The Ādi Granth, or the Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs (1877) · 41

ON THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES USED IN THE GRANTH. cxxv

(1). One day excessive joy has sprung up (in my) mind.

Having rubbed very fragrant sandal-perfume ' (on my body).

That Brahm was shown (to me) by the Guru (as being) in (my) very miud.

(2). Where one goes,* there (in) water (and) stone

Thou art remaining brimful, being contained in all.

All the Vedas (and) Purunas I have searched through.*

One should go there, if he is not here, (they say).

By whom all my restless * errors were cut off.

The Lord of Eamanand, Brahm, is sporting (in all).

The word of the Guru cuts off crores of works.

The idiom of Eamanand is already that of the old Hindul and in no particular differing from the style of Kablr and his co-disciples, who in their numerous writings have delivered to us the language spoken in those days in the valley of the Ganges.

Ifanak and his successors in the Guruship were all Panjabis, but it is remarkable, that their idiom does not differ so much from the Hindu! of those days in a grammatical point of view, as the modern Panjabi does from the Hindi.' But we must not rashly conclude from this fact, that the PanjabI of those days was essentially the same as the Hindu!, and tliat the peculiar grammatical forms of the Panjabi were developed in a later period, for such an assumption is disproved by the old Janam-Sakh! of Buba KTinak, which is written in the regular PanjabI, a dialect which differs considerably from the Hindul, as it uses pronominal sufSxes and other grammatical forms, which are quite unknown in Hindul and only to be found in the cognate Sindhi, to which it approaches far more than to the Hindul. It is therefore almost certain, that Nanak and his successors employed in their writings purposely the Hindul idiom, following the example of Kablr and the other Bhagats, who had raised the Hindul to a kind of standard for religious compositions, and by employing which they could make themselves understood to nearly all the devotees of India, whereas the proper

' ^JlfT (or \J^l)t a perfume, made of sandal-wood, therefore generally: y<,<s ^*WT-

" r)IWl"> fii"st person of the present tense: I go or use to go; the older form of the verb is rjiwcM. later

^ \nT^ "^vTH '3Tf2- ilPy is an old Hindu! Dative-postf].v (shortened from '^nf'l)" identical with the niodeni ^^ or r^T^.

' "Hiyt'^. the old Prakrit passive, wliich is still in frequent use in the old Hindu!.

° nfy, participle past conjunctive of rirycM (Hindi Wt^lT); to look out for.

' ftTTW, Sausk. fg^^; in Hindu! fTR75 has the sense of "uneasy, restless " (not of "imperfect, deficient," as in Sanskrit).

' In order to prevent any mistake as to the nomenclature, we add here, that we understand by tlie old Hindu! the idiom of the old Bhagats, such as Kabir and his contemporaries; by Hindul the later Hindu! of the times of Govind Singh and thereabout, as this idiom differs already in many essential points from the old Hindu!. By Hindi we mean tlie modern idiom since the I)eginning of our century and as spoken at present. There is of course no essential difference hetween Hindul and Hindi as regards the signification of the two adjectives, "/«7irf!(7" being derived from " /((nrf»," a Hindu, and "/lindl" from the Arabic noun"/(/nrf," India, but the two adjectives are very convenient to designate different periods of the develo|)ment of the language of the Hindus in Hindustan proper. Where we do not find it necessary to distingiiisli lielween the older and later Hindu!, we comprehend the language of both periods under the general term Hindul, in con- tradistiucti(ui to the modern Hind).

cxxvi ON THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES USED IN THE GRANTH.

Panjabi was only intelligible to the people of the Panjab. The idiom of the Sikh Gurus however is not the pure Hindu!, but a sort of mixture of both dialects, as they frequently introduce pro- vincialisms, which give a peculiar colouring to their diction, but at the same time bring it nearer home to the understanding of their countrymen. The Granth of Govind Singh is composed in pure Hindu!, as he received his early education in Hindustan, but it has thereby become nearly unintelligible to the Sikhs of the Panjab, to whom it must be translated, if anything is to be explained to them from it.

It would exceed the limits of these remarks, were we to enter more fully into the peculiarities of the idiom of the Granth, which can only be treated in a grammatical analysis of the same. A few hints, which in a great measure also refer to the old Hindul, may suffice here. The general impression, which we receive from the study of the Granth, is, that the grammatical forms of the language are not yet firmly fixed, but are rather in a state of transition, the genius of the language apparently endeavour- ing to build up a new structure out of the ruins of the Prakrit, which had gone to pieces. "We find therefore a number of forms promiscuously employed, as usage had not yet decided for a few select ones. This is manifest not only in the inflexion of the nouns, for which a new way had to be found out, the old Prakrit terminations having almost totally been lost in the progress of time, but also in that of the verbs.

As regards the declensional process of the nouns, most of them have still a vocalic termination {u, 6, i), which is very closely to be attended to, as the right understanding of a sentence frequently depends on the vocalic termination of the noun or nouns. In later MSS. the final vowels are frequently dropped, as the copyists had no longer a right understanding of their grammatical relation, or carelessly exchanged, so that a sentence becomes easily confused thereby. This is especially the case with the Locative singular, which ends in i (if the noun in the Nominative terminate in u), and the Ablative singular, which may likewise end in z (in the modern Panjabi in i), where the final vowel in inferior copies is not seldom either dropped altogether or confounded with " ti," which represents the Nominative. The Nominative plural is variously formed and in like manner the Formative singular and plural, the details of which we must forego here.

The case-affixes and postpositions ^ are manifold, as may be expected at the time of the recon- struction of a shattered language. In the Genitive we find the affixes ftl hi and Jlrf'T asi, which are peculiar to the old Hindu!, and the inflected affixes 57 ^""i 73T kerd, xST cd, tTTJ"; "SX rd (also ■gr.'■«), the Panjabi ^ dd, and even the SindhT ^.^l sandd. In the Dative the postpositions 5^ hau, of J;d, 5 ka (ka), ^TJ kahu, eTvT kah, § kai,- ^ kite (as in Sindhi), 3Tfff (f'di, tufW tliu/ti, ^ tlwi; special Panjab! forms are T^ time, 3? nu {n?t), 35 no; the Genitive case-affix fu hi is, as in Prakrit, also used for the Dative, and peculiar to the old Hindu!. The Accusative is either identical with the Nominative or expressed by the Dative case-signs. In the Ablative we find the affixes ■fir /;;', XJ hit, vT hit, "& o, jjj" au, fg i, 'g^ i, and the postpositions ■fi^TKU' kiahu, ^ dii, m<so thdvahu, Vi tho {=tho), % tai, m so ( = iS), etc. In the Locative singular we meet with the affix «, in the

' Case-affixes we call those remnants of the old Piakrit case-terminations, which are still usually con- nected with the noun itself; postpositions we call those adverbial nouns, which are now employed to make up for the cases and wliiih arc still written separately. To the affixes we must also add 57 kd and its deriva- tives, though they are now always written as separate words, as they are originally an affix (Sansk. ^) and inflected (for tliey turn the noun, wliich they follow, properly into an adjective). Under " case-signs" we com- prehend both affixes and postpositions.

^ That the Hindi and Hindustrmi A-? (^ ^J') is really a Dative-postposition, is sufficiently borne out by the Hindul; some disputed points in Hiiidusfani grammar arc to be settled accordingly, irrespectively of the decisions of tlie fllaulavis, who liave no idea of the old Hindul.

ox THE LAXGUAGE AXD THE METRES USED IX THE GEAXTH. cssvii

Locative plural with the affix l (now pronounced!), or the Locative is expressed by means of postpositions, as: '^ mat, ^rrfvT mahi, TriV'6 vici, etc. The Instrumental is generally expressed by the Formative (without a case-sign) or by the aifix "/," which outwardly coincides with the Ablative. But the postpositions and the case-signs generally are as yet very sparingly used, the noun is usually put in the Formative, and the reader has to find out for himself its grammatical connexion; in many sentences not a single case-sign is to be met with, so that the translation can only be made according to conjecture. This unsettled state of the language often occasions very great perplexities.

The verb is as yet very little developed. Generally three ten.ses only are in use: the Present (in the later Hindu! the Present indefinite and in Hindi the Subjunctive),' the Preterite, and the Future. Of the Imperfect I have found only a few curious forms; the Perfect and Pluperfect, which very seldom occur, are compound tenses.