Review

Author(s): R. L. Turner
Review by: R. L. Turner
Source: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 3 (Jul.,
1934), pp. 571-573
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25200955
Accessed: 28-06-2016 14:57 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland

This content downloaded from 128.110.184.42 on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:57:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

A DICTIONARY OF THE KASHMIRI LANGUAGE 571

primarily with the text but the last volume of translation
is now published, and Dr. Nicholson has entered on the

task of writing the commentary. That in its scope is

likely to include the whole field of Islamic doctrine and

Sufi legend and will be an end fitted to crown the work.

936. R. Levy.

A Dictionary of the KashmIrI Language. By George A.

Grierson. Bibliotheca Indica, No. 229. 12| x 10,

pp. xxiii + 1252. Calcutta : Asiatic Society of Bengal,
1916-1932. Rs. 120.

Sir George Grierson began his work on this great dictionary

in 1898 ; the first part wTas published in 1916, the fourth and

last in 1932. It covers then almost exactly the period of

that monumental achievement, the Linguistic Survey of
India ; yet the rrdpepyov, as it wrere, of this period would

be the full work and more of any scholar of less stature

than Sir George Grierson.
Kashmiri, the language of a land somewhat withdrawn
from the main stream of Indian life, cannot compare in
importance, from the point of view of either administration,

culture or literature, with several of the other languages of

India, whether Indo-Aryan or Dravidian ; while receiving

much both from the literary Sanskrit (Kashmir was for long

a centre of Sanskrit literary activity) and from the neigh

bouring languages of India it appears to have exercised little
or no influence upon them in return. But for the historian

of the development of the Indo-Aryan languages it is of

great importance. For it forms part of the Dardic group of

dialects, which being on the outskirts of the Indo-Aryan

area and situated for the most part in mountainous and
not easily accessible territory, have remained comparatively
free of the influences of the centre, represented by the greater

languages of administration and literature. Among the Dardic

This content downloaded from 128.110.184.42 on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:57:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

572 REVIEWS OF BOOKS

languages Kashmiri is both culturally and politically by far

the most important; for the linguist it has the further

inestimable advantage, that something of its older form is

known. It will not be surprising to the reader to learn

that this too is due to the inexhaustible energy of Sir George
Grierson, who, partly with the collaboration of Sir Aurcl Stein
and Dr. L. D. Barnett, has been responsible for the publication
of several old Kashmiri texts, which have already been noticed
in this Journal. Its complicated and difficult grammar has
been illuminated and schematized by the same pen in several

treatises and the excellent little manual published by the

Clarendon Press. The completion of the Dictionary crowns
this work. For it can confidently be said that no other modern
Indian language, however great its political or literary prestige,

is provided with a better or even as good a dictionary : but

then no other has been so fortunate as to have Sir George

Grierson as its lexicographer.
In his preface the author gives full due to the part played
by Isvara Kaula, whose uncompleted material for a Kashmiri
Sanskrit Kosa formed, after his death, the basis of Sir George's
collection, and of his assistants Govinda Kaula and Mukunda
Rama Sastri, neither of whom lived to see the completed work.
But the real value of such a work depends not on the collection

of material so much as on its arrangement and interpretation.

These are Sir George's.

The grammatical information, extensive and complete in
the case of those words whose flexional forms do not fall
within the regular paradigms, is lucidly set out; full references

are made to the published texts ; and the meanings and uses

of words and phrases are exhaustively set out. The extent

of this information may be gathered from articles like those
on the verbs gatshun (3 quarto pages), yunn (3-J-), or on the
noun atha with all its compounds (10).
One of the difficulties of Kashmiri are the changes caused

in the vowels of a single paradigm or word-group by the

nature of the final vowel of the word. Sir George's plan
This content downloaded from 128.110.184.42 on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:57:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

A DICTIONARY OF THE KASHMIRI LANGUAGE 573

of using the consonants as his basis of alphabetical order

avoids the disadvantage of separating in space whole groups

of words and forms which are best put together. These

complicated vowel-changes and the fact that Kashmiris
use three different alphabets (Sarada, Nagarl and Persian)
for writing their language have led to a great variety in
spelling. Sir George has chosen Nagari with a roman trans
literation as his main medium and, in order to standardize
spelling, has followed, with a few slight alterations, the system
of Isvara Kaula. Appeal to etymology suggests the possibility
that this system is not altogether consistent and may some

times indicate a single sound by more than one symbol: thus

a Sanskrit u followed by two consonants is represented, without

apparently any difference of condition, in three ways as

6 in motsun < mucydle or hotsun < sucyali, as b in rbtsun

< *rucyati (Pkt. ruccai) or bozun < budhyale or poshun

< pusyali, as u in musun < musyale, kupun < kupyati or
kutun < kultayali. But these may, of course, represent
actual pronunciations due to dialect mixture in the standard

language.
Sir George himself has given no etymological indications.

This is perhaps to be regretted, because, out of his vast

store of knowledge, he could have offered much which others
perhaps even after years of research will not be able to attain.
We may hope that he will still make some of the etymological

information he must have gathered about this perhaps best

loved of his Indian languages available in some other form.

One cannot leave this work without once more paying

homage to the genius, the scholarship, the indomitable
will which brooks no opposition from adverse circumstance,
of the author of Bihar Peasant Life, of the Linguistic Survey
of India, and of the Kashmiri Dictionary.

923. R. L. Turner.

This content downloaded from 128.110.184.42 on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:57:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms