Authorities.—No work has yet been published dealing with Indo-Aryan subjects as a whole, although several have been written which treat of one or more stages of their development. For the general question of the Piśāca languages, the reader may consult G. A. Grierson’s The Piśāca Languages of North-Western India (London, 1906). For the different languages of this group, see G. W. Leitner, Dardistan (Lahore, 1877); J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, (Calcutta, 1880); D. J. O’Brien, Grammar and Vocabulary of the Khowār Dialect (Lahore, 1895); J. Davidson, Notes on the Bashgali (Kāfir) Language (Calcutta, 1901). For the linguistic conditions of Vedic times, the Introduction to J. Wackernagel’s Altindische Grammatik (Göttingen, 1896) gives much useful information in a convenient form. For the literature concerning Pāli and Prakrit, see under those heads. The following are the principal works dealing with the general question of the Tertiary Prakrits: J. Beames, Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India (1872-1879); A. F. R. Hoernle, A Grammar of the Eastern Hindi compared with the other Gaudian Languages (1880); R. G. Bhandarkar, “The Phonology of the Prakrits of Northern India,” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Bombay Branch), vol. XVII., ii., 99-182 (see also the same author’s series of papers on cognate subjects in vol. XVI. of the same Journal); and G. A. Grierson’s essays “On the Phonology of the Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars” in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vols. xlix., 1. (1895-1896), 393, 1; “On the Radical and Participial Tenses of the Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars” in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. lxiv. (1895), part i., 352; and “On certain Suffixes in the Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars” in the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung (1903), p. 473. The general subject of this article is discussed at greater length in chapter vii. of the Report on the Census of India, 1901 (Calcutta, 1903). The volumes of the Linguistic Survey of India also contain much detailed information, summed up at length in the introductory volume.
(G. A. Gr.)
[1] Attempts have been made to discover dialectic variations in the Veda itself, and, as originally composed in various parts of the Punjab widely distant from each other, the hymns probably did contain many such. But they have been edited by compilers whose home was in the Midland, and now their language is fairly uniform throughout. In the time of Asōka (250 B.C.) there were at least two dialects, an eastern and a western, as well as another in the extreme north-west. The grammarian Patañjali (150 B.C.) mentions the existence of several dialects.
[2] The Nāgarī (see [Sanskrit]) and allied alphabets, when employed for modern Indo-Aryan languages or for Prakrit, are transliterated in this work according to the following system:—
a ā i ī u ū ṛ ṝ e ē ai āī o ō au āū ṁ (anusvāra) ∞ (anunāsika) ḥ (visarga).
k kh g gh rc
c (ts) ch (tsh) j (dz) jh (dzh) ñ
ṭ ṭh ḍ (ṛ) ḍh (ṛh) ḷ ḷh ṇ
t th d dh n
p ph b bh m
y r l v (w)
ś ṣ s h.
Special sounds employed by particular languages are described in the articles in which reference is made to them. Here we may mention å, sounded like the aw in “law,” and ä, ö, ü, pronounced as in German.
[3] The origin of the postpositions is discussed in the article [Hindostani].
[4] See P. W. Schmidt in Mitteilungen der Wiener Anthropologischen Gesellschaft, xxxiii. 381.