Latest revision as of 11:50, 16 March 2014

NOTE: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a book. Therefore, paragraphs might have got rearranged or omitted and/ or footnotes might have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these errors might like to correct (and/ or update) them in a Part II of this article. Secondly, kindly ignore all references to page numbers, because they refer to the physical, printed book. Thirdly, it might not have complete paragraphs. These are excerpts obtained through an Internet search.

[edit] Preface

In this Volume it bus been my object to present a. summary of the results of the Linguistic Survey of India.. so far as it has been under my oharge, in a. form convenient for reference alike to professed students of language and to tbe lay reader. 'rbe descriptive portion falls into two sections. In the first, which I have named the Introduction, I bo.ve given an 8.COOWlt of previous attempts to set forth the languages of India. and of the procedure followed in the present Survey. Some of what is stated in this section will a.lso be found scattered through other volumes, but here it is all brought -tOgei;ber in one oollecteda.ccount.

The second section is an a.ttempt to bring under one view the results of the Survey and the lessons to be derived from them. Much of it has been based on the Cha.pter on the Languao<>eB of India. contributed by me to the Indian Census Report for the year 1901, but this has boon brought up to date, and a. good deal has been added to it. That chapter may, in fact, be looked upon as a first draft of this section of the volume. Written as it was nearly a quarter of a century ago, there have been found many opportunities for additions and improvements.

These two sections are followed by two collections (Majora and Minora) of Addenda and Corrigenda for the whole Survey. The first (Addenda Majora) consists of the more important additions, and, 6Spt'CiaUy, of acoounts of languages for which matorials became availa.ble after the volume referred to had gone to press. Only in this way have I been able to bring the earlier volumes up to date. The Addenda et OOrJ'igmda Minora mainly include additions of detail, corrections of misprints and of mistakes of my own, and the like. These latter are issued loose and. are printed in such a way that they can be l'eadily cut up and inserted in their proper places in: the several volumes of the Survey. To the whole, three Appendixes have been added.

The first is a. classified list of all the languages of India., in which the statistics of the Survey ha.ve been compared with those of the Census of 1921. The second Appendix is a li8t of those Indian languages of which gmm~phone records are available in this country and in Paris, and the 't hird is au Index of all the names referring to Ia.nguages of India. that I have been able to collect. I hope that the last will be found a useful work of reference for anyone who may desire to identify ans.me with whichhe is not f.a.milial'. It also forms an Index to the, contents of Volumes IT to XI of the Survey itself. A second part of this volume is now in the press.

It is a compamtive vocabnlal"y of 168 selected words in about 368 different la.nguages and dialects, and will, I hope, be found useful by students of langlla.:,<>-es. A third part is being prepared by the competent pen of Professor Turner of the

School of Oriental Studies. It will be a Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan

languages, for tbe special use of philologists. It will appear in due course, a.ndwill complete tbe survey.

It is with a feeling of gratitude for having been permitted. to finish a work extending over thirty years that. after writing this Preface, the pen will be laid down. Without any pretended. modesty I confess that no one is more than myself aware of the deficiencies of the Survey, nor, on the other hand, need I plead guilty to a vain boast when I claim , that what has been done in it for India. has been done for no other country in the world. Such as it is, I bid it adieu, sure of sympathy with my mistakes, and of appreciation of what in it is Worthy, on the part of those lovers of India. who are competent to put its merit and its defects to test.

George A. Grierson

[edit] Indpaedia's note

Indeed, such a monumental work, such a thorough survey of such a staggering number of languages has, indeed, never been done for any other country in the world. As long as people interested in the languages of India can read the Roman script (and even if they cannot), they will have no option but to refer to the work of Mr Grierson and his team--and bless them and hold them in awe. It will take Indpaedia several man-months to merely upload scanned extracts of this invaluable, encyclopaedic work, which is contained in 21 large-sized books. [Some 'volumes' came in two or more 'parts.']

Indpaedia, too, seeks the sympathy--and, if possible, efforts--of its readers. We realise that the text is quite garbled. As an unfunded, volunteer effort we can do no better than this. While complete volumes of the LSI are available on at least 3 websites, Indpaedia wants readers to access the original chapters as they were listed by Mr Grierson,and with a minimum number of clicks and effort.

Readers who want to aid our efforts might like to copy the somewhat garbled text of this series of articles on an MS Word (or other word processing) file, correct the mistakes and send the corrected file to our Facebook page [Indpaedia.com]