পাতা:দ্বিভাষার্থকাভিধান.djvu/৯

PREFACE. -டு THE Dictionary of the Bengali language now offered to the public, is the result of several years' assiduous application more particularly directed to this special object. Early on his arrival in this country, the Compiler became sensible of the want of such a compendium, a mean between the meagreness of a mere vocabulary and the diffuseness of the more elaborate species of Dictionaries. At the period when this work was జ్ఞ్గ there were extant only the vocabulary of Mr. Foster and the large quartos Ο - C e The ,ே considered as the first effort in Bengāli Lexicography of any European, must be considered to bear high and ample testimony to the skill and judgment of the author, as well as to his extensive acquaintance with the language. Deficient, it certainly is; but the Compiler's unassuming profession, Vor et proterea nihil, precludes any charge on that ground. Still it contains a mass of most valuable materials for succeeding lexicographera, though in a state, it must be confessed, somewhat chaotic and difficult of application by a tyro in the language; and the student, as he advances, must often be struck with .ே Compiler's accurate acquaintance with the idiomatical and colloquial applications of terms, considered as mere vocables, little connected with their general notions. Those who have made most proficieucy in this tongue are duly sensible of the real excelleuce of the work, and it must be evident, to one competent to pass a judgment, that Mr. Foster could have been no sciolist in the general principles of language. Had his arrangement been better, his Vocabulary would only have needed due enlargement to answer all the purpose of a standard Dictionary. The work it must be owned, however, is extremely defective, is disfigured and deteriorated by a large admixture of Hindustāni, &c. and is become, moreover, both scarce and dear. Yet it would be an extreme injustice, quite unworthy of an aspirant to literary excellence, to withhold a tribute due to the labours of one to whom the Compiler of the present work acknowledges himself under the greatest obligations. The ponderous quartos of Dr. Carey include a compilation of a widely different character, in bulk, assuredly, exceeding the product of all others together in this field; and if estimated by that measure, they must be allowed, without dispute, to take the first place in the list of works of their class. From these also the Compiler has drawn freely, as from a storehouse of vocables, for the accumnlation of which Dr. Carey has laid him and all other learners of Bengāli under great and lasting obligation. A student of the provincial language would greatly err, however, in the expectation of finding in these large volumes the actual existing vocabulary of the population, free from a strange and heterogeueous admixture of foreiga terms, Persian, Arabic, &c. with every imaginable corruption of the colloquial medium on the oue hand, as well as of high unnaturalized Sanscrit words on the other. Tbe approved ataudard among respectably educated untives is equally removed from both extremes, from the harbarism and vulgarity of the one, from the pedantry and unintelligibility of the other. In uo accredited Dictionary of any literary language are the gross vulgarians of the སྨི་༣༥ ཟnd the low artizan admitted to hold a place, which deceucy and good taste refuse t - With regard to the higher style, indeed, the derivatives of the learned language of India differ materially from many Western tongues; inasmuch as the former are absolutely dependant, for scientifical, theological, and general literary terms and phraseology, on the polished language of the Brahmius; the Bengali more so than any of its tognate dialects; and, in general, a polished and learned atyle must necessarily be formaed on the model of the Sanscrit, a$ well us furuished fromite vocabulary. A due discrimination ia, however, indispensable in detailing the meanings of pure Sanserit terms, many of whose native applications are quite unknown to the derivative dialect. Dr. Carey's great work is as much depreciated in value as it is augmented in bulk, by a mass of matter utterly irrelevant to the study of the provincial tongue; in nearly every instance, the Sanëcrit Dictiouary of Dr. Wilson being transcribed verbatim into its pages, to the ntter confusion of the student, who is thus set afloat on an uukuown •cean of words without pilot or compass. That in the course of time, as the Bengali becomes cultivated, refined and polished, large accessions will accrue from the higher source, may not be doubted; nor should many words or senses, at present little in use ge