PREFACE. IN the following short sketch of the Grammar of the Panjabi Language, I have endeavoured, firstly, to give all that any one need know with regard to the grammatical framework of the language in order to enable him to read and speak it correctly, and, secondly, to be as concise and clear as possible. My own experience of the works that have been written to illustrate the grammars of not a few tongues is that they are so replete with matter which -however valuable to the philologian or the advanced scholar-is practically worse than useless to the learner, that the beginner despairs of mastering such a quantity of new information. He does not, however, know what is indispensable and what merely interesting, and therefore, in trying to learn everything at once, he hampers himself and seriously impedes his progress. The fact is that the essential parts of the grammar of nearly every language are very simple, and they may generally be tabulated in a very concise manner. I have attempted to show this in the case of Panjabi by drawing up in a tabular form in a single page paradigms of the grammatical terminations of Nouns and Verbs and lists of the Pronouns. It will be found that this table is really the "Grammar," and the rest of the book only notes upon the information there given. It is hoped that the Reading Lessons will be found useful. No pains have been spared to avoid misprints, but the fact that the book had to be printed in England, where the type-setters could not be expected to be advanced Panjabi scholars, has rendered the occurrence of slight errata possible. I trust that, should any such blunders be found, the transliteration of words in the Vocabulary will render their detection easy. Bombay, Oct., 1888. W. ST. C. T. |