HINDI AND BRAJ BHÂKHÂ

GRAMMAR.

PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE ALPHABET.

1. THE Nagari alphabet, in which the Hindi language is generally written, consists of forty-nine letters. It is read, like English, from left to right, and is as follows:

Vowels.

Tɑ, W â, T i, t í, 3 u, ♬ ú, ≈ ri, (Ħ rî), (♬ li), (lí), e, ai, o,

au, with ǹ, : ḥ (not initial).

The letters enclosed in brackets will seldom or never be met with in Hindî. The lingual letters are pronounced by turning and applying the tip of the tongue far back against the palate. The sounds to which the English letters in the preceding scheme are restricted have been explained in my Introduction. The lingual letters da and dha, when medial or final, are commonly pronounced ra and rha. A point may be placed under the character, to indicate that this pronunciation is intended. The sound of the letter sa is, generally, corrupted into sha; and that of sha,

into kha.

2. We have given the vowel-forms used only at the beginning of a syllable. The vowel a is inherent in every consonant, and is sounded after every one1 which has not the subscript mark of suppression (viz., 、) understood after it, or another vowel attached to it. These other vowels, when not at the beginning of a syllable, assume the following contracted shapes.

Medial and Final forms of the Vowels.

1 Except the last in a word; and even there a conjunct consonant, in some cases, necessitates its utterance.

2 For the mark of suppression is very rarely supplied either in manuscripts or in printed books. But for this, no room is left for doubt respecting the pronunciation of a word.

3 These vowels are added to the letterthus:ru, ☎rú.

Example of the Vowels following the letter ka. ☎ ka, a ká, fa̸ ki, a kí, ☎ ku, a kú, a kri, ☎ ke, akai, at ko, akau, kan, kaḥ.

It will be observed that the third of the vowels, viz., i, is written before the consonant which it follows in pronunciation.

The mark (), termed anusvára, has, generally, in Hindi, the sound of the n' in the French ton. The vowel aspirate (:) is termed visarga.

3. When two or more consonants meet, without the intervention of a vowel, they coalesce and become one compound character. These compounds are formed by writing the subsequent consonant under the first, or by blending them in a particular way, or by writing them in their usual order, omitting the perpendicular stroke of each letter except the last. The letterra, when it immediately precedes a consonant, is written above it, in the form of a crescent; thus, rga: when it immediately follows one, it is written beneath it; thus, kra, u gra.

The marks and serve to divide hemistichs and distichs, and, occasionally, to indicate other pauses in the composition.

1 It assumes the pronunciation of the nasal of the class of the consonant which it precedes; taking, for example, the sound of m before a labial, as in champak, a tree so called.

The following are among the most useful of the

Compound Letters.

14

gna,

kka, kta, kma, kya, ksha, gwa,chcha,chchha,jna1 (compounded of ja and ǹa), ■ nna, ♬ tta, ☎ tma, ☎ tya, ◄ tra, dda, ddha,dma, dya, dra, a dwa, ¥ dhna, nta, nma, ♬ bra, mpa, lla, vva, ☎ ṣra (compounded of sa andra), e shṭa, u shna, स्र sra, स्त्र stra, हृ hri, ह्न hma, ह्य hya.

The student will meet with few compound characters which the foregoing instructions do not furnish him with the means of readily analysing. Some peculiar forms, however, chiefly occurring in books early printed in India, we do not possess types to represent. Most of these forms belong to the modification of the Nagari alphabet known as the Kayathi Nágarí2

4 The following extract from a Hindî work may

serve as an

Exercise in reading the Nagari Character. इतनी कथा कह शुकदेव मुनि ने राजा परीक्षित से Itni katha kah Şukdev muni ne rájá Parikshit se

1 In common pronunciation, gya.

In words borrowed from the Arabic and Persian, letters occur which have none exactly corresponding to them in the Nagari alphabet. To represent these, the characters which approach nearest in pronunciation are employed; and points may be subscribed, to indicate the extraordinary use made of them.