east to the Sutlej in the west, and from the Himalaya in the north to the Vindliiya mountains in the south. It is also extensively used, though in a somewhat different phase, in a great part of the Deccan, and is moreover the lingua ,franca of most parts of India.

As the Hindi language consists of many dialects, it is necessary to state that it is the Braj Bliasha, or the dialect that is spoken in the districts of Agra and Mathura, and in the neighbourhood of Dehli, the ancient capital of the Mahometan empire, which is generally regarded as the parent of Hindustani. The grammatical structure and also a vast number of the commonest vocables of the Braj were incorporated in the new dialect, and to these were added a vast number of Persian, Arabic, and even Turkish words. "Such words, however, in no wise altered or influenced the language itself, which, as regards its inflexional or phonetic elements, remains still a pure Aryan dialect, just as pure in the pages of Wali or Sauda., as it is in those of Tulsi Das or Bihari Lal."/ Peculiarities of composition, such as reversing the positions of the governing and the governed word (e.g., bap merit- for mera bap), or of the adjective and the substantive it qualifies, or such as the use of Persian phrases with the preposition ba instead of the Hindi postposition of the ablative case (e.g., ba-klutsh7, instead of khaski se., or ba-Irmkm sarkar-ke, instead of sarkar ke ltakm se), are no doubt to be met with in many writings, and these, perhaps, combined with the too free indulgence on the part of some authors in the use of high-flown and pedantic Persian and Arabic words in place of common and yet chaste Hindi words, and the general use of the Persian instead of the Nagari character, have induced some to regard Hindustani or Urdu as a language distinct from Hindi. But such a view betrays a radical misunderstanding of the whole question.

As regards the introduction of foreign words into the various dialects of Hindi, it seems highly probable that it had its origin at an early period, perhaps as early as the 8th or 9th century of our era. But there is good ground for the opinion that, although the Hindi area was overrun as early as the 12th century, the Hindustani was not formed till the 16th century. "For many generations after the victories of Kutbu'd-din Aibak, the first Musalman sovereign of Dehli,the conquerors retained their own Persian, and the conquered their Hindu. The Musahuans had long been accustomed to speak pure Hindi,and it was not they who introduced Persian words into the language, but the Ilindiis themselves, who at the epoch above mentioned were compelled by Todar Mal's new revenue system to learn Persian."; And we learn from Mir Amman of Dehli (whose brief account of the origin of Unlit in the preface to his well-known Bagh-o-Balaip bears on the face of it every convincing mark of probability, and, scanty as it is, is remarkable a°, perhaps, the only attempt at a critical disquisition in the whole range of Hindustani literature) that at the date of the composition of his work (1802) the Al usalnian dynasties had endured for a thousand. years, and that as intercourse increased the languages of the Hindus and Mural-mans became to a certain extent mixed. By the arrival and stay of the Amir Timer the camp or Lazar of the army was introduced into the city, whence the city bazar was called Urdu, a Tartar word signifying " camp." "When Akbar ascended the throne, various races from all quarters, on hearing the kind patronage and bounty of that incomparable house, came and assembled in the royal presence, but the speech and dialect of each was different. From their being collected together, and owing to the trade, traffic, and intercourse which they carried on with one another, a single language, that of the Urdu (or Hindustani), was established."

The epoch of Akbar, which first saw a regular revenue system established, with toleration and the free use of their religion granted to the Hindus, was, there can be little doubt, the period of the formation of the language. But its final consolidation did not take place till the reign of Shah Jahan. After the date of this monarch the changes are comparatively immaterial until we come to the time when European sources began to mingle with those of the East. Of the contributions from these sources there is little to say. Like the greater part of those from the Arabic and Persian, they are chiefly nouns, and may be regarded rather as excrescences which have sprung up casually and have attached themselves to the original trunk than ingredients duly incorporated in the body. In the case of the Persian and Arabic element, indeed, we do find not a few instances in which nouns have been furnished with a Hindi termination, e.g., kharldnii, badalna, guzarnd, daglina, bakhshnii, kaminapan, &e. But the European element cannot be said to have at all woven itself into the grammar of the language. It consists, as has been observed, solely of nouns, principally substantive nouns, which on their admission into the language are spelt phonetically, or according to the corrupt pronunciation they receive in the mouths of the natives, and are declined like the indigenous nouns by means of the usual postpositions or case-affixes.4 A few examples will suffice. The Portuguese, the first in order of seniority, contributes a few words, as kamard or kamrd (camera), "a room;" martol, "a hammer; " nZldnm, " auction " (often corrupted into /llam) ; perk, " a turkey," &c. &c. Of French and Dutch influence scarcely a trace exists. English has contributed a number of words, some of which have even found a place in the literature of the language ; Kammishanar (commissioner) ; jaj (judge) ; istant (assistant) ; dakrar (doctor); daktari„ "the science of medicine," or "the profession of physicians ; " inspektar (inspector) ; sosayafi (society) ; apiG (appeal); apil harn-d, " to appeal ; " dikri or dipri. (decree) ; digri (degree); inch (inch) ; fat (foot); and many more, are words riow commonly used. How far the free use of Anglicisms will be adopted as the language progresses is a question upon which it would be hazardous to pronounce an opinion.

The grammatical structure of the Hindustani differs in no essential particular from that of the Hindi from which it is sprung.. It is therefore of the rise and formation of this language, and of the stage to which it had attained when the new phase of the Hindustani was developed from it, that we shall now speak.

Of the history and development of the Hindi or Hindfii language previous to the 11th century of our era little or nothing is known. It is accepted as a fact by most scholars that Sanskrit ceased to be a vernacular in the 6th century B.c., when the Buddhist religion was founded, which for ten centuries drove Brahmanism into obscurity. From that time the Aryan people of India spoke popular dialects called Prakrits,1 and it is from these that the modern Aryan tongues are mainly derived. These Prakrit dialects are generally grouped under five heads, viz., the 11.(abarashtri, Sauraseni, Magadhi, Paisachi, and A pabhransa„ Of these the Sauraseni, or dialect of Saurasena, the modern tract of Mathura and the surrounding country, is taken to be the parent of the Hindi, or at any rate of that phase of it with which we have to do. These Prakrits were, like the Sanskrit, synthetical and inflexional in their structure, and certainly continued to be so up to the 1st century of our era, the lowest stage to which in point of development scholars have been able to reach. At what precise period the synthetical structure of the Prakrit began to break up and to give place to the analytical formations of the modern speech it is impossible to tell. The gap of nine centuries has yet to be filled up. And unless future discoveries of Buddhistic literature should shed light on the subject, it is to be feared that the history of this period will ever remain unknown.

The dawn of modern Hindi may be dated from the 11th century. The earliest known writer in the language was Chand Bardai (r,.1200), whose epic is in a dialect rude and lialf-formed, but as decidedly analytical as the Hindi of the present day.2 Much of the old synthetical structure no doubt is still to be found in the work ; the particles and the auxiliary verbs are in a very crude and unformed state (as, for example, the use of an obscure. ha for the modern genitive affix ka, which ha does not vary with the governed noun, and is frequently left out altogether ; the total absence of the ordinary substantive verb hap, &c.); but these crudities and remnants of old Prakrit forms do not affect the general structure. Indeed, they are to be found in writings of a much later period, in works belonging to the 14th and 15th centuries, e.g., in the Adi Grantk, the language of which exhibits, according to Trumpp, "grammatical forms not firmly fixed, but rather in a state of transition." And although the forms assume greater fixity, and marked progress is observable in the works of later writers in the Braj Viand dialect, e.g., in those of Kabir, Sur Das, Nabha Ji, Kesava Das, and Bihari Lal (whose poems are, as a rule, composed in very pure and elegant Hindi), we still find certain crudities and traces of Prakrit forms and organic structure, and these continue even in the language of the present day.

To give a minute account of the grammatical formation, to indicate the various phonetic or glottic laws by the operation of which the vocables and grammatical forms of the Hindi are derived from those of the Prakrit or Sanskrit, is beyond the scope of the present article. We can but notice a few general laws, and exhibit results, so far as they have been ascertained. For closer acquaintance with the subject we must refer the reader to the PrdkritPrandsa of Vararfichi, edited by Professor E. B. Cowell; the Prakrit Grammar of Hemachandra, edited by Professor Pischel; the Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India, by John Beames, B.C.S. ; and Essays on the Ga Uria12, Languages, by Professor Rudolf Hoernle.

Prakrit tolerates no compound consonant in the beginning and no dissimilar consonant in the middle of a word. Two dissimilar consonants in a Sanskrit word are changed in Prakrit to two similar consonants, and occasionally one of these is elided and the preceding vowel lengthened. In the modern dialects this elision of one consonant and compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel is the rule. Prakrit either changes a medial surd mute consonant to the corresponding sonant one, or elides it altogether ; and it generally changes an aspirate mute consonant to the simple aspirate It. In -fact the modern Aryan tongues stand to the Prakrit and the Sanskrit in a relation very similar to that existing between the Italian, &c., and the Romance and Latin languages. Hindi "is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans, it is a branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from which Sanskrit sprang when it first assumed its literary independence."3 Vocables. - The vocables may be classed under three heads :l. Words which are pure Sanskrit, as raja, " a kin, " ; " father '' ; kavi, " a poet " ; nagars, " of or belonging to a city " karma, karya, "work"; krodka (vulg. krodh), " anger." Net a few of this class of words have existed in the language for some centuries ; some are to be found even in the oldest specimens of the literature ; but by far the larger number have passed into the language during the present century, and the introduction is still progressing. The form in which they appear is that of the Sanskrit nominative singular.

" ear," Prk. kcQn.ta, S. karma ; atk, " eight," Prk. attka, S. ashtha ; path., " hand," Prk. kattha, S. pasta ; ay, " self," Prk. apix7., S. citma ; bat, " word," Prk. valid, S. vartta ; aj, " today," Prk. alia, S. adya ; age, " before," Prk. ague, S. ogre ; ag, " fire," Prk. aggi, S. agni ; dflk, "milk," Prk. Buddha, S. dl/gal/a; phagun, " Feb.–March," Prk. pharigii•.;., S. pha/gwit ; "old," Prk. vlaPtho, S. vride/ha.h, ; kalta, "said," (Braj kahyan), Prk. kahido, kuhio, S. katkitah ; raha , " remained," (Braj rahyau), Prk. rahido, rahio, S. rakitah ; tha, "was," Prk. Olio, S. sthitah. This is by far the largest class of words in the Hindi. And, as in the case of the first class, they are adopted in the form of the nominative singular of the Prakrit. They are divisible into two classes, the first comprising such as have in their declension preserved traces of the old organic inflexion of the Prakrit declension, and the second those which have preserved no such traces. As regards these it may be observed that the terminations a, e, i, o, u, of the Prakrit are regularly reduced in the Hindi to their inherent simple vowels, viz., a to a, c and a to i, and o and ft to ra ; and these short vowels are, as a rule, made quiescent, so that a word ending in reality in a short vowel virtually terminates in a consonant ; and, not being pronounced, the final short vowel is frequently suppressed in writing also.

_ _ Gender. - The three genders of the Prakrit and Sanskrit are, in Hindi and Hindustani, reduced to two, the neuters and masculines of the old tongues generally becoming maseulines iii the modern language. Instances, however, are not a few in width they are changed to feminines. A striking feature in the modern tongues is the preponderance of masculines ending in Cc, with the corresponding feminines in i. Now in the Sanskrit a is a typical feminine ending, and i is as often a masculine as a feminine termination. Many feminine words ending in a are no doubt to be found in the Hindi, as ehhima, " patience," =S. kshama ; and similarly- many masculine words which in the Prakrit and Sanskrit terminate in i arc also to be met with, as pani, " water," - S. peiniyam ; halhi, " elephant," =S. hasti (hastim). But a is typically a masculine and i a feminine termination in the Hindi and Hindustani, and this is probably due to the number of sources from which the termination springs ; thus we havc - (l) a - Prk. o, =S. as or ah, e.g., kaisol, "like what," " what manner," " how," Prk. a•iso, S. kidria76 ; (2) Prk. aii, =S. akas or akah, ghora, " horse," Prk. ghoraii, S. ghotakah ; (3) ti - Prk. a(k)am, aam, - S. am, e.g., kela, "plantain," Prk. kera(k)am, keratim, S. ktalaram. Again, the masculine ending aka of the old languages has a corresponding feminine in ika ; and as the Prakrit commonly employs the pleonastic increment k to raise bases to the form aka, so it employs the same affix to form the feminine ika of these masculines ; ika becomes iya, and more commonly 7 in the modern tongues. The form spa is that which is generally used in feminine diminutives ; e.g., qibiya, "a tiny box" ; but it is also need like i for a simple feminine ; e.g., kutta," dog," kutiga, "bitch " ; bitrha, " old man," bnrhiya, "old woman." If to the above class of feminines ending in i be added the large class which in Prakrit and Sanskrit form the feminine in i (i.e., the Prakrit masculines in o, =S. as), the preponderance of nouns ending in i seems sufficiently accounted for. It may be added that a and i are so universally regarded as masculine and feminine terminations respectively that the natives employ them freely in forming feminines from masculines and vice versa, e.g., badlei, from the Arabic burial. There are a few other feminine terminations which are worthy of notice, not so much on account of their origin (which presents no difficulty), as on account of the free use which is made of them ; these are - (1) ini, in, an, Uzi, =S. nazi (fens. of in, i); (2) an.Z, cazi, amn, =S. Celli. These are not only found in words derived from the Prakrit, but are added to Persian and even Arabic words ; e.g., hathini, heithin, hathni, "female elephant," (=S. hastini); sunarin, sumTran, "a goldsmith's wife,'' (fern. of sonar, " goldsmith," =S. suvarnakara) ; sherni., "tigress,' from the Persian sher, "tiger" ; nasiban, a proper name, from the Arabic nasib ; pan ll.unrzl., " the wife of a pandit" ; ehaudhrain, " the wife of a chatahari or head-man " ; mehtrani„ "the wife of a sweeper, a sweeper-woman," from the Persian mettar, "a sweeper."

Deelension. - It is here that the most striking contrast between the old and the new languages is found. The synthetical method of the Prakrit and the Sanskrit is, as a whole, rejected, only certain half-effaced traces of declension being retained. The number of cases, as in the Sanskrit, is seven, the nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, and vocative ; but the inflexions of the Prakrit have given place to case-affixes or post-positions. For example, where the Sanskrit has .givagai and givasyai, the Hindi has siv-ko, and siv-ka.

The case-affixes or postpositions are as follow :- instrumental . ne, "by."

Dative-A eensat . ko, " to," " for."

Ablative se, " from."

Genitive (ke, ki), " of."

Locative .......... ........... ....... men, peer, "in," " on."

The genitive affix, it may be observed, varies its termination so as to agree with the governing noun. In other words, it is adjectival, and agrees with the governing noun just as an adjective would ; e.g., sone-ki gharF, " a gold watch."

The case-affixes or postpositions are all, there can be no doubt, remnants of Prakrit nouns which were probably in use at the period when the modern Aryan languages began to be formed. The majority of these are fairly determined, and it seems probable that the remainder will also be fixed before long. The results of the investigation of scholars, as regards the postpositions noticed above (which are those commonly employed in the declension of Hindi and Hindustani nouns), we will here attempt to exhibit.

The case-affix ne of the instrumental (or case of the agent) is regarded by Trumpp and others as derived from ena, the instrumental case-ending of the Sanskrit. This opinion is, how-ever, combated by Beames (Comp. Gram., vol. ii. p. 266 et seq.), who is of opinion that it is an affix of the dative, which was probably transferred to the instrumental as late as the time of Shah Jahan, in whose reign, as has been shown above, Urdu or Hindusani was consolidated. Beanies shows that the postposition is not used in the old Hindi, and is not to be found in most of the dialects, except as a dative ; but he does not, we believe, trace it to any particular original. It is clear, however, that whether this affix is derived from the instrumental case-ending of the Sanskrit or not, it bears a striking resemblance to the latter in its use and the construction it requires ; the Sanskrit tena uktam is marvellously like the Hindi vs-na kalta, "by him it was said," or freely " he said."

The dative postposition ko is derived by Dr Trumpp from the Prakrit kito, kio, - S. kritam. Dr Hoernie,' however, would seem to connect it with the Bangali kachhe " near," and the S. sa-kaga ; and Beames (Comp. Gram., vol. ii. p. 257), accepting this as a right clue, traces the affix to the Prakrit kakkham, =S. kak-sham, " arm. pit," "side," the locative of which, kakshe, he believes to be the source of the Bangali kaehhe.

The postposition se of the ablative is traced by Beames (Corp. Grant.., vol. ii. p. 274) to the Sanskrit salaam, " with," through an old form 801a still used in the rustic dialects.

The genitive case-affix ka (fem. ki, oblique ke) is derived by Trumpp and others from the Sanskrit affix ka. But Hoernle'shows conclusively (arid his derivation is accepted by Beames) that the affix is derived from the Prakrit karii; (=S. kritas), which becomes keno, kera(k)o, and then kerai; ; keno is then shortened to kara, whence the modern form ka.

Of the locative case-affixes, mean, "in," is derived by scholars from the Sanskrit madhye, the locative of madhya, " the middle"; while par (pari, orpai) is obviously traceable to the Sanskrit upari, " upon."

The declensions are two in number. In the one the nominative or base is inflected before the case-affixes are added ; in the other no change takes place in the nominative form. The first consists solely of masculine nouns ending in = Prk. o =S. as (e.g., ghora, "horse," =Prk. ghorad, =S. ghotakas); the second comprises all other nouns, whether they end in vowels or consonants. The base of the first declension is inflected by changing final a to e ; e.g., nom. ghora, inflect, base ghore, gen. ghore-ka, dat. ghore-ko. But in the second declension we find, nom. raja, "king," gen. raja-ka, "of a king," &c. Dr Hoernle connects the e of the inflected base with the ya of the oblique form in Marathi, and so traces it to a Prakrit genitive in yassa = iassa = ikassa. The correctness of this derivation would seem to be established by the analogy of the oblique or in-fleeted base of the plural of nouns, and especially by the inflected base of the pronouns, both these bases being indisputably traceable to the Prakrit genitive. Mr Beames, however, is of opinion that "it is not correct to derive the oblique form from any special case of the Sanskrit;" he thinks that "it rather results from a general fusion of all the cases" (Comp. Gram., vol ii. p. 210). This is the more remarkable as he accepts without demur the fact that the plural oblique base is a corruption of the Prakrit genitive plural.

The terminations of the nominative plural of nouns (where a plural form is used) are, clearly traceable to the Prakrit. Nouns which fall under the first of the declensions noticed above terminate in e in the nom. Our. (e.g., ghora, "horse," nom. plur. ghore, "horses," which is identical in form with the inflected base of the sing.). The termination c - Prk. e, =S. ah. Feminines ending in a consonant (and also fern. Arabic words ending in a, as ba/a), form the noun. plur. by adding eh to the sing. noun. This ending, eh, =Prk-. neuter di, aim, S. neut. an/. The plum termination ali of the nom. of feminines ending in i (as beti, "daughter ") is also to be referred to the Prakrit ain=S. ani. The oblique form of the plural of.all nouns ends in ore (e.g., ghoroh ; gen. ghoroa-ka ; raiddat. raja-on-ko). The termination Oil. is derived from the Prakrit Cojam ( - S. ciiicint), the termination of the genitive plural.

Pronouns. - The pronouns stand in marked contrast to the nouns in respect of the fidelity with which they have preserved the Prakrit forms. Those of the first and second persons run parallel to one another, and have four fundamental forms, namely, the nominatives and the obliques in both numbers. The genitive is a possessive pronoun, mud, as in the noun, is adjectival in form. jdiahc, "1," is derived by Trumpp from the Prakrit man, the accusative of alarm ; hut it seems more probable that it is, as Beames shows, the instrumental main? of the Prakrit, and =S. maya. In the genitive mera, "my," the affix rd added to the Prk. base 'me is, there can be little doubt, connected with the affix ka, used in forming the genitive of nouns ; the form lava, by elision of k would naturally yield 7.a, which we may observe is the genitive affix of nouns also in the Marwari dialect of Hindi. The oblique form mujh is derived from the Pratt majjha, one of the forms of the genitive. Flue dative- ace. mujhe of the modern Hindi is formed by adding e to mufh, this e being the usual sign of the oblique in nouns. Ham, "we," = Prk. amhe by transposition of h. This is now commonly used as the oblique form of the plural (e.g., ham-ko, ham-par) ; but the oblique hamoh., =Prk. gen. plur. amhanam, is also to be met with.

Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1875, pt.. 1, p. 174 el seq. 2 Ibid, p. 124.

The genitive plural hamiirti is probably from Prk. amha +hero, by elision of k: The pronoun th, " thou," = Prk. tuntam, bairn, = S. tram. A form laid, parallel to maih, and similarly derived, is also iu use. The oblique tujh is from the Prakrit tuif ha, one of the forms of the genitive. The sources from and the processes by which the remaining forms are obtained are precisely parallel to those employed in the pronoun of the first person.

The pronouns of the third person are identical with the demonstrative pronouns yah or yilt, "this," and wait. or oath, "that," of which the older forms are ih and //h. The origin of these forms has not yet been discovered. All that can be gathered respecting them is that they are probably connected with one or other of the Prakrit forms atila, lane, inane-, im, &c. =S. ayam,m.,iyant, n. , &c. , and are to be referred to primitive bases i and a or u. The oblique forms of these pronouns, however, point clearly to the Prakrit genitive, e.g., is =Prk. assn, S. asya.

The relative pronoun jo, " he who " - Prk. jo, base ja.

The correlative so =Prk. so - S. sale. Its remaining forms may be made on the model of jo by substituting t for j.

The interrogative pronoun has k for its typical letter, just as the relative has j, and is in all respects as uniform as the relative and correlative. Batts, " who " = ko + ( =S. punch) ; the oblique form kis =Prk. gen. kassa (with change of base from masc. ha to fern. hi), =S. kasya.

The indefinite pronoun koi, "some one," = Prk. kobi, = S ko + api. "The oblique form kiss shows the oblique of the interrogative with the i, whose origin has been forgotten, so that it is regarded as a mere emphatic particle" (see Beames, Comp. Gram.).

" something "= Prk. kimehi= S. k bash it.

The reflexive pronoun ap, "self " - Prk. apps, ape, = S. atm& Verbs and Tenses. - The verbal stems are, generally speaking, derived from the Prakrit present tense of Sanskrit neuter verbs, or from the Prakrit passive past participle. In the formation of the tenses, as in the declension of nouns, the synthetical or inflexional system of the Prakrit and the Sanskrit has given place 'to the analytical. Still wrecks of the old inflexions remain.

The tenses of the modern verb may be naturally classed under three heads - (1) the simple tenses, which are the exact modern equivalents of corresponding tenses in the Prakrit verb, and in which traces of the old synthetic method still linger ; (2) tenses formed of a participle, either the imperfect or the perfect participle ; (3) tenses formed of a participle and an auxiliary verb.

The tenses of the first class are two in'uumber, - the aorist (which corresponds to the present indicative of the old languages), and the imperative, which is derived from the Prakrit imperative.

The terminations of the aorist are :- Singular. Plural.

,75=Prk. anri and, 1. eh=Prk. ama, anza=S. amah.

e =Prk. est =S, a$(. 2. o aha =S. a-tha.

The imperative closely resembles the aorist or old present. The second person sing. is the bare verbal stem, and the second person pinr. is identical with that of the aorist.

From the aorist the Hindustani and the Hindi form the simple future by the addition of gCt (=Prk. gad, gado, =S. gestalt, perf. part. of the root gam, "to go"), e.g., kahfid-gti, "I will tell," &c. The termination ga (which is masc.) becomes gi for the feminine, and ge for the plural, after the analogy of nouns of the first declension.

Of the tenses of the second class little need be said. The participles (which like other vocables are derived from the Prhkrit) are the imperfect and the perfect, or what are vulgarly termed the present and the past. An example of each will suffice to show the construction wait both; "he says"; mails bola, " I said"; wale bolt, "she said"; we bole, "they said." Such is the construction in the case of neuter and intransitive verbs. But if the verb be active transitive, the tenses formed of the perfect passive participle are passively constructed ; the place of the nominative is taken by the instrumental or ease of the agent, and the participle inflects so as to agree with the object, if this be expressed, and appear in the form of the nominative ; but if the object is not expressed, or if when expressed it assumes the dative form, the participle is constructed impersonally and appears in the masc. sing. form ; e.g., • maid-ne kahci, "by me it was said," "I said. "; lts-see ehitfhi, "the letter was written by him," "he wrote the letter " ; raja-ve shernl-ko mars., "the king killed the tigress" ; lit. "as regards the tigress, it was killed by the king." This construction, as we have already remarked, is commonly employed in the Sanskrit..

The tenses of the third class arc formed by adding to the participles already mentioned the various tenses of certain auxiliary verbs, as Rona, "to be "; jamS, " to go " ; and the fragmentary forms hi4,2), (with its remaining persons) and Ilia ; e.g., maiii jars. laud, " I am going" ; scale parhti hai, " she is reading ; wale bal(ha. the, "he was seated," "he was sitting" ; we Male hedge, "they will have started."

Of these auxiliaries hone (ha- =Prk. ho-, = S. blow) and jcina (ja, = Prk. jai, = S. yel) need not detain us. Both verbs are in use in all their tenses in the modern languages, and the preceding remarks on the verbal forms and tenses apply equally to them. Tana is that which is employed to form the passive voice, e.g., leak mars. jciegd, "he will be killed." It is also used for other purposes, such as intensifying a root to which it is attached, hc.

The auxiliaries hiih (with its other persons) and the stand on a different footing. The former is derived from the present indicative of the root as, "to be," in the old languages : - Singular.Plural.

hial=Prk. anthi=S. asnzi. I 1. haisi=Prk. asma=S. smah.

hat=Prk. asi =B. asi. I 2. ho =Prk. aitha=-S. stha.

The latter is derived from the Prakrit thin, - Sanskrit sthitah, the perfect participle of the root stha, "to stand." Besides being used as auxiliaries, both are employed to express simple existence, as main, huh, " I am," "it is I "; wale hat, " he or it is "; wait thd, "he was" ; teals. at, "she was." (J. T. P.) HINI)USTANI LITERATURE. - Hindustani literature falls into two great divisions, of which the first is comprehensively styled Hindi, the second Urcla. Both of these forms of speech are, in their application to literary purposes, at first intruders upon the ground already occupied by the learned languages, Sanskrit and Persian. At no time during modern Indian history has Sanskrit altogether ceased to be used for composition by the class who regard culture and literature as their special heritage, although during the last two centuries it has much fallen from its former estate ; and Persian has been still less neglected by learned Muliammadans and their Hindu imitators in India. But there is this difference between them that, whereas Hindi has been raised to the dignity of a literary language chiefly by impulses of revolt against the monopoly of the Brahmans, Urdu has been cultivated with good will by authors who have themselves highly valued and dexterously used the polished Persian. Both, however, represent the popular side of the national culture, and in the present day they are almost in sole possession of the field. The subject may be conveniently divided as follows :- Early Hindi, of the period during which the language was being fashioned as a literary medium, represented by the old heroic poems of Rajpatarn•, and the literature of the Bliagats or Vaishnava reformers, and extending from about 1200 to 1570 A.D.

Middle Hindi, representing the best age of Hindi poetry, and reaching from about 1570 to 1750 A.D.

The rise and development of literary Urdu, beginning about the end of the 16th century and reaching its height during the 18th.

The modern period, marked by the growth of a prose literature in both dialects, and dating from the beginning of the present century.

exception of a fragment by Jaideo (the author of the Sanskrit Cita-Gov/la/0, preserved in the Adi-Granth, the &Jest specimen of Hindi which we possess : but it is impossible to suppose that he was the first to attempt poetical composition in that language. The metrical perfection of his verse alone shows that he must have had many predecessors ; and rude and rough though his utterance is, it abounds in poetic conventionalisms which must have been the common stock of many singers of his class. The story is told in sixty-nine books, of which some are interludes and digressions, but most are occupied with the exploits of the hero and his warriors. Considering the early date of the poem, and the opportunities of knowing the truth which the author (if he was really Prithwiraj's bard) possessed, it is remarkable how much legend and fiction is mixed up with history in the chronicle. The repeated conflicts between the raja and Sultan Shiliabuddin of Ghor, in which the latter always, except in the last great battle, comes off the worst, and is released on payment of a ransom, seem to be entirely unhistoric, our authorities knowing only one encounter (that of Tirauri near Thanesar, fought in 1191) in which the sultan was defe.tted, and there even lie escaped uncaptured to Lahore. The Mughals (Book xv.) are brought on the stage more than thirty years before they actually set foot in India (122), and are related to have been vanquished by the redoubtable Prithwiraj. These and other points make it questionable whether we have here, at least in its entirety, a genuine contemporary work ; but we may concede, as indeed we are justified ia doing by the language of the poem, that it is one of our earliest documents in Hindi.

It is very difficult for us now to form a just estimate of Chand's poem : the language, essentially transitional in character, abounds in strange forms which have long since died out of the vernacular speech ; few if any Hindus, even the most learned, are able to interpret him ; and his meaning must be sought by investigating the processes by which Sanskrit and Prakrit words have been transfigured in their progress into Hindi. But upon the whole he may be said to exhibit both the merits and defects of ballad-chroniclers in general. There is much that is lively and spirited in his descriptions of fight or council ; and the characters of the Rajput warriors who surround his hero are not unfrequently sketched in their own words with skill and animation. The sound, however, too often predominates over the sense, and we find abundantly exemplified in his poem the wearisome iteration, uninventive sameness of machinery, and tedious unfolding of familiar themes and images which distinguish nearly the whole of Indian narrative poetry. His value, for us at least, is linguistic rather than literary.

The other class of composition which is characteristic of the period of Old Hindi, the literature of the Bhagats, both possesses more intrinsic interest and has exercised a more important influence on subsequent literary endeavour. The heroic chronicles, with perhaps the single exception of a famous saga relating the history of Padmavati, wife of Ratan Sen Raja of Chitor, who in 1303 at the taking of that fortress by Sultan 'Alaud-din burnt herself and (so says the tale) 13,000 other women rather than fall into the hands of the conqueror, which has been several times handled by poets outside the pale of Rajput traditions, and especially in a still highly esteemed work by Jaisi under Sher Shah (1540), had only a local currency, and contributed but little to the furtherance of literature outside the limits of Rajpiitana. The Vaishnava reformers, on the other hand, exercised the most powerful influence both upon the national speech and upon the themes chosen for poetic treatment. Nearly the whole of subsequent Hindi literature is impressed with one or other form of Vaishnava doctrine ; a very large proportion of the poets whose works are still current among the people were Vaishnava saints or bhagats ; and to their initiative is due the almost exclusive use as a poetic dialect of that form of archaic Hindi known as Braj-bhakha. Vaishnavism was essentially a reaction against Brahtnanical influence and the chains of caste, a claim for the rights of humanity ag.iinst the monopoly which the " twice-born asserted of learning, of worship, of righteousness. As Siva was the peculiar deity of the Brahmans, so was Vishnu of the people; and while the literature of the Saivas and Saktas is almost entirely in Sanskrit, and exercised little or no influence on the popular mind, that of the Vaislinavas is mainly in Hindi, and in itself constitutes the great bulk of what has been written in that language.

The Vaishnava doctrine is commonly carried back to Ramanuja, whose appearance is placed by Wilson about the middle of the 12th century. He was a native of Southern India, and had few immediate followers in the north. In the latter region the new opinions were spread by Ramanand, whom the Bhaktanza!a, makes the fourth head of the sect, and other authorities the fifth ; both Wilson and Trumpp place him about .1100 of our era. Nothing in Hindi by Raurianuja has come down to us ; of Ramanand we have one short poem in the Granth (Introduction, p. cxxiv.). Between Ramanuja and Ramanand (though not in the line of teachers descending direct from the former) we may place Jaideo (about 1250) and Namdeo (about 1300), of the first of whom we have a fragment in the Grcith, and of the second six pieces have been similarly preserved. Jaideo was a Brahman, and well acquainted with Sanskrit ; but Namdeo (or Nama) was a chhipi or calico-printer, a very despised class, and was perhaps the first to proclaim among the followers of the new doctrine the essential unity of mankind as worshippers of Hari. Kabir comes next, and i3 incomparably the greatest, in the order of Vaishnava teachers. He was a weaver by caste, and in all probability originally a Musalman. He is counted among the twelve disciples of Ramanand ; but he seems himself to trace his spiritual paternity rather to Jaideo and Nama.1 He dwelt first at Benares and afterwards at Magahar, in the present district of Gorakhpur, during the reign of Sikandar Shah Lodi (1488-1517), and was probably dead before the end of the 15th century. Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, whose Grauth is little more than a paraphrase of Kabir's writings, was born in 1469 and died in 1538 ; and from the relation between the two it seems necessary to suppose that Kabir was several years the senior.

was philosophically a form of pantheism, accounting for the existence of phenomena (the reality of which was denied) by the agency of a Maya, or illusion, emanating from the Supreme. The varied lot of men in life, their differences of faith and aim, their desires, fears, hopes, loves, are all the work of this Haya, to know which, and to recognize beneath all the Supreme, is the only means of emancipation from the chains of illusion. Neither austerities, ritual, nor works of any kind are necessary to obtain the highest end ; this is only to be gained by bhakti, " faith," and perpetual meditation on the Supreme - His names, Hari, Ram, Govind, being ever on the lips and in the heart. The highest end is absorption in the Supreme, reunion with Him from whom all proceeded and who exists in all. Little place is left in this somewhat barren doctrine for a soci it code, since works are naught ; but negatively, at least, it is inoffensive, commanding respect for all forms of life, and quiet performance of duty without self-seeking or desire for gain.

Of the spiritual followers of Kabir many have left memorials in literature ; one of the most eminent of these was Dala, founder of a sect very prevalent in Rajptitana. A translation of two chapters from the Granth or scripture of this Bhagat will be found in a note to Wilson's Religious Sects of the 1Iindets, pp. 106--I13, and will repay perusal. But those whose compositions, if not most excellent from a literary point of view, have at any rate wrought most in history, were the Gurus or spiritual heads of the Sikhs of the Panjab. The AA Granth, or Book of the first five Gurus (from Nanak, who died in 1538, to Arjun, who died in 1601), is described by its translator as " perhaps the most shallow and empty book that exists, in proportion to its size ; " and certainly the translation is not attractive reading. But the doctrines, reiterated with the most painful diffuseness, are essentially those of Kabir, much of whose writings has been incorporated in the volume. The language is rather Old Hindi than Old Parijabi, and thus the work falls within the scope of this article ; though Panjabi words and idioms frequently occur, the grammar is Hindi ; and the authors evidently aimed at propagating their tenets rather among the Hindi-speaking races of Hindustan proper than (as actuallyhappened) among the Panjabi-speaking tribes of the West and South-West. The Granth consists of six parts : I., the Japji, the only portion as yet published in Europe in the original Hindi ; III., and IV., arrangements for devotional purposes of extracts from Part V., the Rags or body of the Granth ; of these Rags there are thirty-one, but only four, Sri Rag, Afajh, Gaup7,, and Asa, have been rendered by Trumpp ; the remaining twenty-seven are described as "a second gathering or gleaning, as materials offered themselves, no attention being paid to the contents, but only to the bulky size of the Granth;" .VI., the 13hog or conclusion, containing verses by various authors, among them Kabir and Shekh Farid of Pakpattan, a famous Indian Sufi, and panegyrics of the five Gurus by fifteen bhatts or bards.. At the end of each Hag is a collection of sayings of the Bhagats, chiefly of Kabir, in confirmation of the doctrines set forth by the Gurus ; and it is in these additions that the literary importance of the work, as a treasure of specimens of early Hindi, mainly consists.

Another of the following of Ramanand, though consider ably later in time than Kabir, was Sur-Das. Of his life little is known : as some of his verses are included in the Granth, he must have lived before its redaction (about 1600) ; if he be the same as a saint of that name mentioned in the Bhaktamcila, as is probable, he was a Brahman, =in or revenue collector of the parganah of Sanclila in Oudh during the reign of Akbar, who is related to have appropriated the collections of his district for the service of the temple of Madan-Mohan at Brindaban, sending to the treasury instead chests filled with stones. When his delin• quency was discovered, he was pardoned by Akbar, but thenceforth abandoned the world, and, becoming blind, led a wandering life as a singer of the praises of Vishnu. His stanzas, generally of four lines (padas), are said to number no less than 125,000; they are collected in a huge volume entitled the Sar-Sagar, and are extremely popular.

While the sects of which Ramanand may be considered the spiritual father adore the Deity chiefly under the names of Banta, Hari, Govind, and dwell but little on the avatars or human incarnations of the Hindu god whom they have selected as the type of the Supreme, there is another division of the Vaishnavas which is not less important in Hindi authorship, and counts its adherents by millions, whose worship is of a different character. The sects belonging to this division take Krishna as their favourite type of the godhead, and, accepting the whole mass of legends (most of them probably of comparatively late origin) relating to this incarnation, inspire themselves with fervour by the contemplation chiefly of Krishna's childhood and his youth in the society of the herd-maidens of Braj. As the doctrine and object of worship are, so also is the mode of life. The Ramanandis are for the most part men of ascetic and unworldly life, not indeed given to self-torture or needless rigour, but caring nothing for the wealth of the world, and living quietly and soberly in the possession of what they deem the truth. The worshippers of Krishna and his mistress Radha, or of the infant Bal-Gopal, on the other hand, are no ascetics, but persons of luxurious and often opulent lives ; among women especially this form of devotion is widespread. The chief sect of this denomination is the Vallabltacharis, or the following of the Gok-nlastha Gosaffes. Their founder was one Vallabha Swami, a Brahman from the south, who settled at Gokul near Mathura, probably about the beginning of the 16th century. The best known works of this sect are the Braj-bilas, a description of Krishna's sports with the maidens of Windaban, by Brajbasi-Das, and the Vartta, a 'collection of legends regarding eighty-four teachers of the following, resembling the Bhaktanzala, which deals chiefly with the other division of Vaishnavas. The popularity of the BrajGilds is immense, and it is to be found in a lithographed form for sale in every bazaar. Its contents (as indeed many other productions of the worshippers of Krishna) have been condemned by Europeans as indecent ; but although containing much that seems at least outwardly licentious and prurient, it is a work the study of which is indispensable to one who would understand the religious temper of the Hindus. The mystic dwelling on the amours of Krishna and the Gopis of Braj has been often compared to the mystical interpretation of the Song of Solomon ; and in most religions we shall perhaps find at least one phase in which the sensual is curiously mingled with the spiritual, and faith and love towards the heavenly stimulated by thoughts and phrases drawn from earthly scenes of passion. Of the Vartta we shall speak under the next division of our subject.

(inaharasa-ntal), and equal to the speech of the gods" (i.e., Sanskrit).

Kesav-Das was a Brahman who lived under Jahangir and Shahjahan. He was the author of a poem on Rama., entitled the Ramachandrika, written in 1602; the Kavipriga, written in the same year, a treatise on the poetic art of much celebrity ; the Rasik-priya, on rhetoric, written in 1592 the Bhakta-lilamiita, an exposition of the doctrine of Ramanandi Vaishnavisrn; and several other works. Kesav-Das's compositions are widely popular, and have been frequently lithographed in Northern India.

Bihari-Lal is renowned as the author of the Sat-sai, collection of 700 distichs, which is perhaps the most celebrated work of Hindi poetic art, as distinguished from narrative and simpler styles. They are inspired by the Krishna side of Vishnu-worship, and take the form of amorous dialogues between Rhclha and the other Gopis and their lover. The author was a native of Goaliyar, and lived at Amber during the early part of the 17th century. Editions of this work, one of the most difficult in Hindi and abounding in subtle conceits, are very numerous. It has been commented on by a crowd of scholars, among them, strange to say, more than one Musalman, - a sufficient proof of the value set by natives of India, irrespective of their creed, on its perfection of language. It has even been translated into Sanskrit.

Tulsi-Das, though perhaps inferior in poetic skill to the two last mentioned, is undoubtedly the most popular Hindi poet. His Ramayan (originally named by the author Rani,- charit-manas, or " the Lake of Rama's deeds ") is perhaps better known among Hindus in Upper India than the Bible among the rustic population of England. He was a Kanauji Brahman, and probably (from his language) a native of Oudh. The greater part of his life he spent at Benares; he died in 1624. His Ramayan was commenced at Ayodhya in 1573. Besides this great work, he is the author of six other poems, all bearing more or less on the history and worship of Rama, called the Ram-gitaval7, the Dohavali, the Kabit-sanzbandh, the Binay-patrika, the radRamayan, and the Chhandeivei. Seven other minor works are attributed to him, but their authenticity is doubtful.

Tulsi's 1?amayan is a rehandling of the great theme of Valmiki, but in no sense a translation of the Sanskrit poem ; real translations are scarcely to be found in original Hindi literature, the vernacular authors permitting themselves great liberty of excision, adaptation, and addition. It consists of seven books, of which the first two, called the lial-kand and Ayodhya-Ridecl, make up more than half the work, and relates the birth and boyhood of Rama and his brethren, his marriage with Sita, their dwelling together in the forest, her abduction by Ravan, the expedition to Lanka and the overthrow of the ravisher, and the life at Ayodhya after the return of the reunited pair. It is written chiefly in dohas, sorathas, and chaupCas, with here and there a chhand interspersed ; the style is very even and well sustained, and the language, while fundamentally the Old Parbi of eastern Hindustan, borrows largely from Braj. The most admired portion of the work is the second book, Ayodhya, which tells of the mischief wrought by Kaikeyi, one of the queens of Dasarath, Rama's father, who had bound himself by a vow to grant her what boon she should . ask, and whom by this bond she compelled to command llama and Sita to go into exile in the great forest south of the Jumna, and to give the throne to her own son Bharat. In this trouble Dasarath dies, and his son obediently goes forth with his wife and his brother Lachhman tothe southern wilderness. The sorrow of Dasarath, the sweet filial piety and perfect manhood of the divine Rama, the valour and prompt affection of Lachhman, the sincerity and humility of Bharat, the purity and wifely obedience of Sita, are themes which a Hindu reader is never tired. of dwelling upon in Tulsi's pages. And unlike though the treatment be to our own standards of taste, overgrown with theological digressions and explanations, and stocked with conventional images and stereotyped phrases as the poem is, even a European may find in it something of literary achievement which appeals to him, however distantly, as the work of a master of the heart. The first two books of the kamayan have been admirably rendered into English prose by Mr F. S. Growse (Allahabad, 1877-78).

Tulsi, though essentially a Hindu and a Brahman in religious feeling, yet belongs to the class of Vaishnavas who count among them Ramanand and Kabir. Iie has little or nothing of the sensual passion of the devotees of Krishna and Radha; and in the commentary on the Bhaktamala it is related that, when in his old age he paid a visit to Brindaban, the centre of the Krishna-cult, he refused to render homage to any other form of the god than Rama. According to the legend, he was beguiled into a temple of Krishna, and bidden there to worship Rama ; he answered that he would only bow his head before one who should bear in his hand the bow and arrows of the king of Ayodhya ; hearing his speech, the image of the god, standing till then as Krishna with the flute (Bansidhar), suddenly changed to the similitude of Rama with the bow.

The Bhaktamala, or " Roll of the Rhagats," is a celebrated work of this period, and is ascribed to Nabhaji, a Vaishnava of the despised caste called _Pons or .7)0721/xis, who lived during the reign of Jahangir, and was a contemporary of Tulsi-Das. The Bhaktamala, in the form in which it is commonly met with, consists of a 72777/, or original text, ascribed to Nabhaji, and a tikci, or commentary, of which there are two, due respectively to Krishna•Das and PriyaDas, both stated to have been written in 1713, in verse, and many more in prose. The mid is a short stanza (chhappai) for each saint, the first line of which is repeated again at the end, stating, in the briefest and most obscure language, his characteristics. The original work of Nabhaji was amplified and added to by Narayan-Das, who lived during the reign of Shahjahan. Mr Growse justly says of it : - " The style (of the 77/7.7) might be described as of unparalleled obscurity, were it not that each separate portion of the text is followed by a (.aka, or gloss, in which confusion is still worse confounded by a series of the most disjointed and inexplicit allusions to different legendary events in the saint's life." A considerable portion of the Bhaktamala was printed in 1817 in Major Price's Hindi and Hindustani Selections, and it has been largely drawn upon by Wilson in his account of the religious sects of the Hindus. The saints treated in it are chiefly of the class of Vaishnavas addicted to the worship of llama ; and the anecdotes of them contained in the work are generally insipid and extravagant in the extreme. "Such as it is, however, it exercises a powerful influence in Upper India on popular belief, and bolds a similar place in the superstitions of this country to that which was occupied, in the darkest ages of the Roman Catholic faith, by the Golden _Legend and Acts of the Saints" (Wilson).

The other side of Vaishnavism, that devoted to the cult of the infant or youthful Krishna, with or without his mistress Radha, is represented by a work similar in character to the _Rhaktanzala, called the Vartta, or Chaurasi Vartla, already mentioned. Specimens of its contents will be found in Wilson's Religious Sects of the Hindus, p. 132. Its legends are of the most trivial and childish description ; but, with the tenth chapter of the ilhagavata Pu•cina, rendered into Eraj-blnikhii, by Chaturblmj Misr, and into modern Hindi in 1801-10 by Lalla Lal, they are nevertheless the inspirers of the greater part of the popular worship throughout the whole of Northern India. The universality of the cult of the infant Krishna may be judged by the enormous number of Hindu proper names which end in Lal, meaning " child," all of which embody some reference to this deity in his youthful form. In Bengal especially the sect is extremely numerous, having there arisen out of the teaching of Chaitanya, who is said to have married a daughter of Vallablachary-a, and is believed by his followers to have been himself an incarnation of Krishna.

Such, in the briefest outline, is the character of Hindi literature during the period when it grew and flourished through its own original forces. Founded by a popular impulse in many respects similar to that which gave rise to Buddhism nearly 2000 years before, and cultivated chiefly (though by no means exclusively) by authors not belonging to the Brahmanical order, it was the legitimate descendant in spirit, as Hindi is the legitimate descendant in speech, of the Prakrit literature which preceded it. Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated the Prakrit metrical forms, and carried them to a pitch of perfection which is too often overlooked by those who concern themselves rather with the substance than with the form of the works they study. The language of these.compositions strikes us often as rude, abrupt, and ambiguous ; undoubtedly in its earlier specimens it is wanting in clearness and definiteness of grammatical form ; but the shackles of metre are frequently the explanation of uncouth forms of speech, and the necessity of filling out a metrical scheme led in too many cases to irregularities and amplifications which had perhaps no representatives in the uncompelled utterances of the vernacular tongue.. Interesting when regarded in the mass, its attractions in detail are few. As in all Oriental literature, repetition and shallowness of idea overcome it, and render an extensive course of reading intolerable to a European. Conventional images, platitudes exhausted to the utmost degree of tenuity, barren philosophical and theological themes which in their wideness entirely overlook the study of detail, - such are, with few exceptions, its leading features ; and one who has read two or three books has in truth made himself master of the whole secret of original Hindi literature.

Urdu, as a literary language, differs from Hindi rather in its form than in its substance. The really vital point of difference, that in which Hindi and Urdu are incommensurable, is the prosody. Hardly one of the metres taken over by Urdu poets from Persian agrees with those used in Hindi; in the latter language, it is the rule to give the short a inherent in every consonant or group of consonants its full value in scansion, except occasionally at the metrical pause : in Urdu this is never done, the only somewhat analogous rule providing for the enunciation of a short a (the nirn-fat/rah) after a nexus of consonants which would otherwise be pronounced without it ; the great majority of Hindi metres are counted by the number of syllabic instanti or inatriis (the value in time of a short syllable) : in until the metres follow a special order of longs and shorts.

The question, then, is not - When did Persian first become intermixed with Hindi in the literary speech 1 - for this process began with the first entry of Muslim conquerors into India, and continued for centuries before a line of Urdu was composed ; - nor, When *as the Persian character first employed to write Hindi 1 - for the written form is but a subordinate matter. We must ask - When was the first verse composed in Hindi, whether with or without foreign admixture, according to the forms of Persian prosody and not in those of the indigenous metrical system? Then, and not till then, did Urdu come into being. If, then, it is really the case that poems were so composed as early as the 11th or the 13th century, the origin of Urdu literature must be carried back to that period. But Hindi itself was at that date, and for many decades later (as we see from Chand and our other earliest specimens of the language), in an unsettled and transition stage. Neither in its case-inflexions nor in its verbal forms did it resemble the language which we know as Urdu. It abounded in short vowels and hiatuses, which could not accommodate themselves either to the Persian character (without the free use of vowel-signs and haanzah, which were seldom employed) or to Persian prosody ; and its syntactical order was loose and unsettled, Urr15, as we know it, is the Hindi of the end of the 16th century enriched from Persian, not the Hindi of Chand and the early Bltagats.

The whole of Urdu poetry follows Persian models of composition ; its themes are those which had already been worked (some might say, worked out) by writers in that language ; and neither in form nor substance do we find the faintest flavour of originality from its commencement to the present day.

The paucity of themes and want of originality in Urdu verse has led to a most elaborate development of the system of rhetoric. Where the substance of what a poet has to say is identical with that which has been said by hundreds, nay thousands, of poets before him, it is of the highest importance that the way of saying it shall if possible be peculiar to himself. Rhetoric, accordingly, rather than poetic feeling, is the distinguishing feature of composition in Urdu. Pleasing hyperbole, ingenious comparison, antithesis, alliteration, carefully arranged gradation of noun and epithet, are the means employed to obtain variety ; and few of the most eloquent passages of Urdu verse admit of translation into any other language without losing that which in the original makes their whole charm. Even in the masnavis, or narrative poems, the story is usually quite a subordinate matter ; it has in most cases been handled time after time, and is familiar to the reader in its minutest detail. Even when the names chosen for the actors are new, the intrigue is old, and the mode in which it is unfolded is the only thing which distinguishes one poem from another. The descriptions thus, confined within a narrow circle of incident and epithet, repeat each other with a monotony which to a European is inexpressibly fatiguing, but which in the East is deemed rather a merit than a defect. Differences of school, which are made much of by native critics, are to us hardly perceptible ; they consist in the use of one or other range of metaphor and comparison, classed, according as they repeat the well-worn poetical stockin-trade of the Persians or seek a slightly fresher and more Indian field of sentiment, as the old or the new style of composition.

These being the nature and features of Urdu poetry, it will be manifest that such an account of • it as can be given here must be little more than a list of names and dates.] The earliest 1.7rtla authors lived and wrote in the Dakkhan, at the courts and under the patronage of the Muhammadan dynasties of Golkonda and Bijapnr, shorty before these dynasties were overthrown by the campaigns of Amangzeb in the south. Slinja'uddin iTari, a native of Gujarat, a friend of Faizi and contemporary of Akhar, is mentioned by the native biographers as the most ancient Ureia poet after Amir Khusrau. He was tutor of the son of the wazir of Sultan Abusl-Hasan Qutb Shah of Golkonda, and several ghazals by him are said to survive. Quit Qutb Shah of Colkonda, who reigned from 1581 to 1586, and his successor Qutb Shah, who came to the throne in 1611, have both left collections of verse, including yhazals, ?whir is, masuaris and qtr.:Valls. And (luring the reign of the latter Thu Nishati wrote two works which are still famous as models of composition in Dakhni ; they are masuaris entitled the Tfiti-mintah, or "Tales of a Parrot," and the Phiii-ban. The first, written in 1639, is an adaptation of a Persian work by Naklishabi, but derives ultimately from a Sanskrit original entitled the gitkassaptuti ; this collection-has been frequently rehandled in Urdu, both in verse and prose, and is the original of the T'efaKaluila, one of the first works in Urd0 prose, composed in 1801 by Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh Haidari of the Fort William College. The Ph id-ban is a love tale named from its heroine, said to be translated from a Persian work entitled the Basatin. Another famous work which probably belongs to the same place and time is the Story of Kanwiip and Kaki by Tahsinuddin, a anasnari which has been published (7836) by M. Casein de Tassy; what makes this poem remarkable is that, though the work of a Musalmanc its personages are Hindu. Kamrap, the hero, is son of the king of Oudh and the heroine, Bala, daughter of the king of Ceylon ; the incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of es-Sindihad in the Thousand and One Nights • the hero and heroine dream one of the other, and the former sets forth to find his beloved ; his wanderings take him to many strange countries and through many wonderful adventures, ending in a happy marriage.

The court of Bijapur was no less distinguished in literature. Ibrahim'Adil Shah (1579--1626) was the author of a work in verse on music entitled the Nau-ras or "Nine Savours," which, however, appears to have been in Hindi rather than Urda_,- the three pre- faces (dibtijahs) to this poem were rendered into Persian prose by Mania Zuhari, and, under the name of the Silt nasr-i Zukuri _are well-known models of style. A successor of this prince, 'Ali 'Add Shah, had as his court poet a Brahman known poetically as Nilsrati, who in 1657 composed a inasnari of some repute entitled the aukhan-i Ishq, or " Rose-garden of Love," a romance relating the history of Prince Minoltas and Madmalati, - like the Kainrsip, an Indian theme. The same poet is author of an extremely long Inasnazi entitled the ' Ali-nConah, celebrating the monarch under whom he lived.

These early authors, however, were but pioneers and feelers of the way ; the first generally accepted standard of form, a standard which has suffered little change in two centuries, was established by Wall of Aurangabad (about 1680-1720) and his contemporary and fellow-townsman siraj. The former of these is commonly called " the Father of Reklitali" - Bilbri-e llekhtalt; and all accounts agree that the immense development attained by Urdu poetry in Northern India during the 18th century was due to his example and initiative. Very little is known of Wall's life ; he is believed to have visited DAB towards the end of the reign of Aurangzeb, and is said to have there received instruction from Shah Gulshan in the art of clothing in a vernacular dress the ideas of the Persian poets. His Kid/iyeit or complete works have been published by M. Gamin de Tassy, with notes and a translation of selected passages (Paris, 1834-36), and may be commended to readers desirous of consulting in the original a favourable specimen of Urdu poetical composition.

The first of the Heidi school of poets was Znha•uddin Ilatim, who was born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shah (1719), the &wan of Wall reached Dchli, and excited the emulation of scholars there. Hatim was the first to imitate it in the Unlit of the north, and was followed by his friends Nap, Mazman, and A.bril. Two divans by him survive. Ile became the founder of a school, and one of his pupils was Rafi'lls-Sanda, the most distinguished poet of Northern India, Khan Arza (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdu poetry in the north. This author is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, in which language he not only composed much poetry, but one of the best of Persian lexicons, the Siroju-l-lughtit ; but his compositions in Urdu are also highly esteemed. lie was the master of Mir Taqi, who ranks next to Salida as the most eminent Urdu poet. Arza died at Lakhnau (Lueknow), whither he betook himself alter the devastation of Heidi by Nadir Shah (1739). Another of the early Heidi poets who is considered to have surpassed his fellows was I n'amullah Khan Yaqin, who died during the reign of Ahmad Shalt (1748-54), aged only twenty-five. Another was .Mir Hard, pupil of the same Shah Gulshan who is said to have instructed Wall ; his diwein is not long, but extremely popular, and especially esteemed for the skill with which it develops the themes of spiritualism. In his old age he became a dam wesh of the Nagshbandi following, and died in 1793.

Salida and Mir Taqi are beyond question the most distinguished Urdu poets. The former was born at Debli about the beginning of the 18th century, and studied under I Intim. lie left Dehli after its devastation, and settled at Lakhnau, where the Nawab Asafuddaulah gave him a pigir of Rs. 6000 a year, and where Le died in 1780. His poems are very numerous, and cover all the styles of Urdd poetry ; but it is to his satires that his fame is chirllv due, and in these he is considered to have surpassed all other Indian poets. Mir Taqi was born at Agra, but early removed to Debli, where he studied under Arzil ; he was still living there at the time of Sanda's death, but in 1762 repaired to Lakhnau, where lie likewise received a pension ; he died at a very advanced age in 1810. his works are very voluminous, including no less than six climb's. Mir is counted the superior of Salida in the yharal and InahlIall, while the latter excelled hint in the satire and gaVdah. Sayyid Ahmad, an excellent contemporary authority, and himself one of the best of modern authors in Urda, says of him in his Asaru-sSaniidid : - " Nir's language is so pare, and the expressions which he employs so suitable and natural, that to this day all are unanimous in his praise. Although the language of Salida is also excellent, and he is superior to Mir in the point of his allusions, he is nevertheless inferior to him in style."

The tremendous misfortunes which befell Heidi at the hands of Nadir Shah (1739), Ahmad Shah Durrani (1756), and the Narathils (1759), and the rapid decay of the Muglial empire undertheserepea ted shocks, transferred the centre of the cultivation of literature from that city to Laklinau, the capital of the newly founded and flourishing state of Oudh. It has been mentioned how Arzu, Saudis, and Mir betook themselves to this refuge and ended their days there; they were followed in their new residence by a school of poets hardly inferior to those who had made Debli illustrious in the first half of the century. Here they were joined by Mir Hasan (died 1786), Mir Soz (died 1800), and Qalandar•bakhsh Jur'at (died 1810), also like themselves refugees from Dehli, and illustrious poets. Mir Ilasan was a friend and collaborator of Mir Hard, and first established himself at Faizahad and subsequently at Lakhnau ; he excelled in the yhazal, 9nasnari, and niarsiyah, and is counted the third, with Salida and Nir Taqi, among the most eminent of Urda poets. His fame chiefly rests upon a much admired inasnari entitled the Si1p-u-1- &Tan, or "Magic of Eloquence," a romance relating the loves of Prince Be-nazir and the Princess Badr-i hltsupe ; his moaner/ called the (1 loam (" Rose-garden of Irani," the legendary 'Adite paradise in Southern Arabia), in praise of Faizabad, is likewise highly esteemed. Mir Muliammadi Soz was an elegant poet, remarkable for the success with which he composed in the dialect of the harem called Beati, but somewhat licentious in his verse ; he became a darwesh and renounced the world in his later years. Ju•'at was also a prolific poet, but, like Soz, his glawals and masnavis are licentious and full of double meanings. lie imitated Salida in satire with much success ; he also cultivated Hindi poetry, and composed oiohrcis and Am:bilis. Niskin was another Lakhnau poet of the same period, whose marsiyaks are especially admired ; one of them, that on the death of Muslim and his two sons, is considered a masterpiece of this style of composition. The school of Lakhnau, so founded and maintained during the early years of the century, continued to flourish till the dethronement of the last king, Wajid 'Ali, in 1856. Atash and Nasikh (who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the best among the modern poets of the school in the yhazal ; Mir Anis, a grandson of Mir Hasan, and his contemporary Dabir, the former of whom died in December 1875 and the latter a few months later, excelled in the marsiyah. Rajah All Beg Sufis, who died in 1869, was the author of a much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled the Faseinah-e'Ajgb or "Tale of Mar- vels," besides a dimin. The dethroned prince Wajid 'Ali himself, poetically styled Akhtar, is no mean poet ; he has published three diwcins, among them a quantity of poetry in the rustic dialect of Oudh which is philologically of much interest.

Though Dehli was thus deserted by its brightest lights of literature, it did not altogether cease to cultivate the poetic art. Among the last Muehals several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shah (1761-1806) wrote under the name of Aftab, and was the author of a romance entitled llfanzion-i Agdas, besides a diwein. His son Sulahnan-shikoh, brother of Akbar Shah II., who had at first, like his brother authors, repaired to Lakhnau, returned to Dehli in 1815, and died in 1838 ; he also has left a diwcin. Lastly, his nephew Bahadur Shah II., the last titular emperor of Dehli (died 1862), wrote tinder the name of Zafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrahim Zang, a distinguished writer ; he has left a voluminous divan, which has been printed at Dehli. Masbafi (Ghulam-i Hamdani), who died about 1814, was one of the most distinguished of the revived poetic school of Dehli, and was himself One of its founders. Originally of Lakhnau, he left that city for Heidi in 1777, and held conferences of poets, at which several authors who afterwards acquired repute formed their style ; he lies left five ditixias, a Taz.kircch or biography of Urdu poets, and a Sha1t-ntimah or account of the kings of Dehli down to shah 'Alain. Qaim (Qiyaniuddin 'Ali) was one of his society, and died in 1792 ; he has left several works of merit. Ghahh, otherwise Mirza Asadullah Khan Naushah, laureate of the last Mughal, who died in 1869, is undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Dehli poets. He wrote chiefly in Persian, of which language, especially in the form cultivated by Firdausi, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master ; but his Urdu dizain, though short, is excellent in its way, and his reputation was spread far and wide. To this school, though he lived and died at Agra, may be attached Mir Wall Muhammad Nazir (recently dead in 1832) ; his mascaras entitled Togi-namah, Aituri.-nanzah, Banjare-naniale, and Burhapenantah, as well as his diwan, have been frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less artificial than that of the generality of Urdii poets, and some of his poems have been printed in Nagari, and are as well known and as much esteemed by Hindus as by Nullammadan8.

tion of Urdu prose than had a hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Wall. At the commencement of the present century Dr John Gilchrist was the head of this institution, and his efforts were directed towards getting together a body of literature suitable as text-books for the study of the -Ora language by the European officers of the administration. To his exertions we owe the elaboration of the vernacular as an official speech, and the possibility together at Calcutta the most eminent vernacular scholars of the time, and their works, due to his initiative, are still unsurpassed as specimens of elegant and serviceable prose composition, not only in Urdu, but also in Hindi. The chief authors of this school are Haidari (Sayyid Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh), Husaini (Mir Bahadur 'All), Mir Amman Lutf, Hafizuddin Ahmad, Sher 'All Afsos, Nihal Chand of Lahore, Kazirn 'Ail Jawan, Lallu Lid Ravi, Mazhar 'Ali Win:, and fkrain 'Ali.

Haidari died in 1828. He composed the Totii-Kahani (1801), a prose redaction of the Tag-neimall, which has been already mentioned ; a romance named Araish-i Makfil (" Ornament of the Assembly "), detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Tai ; the Gul-i Maghfirat or Dale Majlis, an account of the holy persons of the Muhammadan faith ; the Gulzar-i Danish, a translation of the Bahar-i Danish, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the craft and faithlessness of women ; and the Tarikh-i Areldiri, a translation of a Persian history of Nadir Shah. Husaini is the author of an imitation in prose of Mir Hasan's Sihra-l-bayan, under the name of Tasr-i Bena:ir (" the Incomparable Prose," or "the ]'rose of Benazir," the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work named Alehlag-i _Hindi, or "Indian Morals," both composed in 1802. The Akhlaq-1 Hindi is an adaptation of a Persian work called the Mularrilm-l-qulub ("the Delighter of Hearts"), itself a version of the Hitopadeia. Mir Amman was a native of Dehli, which he left in the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to Calcutta. To him we owe the Bagh o Balla'. (1801-2), an adaptation of Amir Khusran's famous Persian romance entitled the Chaluir Dai-wesh, or "Story of the Four Dervishes." Amman's work is not itself directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost contemporary rendering by Tahsin of Eta‘r a, called the Nan-tarz-i Marassd. The style of this composition is much admired by natives of India, and editions of it are very numerous. Amman also composed an imitation of Husain WiTiz Kashifi's originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in Persian as the Fables of Bidpai, or Kalilah and Damnah. Afsos was one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school ; originally of Dehli, he left that city at the age of eleven, and entered the service of Qasha 'Ali Khan, Nawab of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to Haidarabad in the Dakhhan, and thence to Lakhnau, where he was the pupil of Mir Hamm Mir Soz, and Mir Haider 'Ali Hairan. He joined the Fort William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much esteemed diwein ; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works of great excellence, the iiraish-i Makfil (1805), an account of India adapted from the introduction of the Persian Khulasalu-t-tawarikh of Sujan Rae, and the Bagh-i Urclii (1808), a translation of Sa'di's Gulistan. Nihai Chand translated into Urdu a masnavi, entitled the Gul-i Bakciwali, under the name of .Mazhab-i'Ishq (" Religion of Love ") ; this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in 1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawan, like most of his collaborators, was originally of Dail and afterwards of Lakhnau ; lie joined the College in 1800. He is the author of a version in Until of the well-known story of Sakuntala, under the name of Sakuntala the Urdu was rendered from a previous Braj-bliaklia version by Nawaz Kabishwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also composed a Barah-masci, or poetical description of the twelve months (a very popular and often-handled form of composition), with accounts of the various Hindu and Muhammadan festivals, entitled, the Dastier-i Hind ("Usages of India"), printed in 1812. lkram 'Ali translated, under the name of the Jklewanu-,gsafa, or " Brothers of Purity" (1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on science and philosophy entitled Rasailn Ikhwani-Hofa, and composed in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers who dwelt at Basrah, has recently been made known to European readers by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858-1879) ; the chapter selected by Ikram 'All is the third, which records an allegorical strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of the Jinn. The translation is written in excellent Urdu, and is one of the best of the Fort William productions.

Sri Latin Lai was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarat, had long been settled in Northern India. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdu prose was done by LallE Lai almost alone for Hindi. His I'rem Sagar and Bajniti, the former a version in pure Hindi of the 10th chapter of the Bhagattala Puralja, detailing the history of Krishna, and founded on a previous Braj-bhakha version by Chaturbhuj Misr, a-nd the latter an adaptation in Braj-bliakha prose of the lfitopctde§a and part of the Pancha-lantra, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindi prose. The Hemp Sagar was begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys immense popularity in Northern India, has been frequently reproduced in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. The Bajniti was composed in 1809 ; it is much admired for its sententious brevity and the parity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallii Lid was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindi and Urdii entitled Lataif-ti Hindi, an anthology of Hindi verse called the Sabha-bilas, a Sat-sai in the style of Billari-Lal called Sapta-Scrtika, and several other works. lie and Jawan worked together at the Singhasan Ilattisi (1801), a redaction in mixed Urdfi and Hindi (Devanagari character) of a famous collection of legends relating the prowess of King Yikramaditya ; and he also aided the latter author in the produetion of the Salcuntala Natak. Mazhar 'Ali Will was his collaborator in the Baital Pachisi, a collection of stories similar in many respects to the Singhasan Battisi, and also in mixed UnIU-Ilindi ; and he aided Wila in the preparation in Urdu of the Stomp of Marlanal, romance originally composed in Braj-bliaklia by Moti Ram.

The works of these authors, though compiled and published under the superintendence of Dr Gilchrist, Captain Abraham Lockett, Professor J. W. Taylor, Dr W. Hunter, and other European officers of the College, are essentially Indian in taste and style, and owe to this character a popularity and wide reputation which have been gained by no other work (and there have been many) undertaken under British initiative. If not absolutely the first works in Urdu and Hindi prose, they were at any rate the first literary standards in those lang,uages ; and almost the whole of recent prose authorship is due either to their influence or to one of two other impulses, the first of which was almost synchronous with the Fort William productions, and the other not many years posterior to them. These were the reform in ]slam led by Sayyid Ahmad, and the introduction of lithography and a newspaper press.

Sayyid Ahmad was born in 1782, and reeeived his early education at Heidi ; his instructors were two learned Muslims, shah .Abdu-1:Aziz, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur'an (the Tafsir-i Aziziyyali), and his brother, 'Abdu-l-Qatlir, the writer of the first and best translation of the Holy Volume into Urdii. Under their guidance Sayyid Ahmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhahis, a sect whose preaching appears at this time to have first reached India. He gathered round him a large number of fervent disciples, among others Ilaji nephew of 'Abdu-1:Aziz and XT_ - TO" Abdu-l-Qadir, the chief author of the sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Dehli, Sayyid Ahmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents. Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to Constanti- nople and was there received with distinction and gained many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and Arabia, and then returned to Dehli. The religions degradation and coldness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him after his sojourn in lands where the life of Islam is stronger, and ho and his disciples established a propaganda throughout Northern India, reprobating the superstitions which bad crept into the faith from contact with Hindus, and preaching a jihad or holy war against the Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshawar, attended by, it is said, upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers, Haji Ismail and 'Abdu-I-Hayy. He was furnished with means by a general subscription in Northern India, and by several Muhammadan princes who had embraced his doctrines. At the beginning of 1829 he declared war against the Sikhs, and in the course of time made himself master of Peshawar. The Afghans, however, with whom he had allied himself in the contest, were soon disgusted by the rigour of his creed, and deserted him and his cause. He fled across the Indus and took refuge in the mountains of Pakhli and Dhamtor, where in 1831 he encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Sher Singh, and in the combat he and Haji Ismail. were slain. His sect is, however, by no means extinct; the Wahhabi doctrines have continued to gain ground in India, and to give rise to much controversial writing, down to our own day.

The translation of the Qur'an by Abdu-l-Qadir was finished in 1803, and first published by Sayyid Abdullah, a fervent disciple of Sayyid Ahmad, at Hiighli in 1829. The Tambihu-l-ghdfilin, or "Awakener of the Heedless," a work in Persian by Sayyid Ahmad, was rendered into Urdu by 'Abdullah, and published at the same press in 1830. Haji Ismail was the author of a treatise in trda entitled Tagwiyatu-l-Lndn (" Confirmation of the Faith "), which had great vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples of the Tariqah-e liluhammadigyah (as the new preaching was called) are the Targhib-i Jihad ("Incitation to Holy War"), Hiciciyatu-l-ilitiminin ("Guide of the Believers"), Mfizihul-Kabitir wa-l-Bid'ah ("Exposition of Mortal Sins and Heresy "), Nasthatu-l-Muslimin (" Admonition to Muslims"), and the All'at Masud, or "Hundred Questions."

Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at Fort William, and all the compositions prepared for Dr Gilchrist and his successors which have been already mentioned were thus made public ; but the expense of this method of reproduction long precluded its extensive use in India, and the ungraceful characters used as types were not appreciated by the natives. In 1837 the first lithographic press was set up at Dehli, and from that date onwards the publications, original or editions of older works, issued in this shape annually may be counted by hundreds. The newspaper press soon followed the introduction of lithography, and there are atpresent about two hundred journals in Urdu and Hindi printed in India, the majority in the North-Western Provinces, the Panjab, and Oudh, but a few at Madras, Haidarabad, Bangalore, Bombay, and Calcutta. The extension taken by vernacular litera- ture during the last thirty years is enormous, and to describe it adequately would require a volume. The reader is referred for the best account of it to M. Garcia de Tassy's Annual Summaries from 1850 to 1877, where he will also find much interesting information regarding the nature and value of the newspapers now so numerous. Here a few names only can be mentioned which seem the most prominent among the crowd of writers who daily, by the cheap and simple agency of a lithographic stone and bazar paper, make their ideas public in Northern India.

Sayyid Ahmad Khan Baliadur, C.S.I. (not to be confounded with the Wahhabi reformer), is perhaps the most eminent and eloquent among contemporary writers of Urdu. He is the author of numerous works, among others of the Asdru-s-Sauaclid ("Vestiges of Princes"), an excellent account of Dehli and its monuments, which has passed through three editions (1847, 1854, 1876). His fame, however, chiefly rests upon his persevering efforts to raise the standard of civilization and culture among his co-religionists, for which purpose he has since 1870 issued a most valuable journal entitled the Tahzible-l-Alchldq, or " Muhammadan Social Reformer' (which, unlike almost all its competitors, is printed with movable types). The articles in this publication, chiefly of a religious or educational character, are of a high order of excellence, and display most effectively the resources of the Urdii language as a means of expressing modern ideas. Maulavi Nazir Ahmad of Dehli is the author of two excellent stories named .ifir-citu-l-'arus ("the Bride's Mirror ") and Taubatu-n-Nasth (" the Repentance of Nasth "); and Pandit Kashinath of Agra lias written a good treatise on ethics, founded on Persian compilations on the subject, called Akhlaq-i Kdsla. These three works have received rewards from the Government of the North-Western Provinces, and enjoy much popularity. The officers of the educational department have been prolific in schoolbooks of various degrees of excellence. Mr H. S. Reid and his assistants, Qamaruddin Gulab Khan, Cliiranji Lal, Pandit Bansidhar, Sri Lai, and Mohan Lal, were at work from 1851 to 1860 in this direction, and several good translations and compilations are due to them. In the Panjab Zukaull5h Khan of Dehli, and Karimuddin and Pandit Ajodhya Parshad of Lahore, have been no less active ; and Northern India is now well supplied with the means of elementary education in the vernacular in literature, history, geography, and mathematics. Science, owing to the difficulties of technical nomenclature, is less efficiently represented, and the controversy regarding the best method of clothing its vocabulary in a vernacular dress is hardly yet solved. Owing to the fortunate circumstance that Urdu is able to draw for its vocabulary upon Persian and Arabic as well as upon its native Indian resources, the attempts which have been made in Egypt, Turkey, and other countries where these languages are in use to provide vernacular equivalents for scientific terminology will, it may be hoped, work not only for the benefit of those countries, but also for that of India, and thus in time provide a satisfactory means of raising vernacular education in science to the level of other branches of culture.

In IIindi also there is much activity, though not so much as in Urdu. The pure or " High " Hindi, which rejects all foreign words, and supplies its vocabulary exclusively from Sanskrit, is a recent creation, and cannot even yet be said to represent the language of any large class of the population. A good specimen of this dialect is Nilkanth Slrastri Gores SW-Bars/Ian harpan, or " Mirror of the Six (orthodox) Schools (of Hindu philosophy)," a controversial work by a converted Brahman. The genuine Hindi of the old literature, used now exclusively for poetry, is represented by an excellent publication issued weekly at Benares by Babii HarishChandra, entitled Kabi-lachau-Stallai, or "Ambrosia of the Words of Poets." In this will be found much good original work, and vast quantity of old Hindi poetry now for the first time published. The translations of the .31aluibharata and Hariraww, made by Pandit Goknlnath of Benares, and printed at Calcutta in 1829, deserve mention ; and one of the most important collections of Hindi poetry, the Ildg-Kalpadrum of Krishnanand Vyasadev RagSagar, was printed at the same place in 1842-45 in an immense volume of 1800 pages.

English education has naturally had a vast influence on modern vernacular literature, though not wholly a beneficial one. More than a half of the new works issued within the last thirty years are translations or adaptations from English ; the journals, the great popularizers of new ideas, take their matter chiefly from English newspapers ; the courts, where Urdu has since 1832 become the official language, contribute to the spread of the stiff and difficult phraseology of the Acts of the legislature, as different from the natural idiom of the people as can well be imagined. Literature in India has always owed much to the fostering influence of Government. It has been seen how the schools of Dehli and Lakhnau rose and declined with the fortunes of the Mughal empire and the kingdom of Oudh, and how that of Calcutta similarly owed its existence to British initiative. At the present day the patronage of the rulers of India is no less influential in determining the course of literary activity. Poetical composition is little practised, both because of the exhaustion of its themes and the little appreciation which it meets with from Europeans. More solid studies, politics, science, philosophy, morals, history, and especially controversial theology, are the topics now in favour ; and, though much that is published is of the slightest possible intrinsic value, the resources of the language are being gradually cultivated and enlarged to meet the needs of the day. There is thus no reason to doubt that Hindostan will in time possess a body of literature worthy of the flexible and expressive speech of its people, and reflecting faithfully the standard of culture which it owes to its Western rulers. (c. a. L.)