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APPENDIX.
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own language, the record of their religion, traditions, and laws, but it required no slight modification before it could become the vernacular tongue of men whose organs of speech were utterly incapable of enunciating several of its elements, and most of its combined consonants. The old Sanskrit of the Veda, which we may suppose to have been the language of the followers of Bharat, is a harsh language compared with the musical Támil, dialects allied to which we must suppose the languages of the Indian aborigines to have been. Indeed it is admitted that the Telinga, Canarese, and other languages of the Peninsula, are closely allied to that tongue; but this is far from the whole truth; for though the languages of northern and central India borrow most of their vocables from the Brahmanical Sanskrit, yet in their grammatical construction, and the pronunciation of the letters, they more nearly resemble the Tamil. Thus, for example, the letters
(ri) and (sh) along with the Visarga, are unpronounceable by the great body of the population in every part of India. And as to the combinations – (ksh)
(sht') † (kt) and a host of others, no Indian but a Brahman ever attempts to enunciate them. In regard to the inflexions of nouns in the vernacular Indian tongues, we have first the letter 9 (n) a very common characteristic mark of the genitive, appearing in the Támil 57 (ina) the far (ni) of the first declension in Telinga, the 999 (ana) and gat (iná) of the first and fourth declensions in Canarese, the al (ná) fa (ni)
