PREFACE.
It is with much hesitation, and with a deep sense of its many imperfections, that I now lay this volume before the public. Begun in 1866, it has for more than five years occupied my leisure hours; and if it should be remarked, as in justice it might, that the result is somewhat meagre for so long a period of preparation, I would reply that the duties of a magistrate and collector in Bengal are not only onerous, but so multifarious, and often so urgent, that he is never safe from interruption at any hour of the day or night. On an average, two hours a day has been the utmost time that I could devote to my amusements or private pursuits of any kind. Constant journeys, repeated attacks of sickness, and the "mollis inertia" inseparable from the climate during at least six months of the year, must also be taken into consideration. It may be asked, why under these circumstances I undertook the task at all? To this I answer, that to a hardworked brain change of labour is often a greater relaxation than absolute idleness, and that having always been a student of languages from my childhood, I had adopted this form of amusement in preference to any other, and had collected and grouped together many examples of the most salient peculiarities in the languages which I heard spoken round me long before any idea of writing a book entered my head.
It was, I think, in 1865 that I first saw Dr. Caldwell's
