82 INTRODUCTION. before “the Brähmins, Vaidyas and Kāyasthas brought an Indo-European language into Bengal.” The peculiarity of Bengali accentuation, according to Mr. Anderson, is to be seen in the tendency to throw the accent forward, whereas the words in Hindi are stressed on the second and sometimes on the final syllable. Such for instance are the words Kharāb, Panjābi, Mofāssil, Adālat, Dewānī, Faujdārī, Mahārāj, Kumāri, Bangāla, Hindusthāni, Chitrarèkha, Dakhāl etc., all stressed on the second or final syllable, whereas these very words, which are also common to Bengali, when used in a Bengali sentence have an initial accent. “Not only is the first syllable of a separate word accented in Bengali,” says Mr. Anderson “but is not the first syllable of a clause still more strongly accented e.g., ii"go আমরা—উদ্ভিদ বলি—কারণ ইহা of gol–ce" of oil ed; 2 There are subsidiary accents of course, but are not the initial accents following pauses, dominantly audible?” The language which preceded Bengali in this country was, Mr. Anderson supposes, “either Dravidian or Tibeto-Burman Koch. Koch has a long agglutinative verb which is pronounced with a strong anaerusis or ‘start-off’ accent. This may have been the origin of the Bengali initial accent.” He further observes:—“The Bengali accent differs from the Hindi or Mahratti accent very much as the French accent differs from the English or German accent, whereas most modern languages in India and Europe have a strong word-stress. That is why so few foreigners can talk French or Bengali like natives. In French the tonic accent precedes and announces a pause or (in verse) casura. In Bengali it seems to be an initial anaerusis accent, after a pause, at the beginning, that is, of a vocal unit of utterance. In Hindi, English, Mahratti, Italian, German etc., there is a stress on the word which does not vary according to the position of the word. In French and in Bengali the incidence of the accent does vary according to the place a word occupies in a phrase.” “The Bengali payār is like the French heroic metre, the Alexandrine. It would be very difficult to write such verses in English, Hindi, or in any other language in which frequent word-stresses are the characteristic audible feature of the language.” Mr. Anderson has written a few lines of doggerel in English payār by putting stresses where the tonic accents seem to fall in Bengali; here they are:– “Thi"s is the melodious the de”licately chi'ming Me”tre of Benga'li, in its pauses and its rhy'ming. T"ripping to the mea'sure of the da"nce of little feet; P"erilously simple, like the ji”ngle of the sweet Be"lls upon the ankles of the da"ncers as they posse; Bells upon their a'nkles, yes, and ri"ngs upon their toes.” On this point he says “Observe that the stresses here are much
