R. S. McGregor – författare

This major Hindi-English dictionary has been produced to meet the need of a growing number of people now learning and studying Hindi. Reflecting the many-sided development of Hindi during the 20th century, it provides over 36,000 headwords, with generous use of illustrative material showing words in use. Both colloquial and literary vocabulary is covered, together with some modern regional variants. The `Urdu' vocabulary of Hindi is well represented, as well as modern Hindi and English.

This volume addresses research topics within the field of Bhakti literature, the devotional poetry and other compositions of devotional character in the earlier literature of the modern South Asian languages. Its papers range from the roots of the Bhakti tradition in the early history of Krsna to its modern adaptations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. Geographically, they span Bengal to Sind, Panjab to Maharashtra. Contemporary study of the modern Indian languages has broadened the scope of scholarship to consider today's Hindu attitudes, and those of a mixed society, against the background of ancient culture. Here, materials in six modern Asian languages are discussed: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi in its main literary forms, Marathi, Panjabi and Sindhi; with assessment also of material in Sanskrit, Arabic and Chinese. In addition to studies of literary (and orally transmitted) works in the Krsna or Rama traditions, and of Sufi compositions and their interpretation, there are papers on the early history of sacred sites, the emergence of the religion of Rama, later religious formulations throughout the subcontinent, and the interaction of the Islamic and the Hindu.

For centuries, until the consolidation of modern standard Hindi after 1900, the Hindi dialect known as Braj Bhāsā enjoyed great prestige as the vehicle of the Krsna cult literature of northern India, as well as for the brilliance of its secular literature. Most of this material was in verse, although since the beginning of the last century we have had knowledge of the existence of texts in Sanskritized Braj Bhāsā prose, chiefly sectarian chronicles and commentaries, from a relatively early date. In this, the earliest thorough analysis of a Braj Bhāsā text, Dr McGregor presents one of the oldest known Braj Bhāsā prose texts: a Braj commentary on the Sanskrit Nītiśataka of Bhartrhari, originally composed about 1600. His detailed examination of the morphology, phonology and syntax of its language casts light on the types of language that underlie the Braj Bhāsā used in verse literature, and provide a comparative basis for further studies of the prose produced in Braj and in other Hindi dialects before the nineteenth century.