tongues," and again (p. 52):-- "In Marathi we see the results of the Pandit's file applied to a form of speech originally possessed of much natural wildness and licence. The hedgerows have been pruned and the wild briars and roses trained into order. It is a copious and beautiful language, second only to Hindi. It has three genders, and the same elaborate preparation of the base as Sindhi, and, owing to the great corruption which has taken place in its terminations, the difficulty of determining the gender of nouns is as great in Marathi as in German. In fact, if we were to institute a parallel in this respect, we might appropriately describe Hindi as the English, Marathi as the German of the Indian group--Hindi having cast aside whatever could possibly be dispensed with, Marathi having retained whatever has been spared by the action of time. To an Englishman Hindi commends itself by its absence of form, and the positional structure of its sentences resulting therefrom; to our High-German cousins the Marathi, with its fuller array of genders, terminations, and inflexions, would probably seem the completer and finer language." In the article PRAKRIT it is explained that the literary Prakrits were not the direct parents of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Each Prakrit had first to pass through an intermediate stage--that of the Apabhramsa--before it took the form current at the present day. While we know a good deal about Maharastri and very little about Sauraseni Prakrit, the case is reversed in regard to their respective Apabhramsas. The Saurasena Apabhramsa is the only one concerning which we have definite information. Although it would be quite possible to reason from analogy, and thus to obtain what would be the corresponding forms of Maharastra Apabhramsa, we should often be travelling upon insecure ground, and it is therefore advisable to compare Marathi, not with the Apabhramsa from which it is immediately derived, but with its grandmother, Maharastri Prakrit. We shall adopt this course, so far as possible, in the following pages.