The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-10 00:00:00

THE NATIVE LANGUAGE IN INDIA.

One of the greater difficulties with which we have
to contend in the government of India arises out of
the fact that there we arc, in a peculiar sense, aliens
in language. After a full century of possession the
complaint has been heard that the representatives
who hold this empire for us nowadays know less of
the native dialects than:those who built it up in the
bygone time. The traditionary nabob who has
supposed to have with all his wealth a miserable
conscience and a diseased liver, and tne more recent
"old Indian" who came home, generally a bachelor,
to end his days among expectant relatives, could
speak with the natives, and, therefore, sympathised
with them more than the cadet who in these days
of the overland route goes to India scarcely feeling
that he has left England, and who counts the weeks
till he shall obtain furlough or leave the country
for ever. It is surely a curious result of bringing
England nearer to India that it should be the
means of severing the Englishman from the native
—of widening the vast gulf that separates the Eu-
ropean from the Indian. Yet such is the fact, and
it is to our ignorance of the native dialects—it is
the want of intercourse which that ignorance in-
volves, that we must in great measure attribute the
tremendous surprise with which we bad to face the
mutiny of last year. Now, if we were to ask,
where is the great difficulty of learning a native
language during a residence of some 20 years—of
learning, say, Hindustani, which is throughout In-
dia what French is throughout Europe, we should
be told that the difficulty lies at the very threshold
of the study ; it is in the alphabet. So great is
this difficulty, and so urgent is the necessity of sur-
mounting it, that—as we had some time ago occa-
sion to point out--it has been proposed, and we think
wisely, to substitute for the complicated Oriental
alphabets the Roman letters which are in use
throughout Europe. Nor is this a measure of utility
proposed merely for ourselves. It is of still greater
importance to the natives, as without it they can
have but little education, and no literature. And
when it is understood that the alphabet it is proposed
to adapt to the Oriental languages as the standard of
pronunciation is not the English alphabet, which
especially in its vowel sounds is exceedingly ano-
malous, but the Italian or Roman—the same which
the American missionaries have employed with
most perfect success in reducing the languages of
the South Sea Islands to writing, and which the
Dutch have in like manner introduced into Java and
Amboyna, it will be evident that the suggested im-
provement is to be regarded not as the yoke im-
posed by victors upon a conquered race, but as a
necessity of civilisation, and as the homage which
the most useful alphabet in existence demands from
others that are deficient and impracticable. As
from India we obtained through the Arabs those
numerals which are now in use throughout almost
the entire globe, so it is proposed to give India in
return the benefit of those letters which we our-
selves obtained from our Roman conquerors.
The various languages of India are so nearly
allied that, properly speaking, they are but dif-
ferent dialects of the same language ; and if they
were all written in the same character the unity of
speech would be apparent, while with but trifling
alteration one literature would do for all, and a
contribution to any particular dialect would be an
addition not merely to the literature of that variety
but also to the common stock. Where every dia-
lect, however, has its separate alphabet, and every
province is distracted by the currency of two or
three alphabets, the utmost confusion prevails, and
people who understand each other in speaking—
Hindoos and Mahomedans, Pundits and Bunyans
—are unable to correspond With each other in writ-
ing or to make use of each other's books. Even
were it possible out of the 14 current alphabets of
India to select one for universal use, the difficulties
in the way of adopting it would be almost insuper-
able. There is not one of them which it is not
extremely difficult to read, difficult to write,
and difficult to print. As for reading, it is
well known that the natives themselves can-
not read them fluently. Even the pundits
and moonshees are continually obliged to stop
for the purpose of spelling the words. A fluent
reader of any of the native] characters is almost
unheard of, while a mere boy who is taught the
Roman characters will in the course of a few
months read anything that is given to him with-
out stopping. Writing, it may well be imagined,
is still more difficult. As a general rule it is im-
possible to write fast in the native alphabets with-
out making so many blunders and omissions that
the manuscript becomes an unintelligible scrawl.
Taking a most favourable example, however, we
may mention an experiment which was tried by
one of the teachers of the Hindoo College. He
asked one of the best Bengali copyists to write as
rapidly as he could in the native character, while
he himself wrote in the Roman ; and the result of
the competition was in favour of the latter by two
and a half to one. This is bad enough. The
greatest difficulty of all, however, occurs in print-
mg. For one dialect a fount of type is required
consisting of not less than 700 letters, simple and
compound ; another requires 900 letters ; a third
1,000, and so on. Apart from the cost of preparing
such a fount, consider tie difficulty with which the
compositor has to contend with in having a "case"
before him with this peodigious collection of cha-
racters, which, after all, makes no provision for
such convenient indications as we have in our capi-
tals, small capitals, and italics. Consider the
labour not only of selecting all these letters, but of
placing now above and now below the consonants
those incomprehensible vowel points, which, as rest-
ing on a thin strip of metal, are very liable to be
broken, and to embarrass compositor ;and reader
alike. Consider the enormous space, too, which
these characters must occupy, and the waste of
paper and pres3-work which follows. Consider the
impossibility of producing those varieties of large
and small type which are so useful in books
printed in the Roman letters. The wonder is that
having to surmount these enormous difficulties it
has ever been possible to print in the Oriental
character. Our Indian cadets are recom-
mended to buy Shakespear's Ilindustanee Die-
tionctry, but the cost . is. five guineas ; they
are advised to buy his . grammar and two other
works, but the co :_t is four guineas more.
No doubt they are cheap, if the labour bestowed
upon them be taken into account ; but to the young
cadet they are dear, they are bulky, and they are
by no means inviting. The dictionary might be sold
for half a sovereign if it were printed in the Roman
character; it would be intelligible at first sight,
and it would be reduced to respectable dimensions.
There is-, indeed, nothing like the Roman alphabet
for utility—easily read, easily written, with a thou-
sand little conveniences in print which no other
can boast of, as no other can be compared with it
for compactness. By slightly increasing the num-
ber of its sounds—and this is easily done by accent-
ing in various ways .the existing letters—it is
capable of being substituted for the most copious of
the Oriental alphabets. The strange multiplication
of characters in the Oriental orthography is created
by the compound soundi—a compound being
formed by the union of two or more letters which,
when written together, bear but slight traces of
what they originally were, and to all intents and
purposes form a new letter. No such difficulty
presents itself in the Roman alphabet, the simplicity
of which so commends itself even to the natives of
India that not only is it used in writing by great
and increasing numbers of the most influential
classes, but also Hindustani newspapers are
actually printed in it and preferred by those who
understand it.

These facts prove what we have said, that the
introduction of the Roman letters into India would
not only be useful to ourselves, but is the condition
on which alone the education of the natives and the
growth of a vernacular lii.erature are possible. If
we desire the personal influence of Englishmen to
be brought more strongly to bear upon the Mussul-
man and the Hindoo ; if we desire to bridge over
the chasm that now separates the victor from the
vanquished—the ruling from the subject race ; if we
desire to educate the natives and to bring them
under the dominance of European ideas and a
Christian civilisation ; if, too, we would wipe away
the reproach which has been so often brought against
us, and raise a monument of ourselves in that land
—less imposing, it may be, but certainly more en-
during than the most magnificent of public works
—then the best thing we can do—the stepping-
stone to all else—is to set about this very simple
work of establishin.g the use of the Roman alpha-
bet throughout India. A good deal has been done
already in this direction. The proposal WilS origi-
nglalayumalal)d.ecnonteaerlyinat quarter of a century back ; and
though at first received with oppo.sition,. it has
terrible event of lasto. y
eal. favour,arou
seesdpetheiealElyugsliinshceputhbe
lie to the consideration of India affairs. As a first
fruit of this
ye
New have
amovement, the British and Foreign
editionßi bl
eSooefietltiTestamentitomatl in the llindustani
undertaken to publish a large
language, but in the characters, the Eng-
lish version being printed in parallel columns as
, in
the polyglot bibles; and what is the ' object 7—to
induce the soldiers in the Queen's army .
, as well as
others now in.l.nlia, to study the language and
acquire the ability of associating with the • t 3
natives.
It is hoped, also, that the Governmentof India ..
may
be induced to give some encouragement to the
scheme, the promoters of which are certainly modest
in their expectations, if it be true as we believe that

they limit their requiremenes to the three follow-
ing.points—namely, Ist, that Government would
simply permit petitions a~i other documents in the
Roman character to be received in their courts and
offices ; 2d, that they would publish a set of the
Acts of the Indian Government in the Roman cha-
racter, and, 3d, that in the same character they
would publish an edition of the vernacular Govern-
ment Gazette, including, of course, projects of law
and other documents relating to current legislation.
These demands are so moderate, and the object to
be obtained so desirable, that we trust it is only
necessary to propound the scheme in order to be-
speak for it the favourable consideration of the
Indian Council.— Times.