838 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
than a knowledge of English are necessary for their expansion.
We shall arrive at the same conclusion when we consider how languages grow. They are a reflection xsf the character of flhe people who use them. One who knows the dialects of the Zulus of South Africa knows their manners and customs. The character of a language depends upon the qualities and acts of the people. We shold unhesitatingly infer that a nation could not possess warlike, kind hearted and truthful people, if its language contained no expressions denoting these qualities. And we should fail to make that language assimilate such expressions by borrowing them from another language and forcing them into its dictionary, nor will such spurious importation make warriors of those who use that speech, You cannot get steel out of a piece of ordinary iron, but you can make effective use of rusty steel, by ridding it of its rust. We have long laboured under servility and our vernaculars abound in servile expressions, The English language is probably unrival- led in its vocabulary of nautical terms. But if an enterprising Gujarati presented Gujarat with a transla- tion of those terms, he would add nothing to the langu- age and we should be none the wiser for his effort. And if we took up the calling of sailors and provided ourselves with shipyards and even a navy, we should automatically have terms which would adequately -express our activity in this direction. The late Rev. J. Taylor gave the same opinion in his Gujarati Gram- mar. He says : " One sometimes hears people asking whether Gujarati may be considered a complete^ or an incomplete language. There is a proverb, k As
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