The distinctive feature of the book is the employment of English letters to express Hindústání words, at least, in the grammatical portion of the work. The Oriental characters, those crooked and forbidding forms, which like a thorn fence block the avenues of approach to every Eastern language, deterring nearly all but students upon compulsion from attempting an entrance, do not here obtrude themselves before they are required. Nevertheless, let it not be supposed that, by adopting this method of commending the study of Hindústání to all classes of Englishmen resident or likely to be resident in India, I underrate the importance of acquiring a knowledge of the native alphabets.

My only object has been, so to remove the first difficulties of the subject, that the most unstudious of Englishmen may be allured onwards to the acquirement of a correct knowledge both of the language and the two principal alphabets, such as every gentleman who pretends to superiority over the Hindús ought to possess. "The grand point is," as the father of Hindústání Grammar, Dr. Gilchrist, has observed in the preface to his Philology, "by some scheme or other to render the study of the most necessary Oriental tongues easy at first, that every learner, if possible, may acquire some taste for, and knowledge of their rudiments, to prepare him for proceeding with alacrity in his future career, instead of being harassed and disgusted

at the outset with a strange tongue, and a still stranger character at the same time. Were we to learn French through the medium of a new alphabet, I have little hesitation in saying that for thirty tolerable linguists in this language we should not have ten; and the same effects will be produced by similar causes in the acquisition of any other tongue, more especially in a country like India, where everything conspires to enervate the body and mind of students who have not previously at home acquired a relish for the vernacular speech of the people amongst whom they are destined to sojourn. That the real pronunciation and inflection of words, with the general construction of Hindústání, are most obvious in the Roman character there can be no doubt; nor is there anything to prevent learners from afterwards making themselves masters of whatever character they find most essential."

But although my main design in applying the English alphabet to the explanation of Hindústání grammar has been to make the language of Hindústán more attractive to Englishmen generally, yet other collateral advantages may flow from a plan which falls in with the system now being introduced into India by learned and devoted missionariesI mean that of printing the Hindústání Bible and other books in Roman type. Even Urdú newspapers and magazines (for example the Khair-khwáh i Hind, which has been ably conducted under the auspices of the Rev. R. C. Mather, of

Mirzapore) are now printed on this plan, and are largely read by anglicised natives. If our simple alphabet can be employed to express the spoken dialects of India, and books printed in this type can be circulated throughout the land, the natives may be gradually familiarised to our system, and may adopt it (as many have already done) in preference to their own. No one can estimate the potency of such an engine in promoting intercourse and communion between the European and Asiatic races.

And let me here venture a remark which, however trite, cannot be too often repeated, that if we hope, not merely to retain India, but to avert a similar or perhaps a more general rebellion than that of 1857, we must endeavour gradually to remove the partition-wall between the races. The remembrance of that terrible mutiny is likely for a long period to embitter our intercourse with the natives. Such estrangement as that which has hitherto subsisted between governors and governed, ought not to continue. It is no mere question of holding or abandoning our Eastern Empire. It is a question of life or death to the thousands of our fellow-countrymen resident in India. It is a question of honour or disgrace to every Englishman, whether abroad or at home. If we do not seek to know the people of India better than we have hitherto done; if, instead of respecting them as our fellow-men and fellow-subjects, we persist in despising them

as a servile and inferior race, we cannot blame them if they also shrink from contact with us, or even if at a future day

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they should rise up and say, We will not have these men to reign over us." Our material supremacy, if not founded on mutual sympathy, confidence, and good-will, will be little better than a tower built on sand, which the next storm must sweep away. We may make laws, administer justice, lay down railroads, develope the resources of the country; but unless we seek to know and understand the natives, unless we find in them something to respect, unless in our religious and social character we shew ourselves worthy of imitation, we can never expect any reciprocity of sentiment or esteem on their part.

With regard to the method I have pursued in the compilation of the present Grammar, I should state, that although the detail is entirely original, the synoptical arrangement of the verbs was suggested by the late Captain Gordon's tables of Urdú inflections, printed for the use of Cheltenham College; and the grouping of the tenses under three heads, by the excellent Grammar of Professor Forbes, which everyone must acknowledge to be a work of standard-authority. I must also express my acknowledgments to Captain Henry J. W. Carter, of Cheltenham College, who has furnished me with some valuable hints. In the composition of the Syntax I have been guided by my own Sanskrit Grammar, published by the University of

Oxford; but the detail is founded on a minute analysis of the Bág o Bahár.

The Selections, Vocabulary, and Dialogues appended to the volume, are the work of Professor Cotton Mather, formerly of Addiscombe College, and now of Woolwich; and both he and Major Robertson have kindly assisted me in revising the proof-sheets of the Grammar, and aided me by many useful suggestions.

MONIER WILLIAMS.