INTRODUCTION.

THIS little treatise is intended to facilitate the study of a language hitherto hardly sufficiently valued,—the vernacular tongue of the great majority of the inhabitants of the Panjab. Although long groaning under the rule of Muḥammadan conquerors, the people of the Panjab even then clung to their own language in preference to adopting the Urdu of their masters: and at the present time Urdū, although studied and taught in nearly every school to the almost utter neglect of the Panjabi, is nevertheless regarded by the mass of the people as being quite as much a foreign tongue as Norman-French was in England in days gone by. While Urdu is generally spoken in public by the educated classes, yet in their own homes all-Muḥammadans, Sikhs and Hindūs alike (though with considerable difference of vocabulary)-speak Panjābī and Panjabi only. Any one who wishes to gain the confidence and win the affections of the villagers especially-and the Panjab is a country of villages-must be able to address them in their dear mother-tongue. If we except the Granth,-written in poetry, and in a dialect more nearly resembling Braj Bhasha than modern Panjabi,—and the various Janam Sakhīs or mythical Lives of Gurū Nanak, the language has produced few books of any great literary value. This to a great extent accounts for the light esteem in which it has generally been held by Europeans. Still, as we have tried to show, it is of no little importance, and it has by no means been utterly neglected by those engaged in the great work of extending the kingdom of Christ in the Panjab. The members

of the American Mission in Lūdiāna and Lahore have especially interested themselves in the language, and it is to them that we owe the only really useful' grammar (that of Dr. Carey was a merely tentative effort) and the only dictionary of the language which have yet appeared. To these-the "Panjābī Grammar " of that venerable Missionary, the Rev. John Newton of Lahore, and the "Panjābī Dictionary" edited by the Rev. L. Janvier of the same Society, I am very deeply indebted. Both these valuable works, however, are perhaps utterly unknown in England, and they are almost out of print in the Panjab itself. It seemed to me therefore that it would be by no means a work of supererogation to endeavour in a humble way to aid students in attaining a knowledge of Panjābī by compiling a Simplified Grammar and Reading Book, which might serve to remove some of the difficulties and supply the student with a stock of useful words.

Besides the books above mentioned and the always useful Hindustani Dictionary of Platts, I had when in the Panjab the advantage of residing for more than a year in Amritsar itself,—the sacred city of the Sikhs-and of reading the language under the instruction of one of the Granthīs of the Golden Temple. This has enabled me to explain a few points of Grammar which have not, I believe, been previously treated of, and also to give the meanings of certain words not found in the Panjābī Dictionary above referred to. Otherwise I lay no claim to originality, which would be out of place in a work like the present.

In the Grammar use has been made of Roman letters for the purpose of simplification, but at the same time an exact system of transliteration has been adopted, so that there is no loss in accuracy to counterbalance the gain in time which results from dividing the difficulties of our task in order the better to overcome them in succession. A few useful hints have been borrowed from

1 These works were published, the Grammar at Lūdiāna in 1851, and the Dictionary at the same place in 1854.

the system of generalization employed by the late Professor Palmer in his "Simplified Grammar of the Hindustanī Language."

The Reading Extracts-the first and the last excepted-are taken from the "Sikhkhã de Rāj di Withiā," the book appointed for Government Examinations in Panjābī. It will be found that they gradually increase in difficulty, the second story from the Janam-sākhī being in a much more colloquial style and in a different dialect from most of the others. The advantage of a carefully varied selection of this kind is at once apparent.

It is unnecessary to say much about the pronunciation of the language, but it may be noticed that (1) h is very lightly sounded and is often entirely inaudible (e.g. he, kiha, riha, are pronounced e, kiā, riā). At other times it serves to lengthen the sound of the preceding vowel (e.g. bihla or wihla, pronounced belā or velā). So also in verbs, especially when the present tense of hona, 'to be,' is used as an auxiliary (e.g. while akhde han is so written and read, in speaking the two words are amalgamated and become ākhdin). (2) B and W very often interchange both in speaking and writing; and the, though here transliterated W in accordance with almost universal custom (in Urdu and Hindi at least), is in reality much more nearly V.

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In words of Sanskrit origin the following are some of the more important changes that occur in their introduction into Panjābī. W is often changed to B, and vice versa: ri becomes ir (kripā = P. kirpā): sh and s alike become s (deśa P. des): ksh becomes kh (kshatriya P. khattrī): r and y united to another consonant become assimilated with it (e.g. S. punya P. punn: S. dhanya = P. dhann: S. satya Old P. sati, Mod. P. satt: S. karǹa=P. kann and H. U. kān: S. karma P. karm, kamm and H. U. kām). Words which in Urdu and Hindi have r, in P. generally take d instead (e.g. barā P. waḍā: U. H. chhoṛna P. chhaḍnā), though rh generally remains unaltered. Those words which have long vowels in H. and U. and are of Sanskrit stock have short ones in

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P., and generally double the consonant following (but this is frequently explained as in the case of kām and kān above). The ≈ sounds of Urdu (Persian and Arabic) words becomes j (eg. bāzār = P. bajār: Wazīr=P. Wajir)—this applies to;b: the 8 sounds and sh (~,,,) become 8: ƒ becomes ph: ¿ becomes g: ¿ becomes kh: becomes k: final -ah (-) becomes

-ā:

ق

ض
ظ

て becomes his omitted. Besides this, the Panjābī is dis

tinguished for its preference for

in many cases when H. has n. detailed notice.

the letter ǹ, which is used in it

Other peculiarities are less worth

I have spared no pains to include in the Vocabulary every word used in the Reading Lessons, and hope I have omitted none. If, however, any have through oversight been left out, they will probably be found to be very common U. and H. terms, the meaning of which is generally known to all who are likely to use this little book.

Should this work assist any one in acquiring such a knowledge of Panjabi as will enable him to preach the Gospel to the people of that country, the compiler's chief object in preparing it will have been attained.

BOMBAY,

October, 1887.

W. ST. C. T.

THE ELEMENTS OF PANJĀBĪ GRAMMAR.

The Panjabi Language, like the Hindi with which it is closely allied, is derived from the Prakrit, once the vernacular of the Panjab and of a large part of Hindūstān proper. As the Prākrit itself was only a popularised corruption or simplification of the Sanskrit, nearly every genuine Panjabi word of the present day can be traced without much difficulty to that venerable tongue, which contains many of the oldest forms of that Āryan speech which is common to most of the inhabitants of Europe, Persia, and India. Although but little cultivated, owing to the presence of Muḥammadan conquerors who used in preference the Persian, and more recently the Urdu, language for literary purposes, the Panjābī tongue is well worthy of attention, even from a philological or literary point of view. Moreover, in the central Panjab at least, it is the mother-tongue of the people, and the only language thoroughly understood by the great majority of them.

As those who study this tongue have generally gained a fair knowledge of Urdu first, it will not be necessary to do more than show in what the Panjābī differs from that dialect, as far as its grammatical relations are concerned. We shall therefore frequently avail ourselves of the Urdu language in order as far as possible to render the comparatively easy task of mastering the grammar of the Panjabi tongue still more easy by showing the close relationship and similarity which exists between them, owing to the fact