The Student's Maráthí Grammar (Classic Reprint)

This is a new and enlarged edition of theS tudent sM anual of Marathi Gbammak designed equally for beginners and advanced stndents. The former are advised to pass over theN otes, printed in small type, as well as the portions in the text which are specified as useful at an advanced stage of study. I have given copious explanations, not seldom venturing to offer a rationale of the facts or forms discussed, as intelligent students, in these days, are expected to know more than what is merely elementary and practical, I have also endeavoured to determine the exact form and sense of every grammatical word and inflection; and the value of definite opinions on these points can be truly estimated only by those who are acquainted with the present painful state of uncertainty and doubt that generally prevails. I have, moreover, attempted to simplify and systematise several diflS cult departments of Marathi grammar. I would specially cite, by way of example, theD eclension of Nouns. The number of theD eclensions has been reduced from six or seven to three, if not absolutely to one, while a most simple method of deriving the crude-form has been suggested. By the aid of two pronominal letters any Marathi noun could be declined with absolute certainty. For thib and other important changes in my book, I am indebted chiefly to the Comparative Grammar of Bopp. a work which is not more valuable for what it explicitly teaches than for what it obscurely suggests. It is by a study of this wonderful work that I have been led to look for something deeper, truer, and more spiritual in words than what their external form reveals, and it is under its guidance that, I believe, I have attained, though but imperfectly, to the hidden life of some of theM arathi words and inflections. I ndeed, there is nothing arbitrary and conventional in language: every form of it is instinct with life
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)