FOR the furtherance of a good understanding between the sahibs and the Aryans who obey them and minister unto them, the Raj^[91] has ordained language examinations. This was necessary, because in war, contract-making, or the management of accounts, neither a Ghurka nor a Bengali will comprehend you if you simply swear at him. He must be approached through a rudimentary medium of imperative moods and future tenses. Therefore the institution of the Higher and the Lower Standard, and much anguish on the part of Her Majesty’s subalterns. The Raj attaches rather more credit to the former of these examinations, but afterwards the difference is nominal—you forget them with equal facility.

It might be respectively pointed out, however, that the Government of India has done nothing in this direction to stimulate intercourse with the native population among memsahibs. In fact the Government of India does not recognise memsahibs in any way that is not strictly and entirely polite. And so the memsahib “picks up” Hindustani—picks it up in her own simple artless fashion which dispenses with all ordinary aids to the acquirement of a foreign tongue. She gathers together her own vocabulary, gathers it from the east and the west, and the north and the south, from Bengal and Bombay, from Madras and the Punjab, a preposition from Persia, a conjunction from Cashmere, a noun from the Nilgherries. She makes her own rules, and all the natives she knows are governed by them—nothing from a grammatical point of view could be more satisfactory than that. Her constructions in the language are such as she pleases to place upon it; thus it is impossible that she should make mistakes.

The memsahib’s Hindustani is nevertheless not perfectly pure, entirely apart from questions of pronunciation, which she regulates somewhat imperiously. This is because she prefers to improve it by the admixture of a little English; and the effect upon the native mind is quite the same. It really doesn’t matter whether you say, “That’s bote atcha hai khansamah-gee,”^[92] or “This is very carab,^[93] you stupid ool-ka-beta,”^[94] or use the simple Hindustani statements to express your feelings. The English may adorn them, but it is the Hindustani after all that gives vitality to your remarks. “Chokee lao,” means “bring a chair,” but if you put it, “bring me a chokee lao,” the meaning of the command is not seriously interfered with, beside convincing you more firmly that you have said what you wanted to say. I suppose Mrs. Browne talked more Hindustani to Kali Bagh than to anybody else, and one dinner’s dialogue, so to speak, might be like this:

“Kul ka^[95] mutton, how much is there, Kali Bagh?”

“Ha, bus hai, hazur.”^[96]

“Then you may irony-stew do,^[97] and undercut beefsteak muncta,^[98] and mind you find an atcha wallah.^[99] Onions fry ka sat, sumja?”^[100]

“Ha, hazur! Bote atcha wallah miliga.^[101] Ecpuddin kawasti?”^[102]

“Oh, you can plum-pudding, do—a chota wallah, and cabadar bote plenty kismiss”^[103]

“Brunndi-sauce ka sat?”^[104]

“Na. Put into whiskey-shrab. Brunndi burra dom hai.^[105] And dekko, curry hazri na muncta, tiffin muncta.”

This last statement is to the effect that curry does not want breakfast, wants tiffin, but the heathen mind never translates the memsahib literally. It picks the words it knows out of her discourse and links them together upon a system of probabilities which long application and severe experiences have made remarkably correct. Then it salaams and acts. The usually admirable result is misleading to the memsahib, who naturally ascribes it to the grace and force and clearness of her directions. Whereas it is really the discernment of Kali Bagh that is to be commended.

Considering the existence of the Higher and Lower Standard there is less difference between the Hindustani of Anglo-Indian ladies and Anglo-Indian gentlemen than one would expect. The sahib has several choice epithets that do not attach themselves to the vocabulary of the memsahib, who seldom allows her wrath to run to anything more abusive than “Son-of-an-Owl,” or “Poor-kind-of-man,” and the voice of the sahib is in itself a terrible thing so that all his commands are more emphatic, more quickly to be obeyed. But he is pleased to use much the same forms of speech as are common to the memsahib, and if he isn’t understood he will know the reason why. The same delicate autocracy pervades the sahib’s Hindustani as characterises most of his relations with his Indian fellow-subjects. He has subdued their language, as it were, to such uses as he thinks fit to put it, and if they do not choose to acquire it in this form, so much the more inconvenient for them. He can always get another kitmutgar. The slight incongruities of his system do not present themselves to the sahib. He has a vague theory that one ought not to say tum^[106] to a Rajah, but he doesn’t want to talk to Rajahs—he didn’t come out for that. So that my accuracy need not be doubted I will quote the case of Mr. Perth Macintyre, and I am quite sure that if Mr. Perth Macintyre were to be presented to the Nizam of Hyderabad to-morrow—an honour he would not at all covet—he would find nothing better to say to him in Hindustani than “Atcha hai?”^[107]—the formula he would use to a favourite syce.

Mrs. Browne had a great aptitude for languages. She had brought her German prizes with her, and used to look at them with much satisfaction when the problem of conquering Hindustani was new to her, and she thought it would be a matter of some difficulty. She had ambitious ideas at first, connected with a grammar and a dictionary, and one January afternoon she learned a whole page of rules for the termination of the feminine. Mrs. Macdonald found her at it, and assured her earnestly that she was “going the wrong way about it.” “With all you have to do,” declared Mrs. Macdonald, “you’ll never get to the end of that book, and when you do you’ll have forgotten the beginning. Whatever is the difference to you whether ghoree is the feminine for horse, or what the plural is! They’re all gorahs! Now I picked up Hindustani in the ordinary way. I listened, and whenever I didn’t know a thing I asked my ayah what its name was—and in two months I spoke the language fluently. So will you, but never with a grammar; a grammar won’t help you to order dinner. Neither will a dictionary—you won’t find ‘hoss-nallis’ in a dictionary. That’s Hindustani for ‘horse-radish.’ It’s awfully funny, how like English the language is in some words?”

“Is it?” said Helen, “I hadn’t noticed that. It must be quite easy to learn, then.”

“Oh, quite! For instance, where we say ‘stable,’ and ‘coat,’ and ‘beer,’ they say ‘ishtable,’ and ‘coatee,’ and ‘beer-shrab.’ And the Hindustani for ‘kettle’ is ‘kettley,’ and for ‘bottle,’ ‘botle.’ Oh, it’s not a difficult language!”

One does not cling to a manual of Hindustani in the face of the protestations of one’s friends, and Mrs. Browne found herself induced to abandon hers before the terminations for the feminine were quite fixed in her mind. One might just as well acquire the language in a less laborious way. So she paid diligent attention, for one thing, to ordinary Anglo-Indian conversation, which is in itself a very fair manual of Hindustani. There is hardly any slang in Anglo-India, the tongue of the gentle Hindu supplies a substitute for that picturesque form of expression. It permeates all classes of society, that is, both Covenanted and Uncovenanted classes; and there are none so dignified in speech as to eschew it. Mrs. Wodenhamer uses it, and the missionaries’ wives. It is ever on the tongue of Kitty Toote; I have no doubt it creeps into the parlance of Her Excellency. Therefore it cannot be vulgar. Only this morning, Mrs. Jack Lovitt in the course of ten minutes’ conversation in my drawing-room simply scintillated with it. She wanted to know if it was pucca that we were going home for good next hot weather, and remarked that it was a pity we had the house on a long bundabust,^[108] it was always such a dick and worry to get rid of a lease. One of her kitmutgars had been giving her trouble—she was afraid he was a bad jat of man—he was turning out a regular budmash.^[109] He attended to his hookums^[110] very well, but he was always getting into golmals^[111] with the other servants. Had I heard the gup about Walter Toote’s being in trouble with his Department? Awful row on, Mrs. Lovitt believed. And had I been at Government House the night before? It was getting altogether too gurrum^[112] for nautches now. As for her, she had been up every blessed night for a week with Mrs. Gammidge’s butcha^[113]—awfully bad with dysentery, poor little wretch—and was too done to go. It was quite time the season was over, and yet they had three burra-khanas^[114] on for next week.

It will be evident that a very limited amount of intercourse of this sort will assist tremendously toward a self-satisfying acquaintance with Hindustani. There is a distinct flavour of the language about it. But this lingers only in India. We leave it when we sail away from the Apollo Bunder,^[115] where it attaches itself to the first new-comers. It belongs to the land of the kitmutgar; it forsakes us utterly in Kensington.

Mrs. Browne found it very facilitating, and if she did not finally learn to speak like a native she speedily learned to speak like a memsahib, which was more desirable. In the course of time young Browne forgave her the agonies her initiation cost him. They began early in the morning when Helen remarked that it was a very “atcha” day, they continued at breakfast when she asked him if he would have an “unda”^[116] or some “muchli”^[117] or some “tunda beef,”^[118] and it went on at intervals from five o’clock till bed-time. It was her impression, poor dear thing, that she was humorous in this—it was not for six whole months that she learned how Anglo-India sanctions Hindustani for grim convenience only, declining to be amused by it in any way whatever, and has placed its own stamp upon such time-established expressions as are admissible. More than these are recognised to come of vanity and the desire of display, and Anglo-India will have none of them. In the meantime Mrs. Browne trespassed daily, smiling and unaware. At first her George received these pleasantries with a pained smile. Then he looked solemn, then severe. When Mrs. Browne’s lapses had been particularly flagrant a chill fell upon their intercourse which she was puzzled to understand. Whereupon she tried to dissipate it by the jocular use of more Hindustani, which made young Browne wriggle in his chair. They arrived at a point where it was obviously impossible to go on. It did not occur to young Browne to propose a separation, though he had shocking liver that day, but he arose suddenly and said he’d be hanged if he’d stand being talked Hindustani to any longer. Thereat Mrs. Browne, being a person of tender feelings, wept. Whereat Mr. Browne, being a man of sentiment in spite of liver complications, was instantly reduced to nothingness and suppliance, when explanations of course ensued, and Helen was made acquainted with most of the information in this chapter. In the upshot, whether Mrs. Browne never spoke a word of Hindustani again, as she proposed, or spoke it all day long for a year and nothing could be sweeter, as he proposed, I have never been made aware.