ALTHOUGH the form of this work was suggested by W. Meyer-Lübke's Romanisches Ety-mologisches Wörterbuch, the head-words under which the material is collected do not represent the vocabulary of a real and comparatively uniform language at all comparable with that of the actual Latin. the history of which Meyer-Lübke followed into the modern Romance languages and which was in regular use for writing and administration over the whole Roman Empire and was the common speech of a large proportion of its inhabitants.
The phonetic systems of nearly all the New Indo-aryan languages are descended directly from that of the Rgveda' with one exception. Whereas Indo-curopean k, g, gh were represented by s, j, h in the Rgveda, in the Kafiri group they were retained in the intermediate stage of dental affricate as ts, dz; IE. guh before palatal vowel which like gh was opened to h in the Rgveda retained its occlusion as j (2) in Kafiri. It will therefore be realized that Kafiri words with these sounds are not to be derived immediately from the head-words under which they are shown: see, e.g., śiras-, dáśa, jānati, *hadas-, hánati. One other possible divergence going back to a pre-Indo-aryan stage is the emergence in Middle Indo-aryan of (j)jh - ks as different developments of earlier *gzh; but both forms, having had wide expansion and not disclosing any dialectic boundaries in New Indo-aryan, will be found among the head-words with suitable cross-references: see, e.g., ksárati and *jharati.
In some cases an older form has been replaced by an analogical creation, e.g. dūchí- RV. (<"dus-dhi-)~ durdhi- MBh. In other cases the original survives only in New Indo-aryan, e.g. *nidāti (<*niz-da-) ~ nir-daty- Mn., *būdhi- (<'buddhi-) ~ buddhi- Mn. In compounds the unexploded final -t of ut may be expected to be lost before following st(h), giving rise to ust(h)- attested in Middle and New Indo-aryan, although dialectically or through analogical replacement appearing only as utt(h)- in Sanskrit. Similarly ut before initial s-ap-pears most frequently in MIA. and NIA. as uśś- (uss-), whereas Sanskrit always has ucch-. To allow for the divergent development in such cases the head-word has been shown with *ut-sth-, *ut-ś-: see, e.g., *ut-sthāti, *ut-śirsa-.
Owing to differences of dialect or of time at which many of the loanwords from Munda, Dravidian, or other languages came into Indo-aryan, they appear in forms which cannot be referred to a single Indo-aryan form, especially in the case of names of animals and plants. In such cases the New Indo-aryan words may be collected under more than one head-word with appropriate cross-references: see, e.g., mayûra-, śvāvídh-, krmuka.
A particular class of words are those I have termed 'defective'. These are adjectives which express, from language to language, almost any defect, whether physical, mental, or moral. They display, within a single language or from language to language, an almost bewildering variety of form, involving interchange of single with double consonant, aspirates with non-aspirates, voiced with unvoiced, dental with retroflex, nasalized vowel with unnasalized, vocalization with a or i/e varying with ujd; see "bukka- and the list of similar series there given. The variety of form is no doubt due to a variety of causes: they are liable as 'expressive' words to changes which indicate emphasis, as derogatory words to deliberate deformation, and under both headings to the formation of rhyme-words. While some, e.g. banda, are found in Vedic, and some, e.g. kuntha-, have parallels in Iranian, and some, c.g. "runda-, possibly derive from Indo-european, a large number appear to come from non-Aryan sources-Dravidian and especially Munda and may owe some of their diversity of form to different dialects within those language-groups (see in the last instance F. B. J. Kuiper in Lingua 14, 54-86). There are parallel series of words meaning 'lump' with the same variation of form: see, e.g., *lakka-~
The order in which words from new Indo-aryan languages are quoted is purely geographical, being based on their present distribution rather than on any special dialectic connexions among them. Beginning in the West with European dialects of Gypsy, it moves through the Dumäki of Hunza (like Gypsy, belonging originally to a language group of India proper) to Kafiri and Dardic, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Lahnda, Panjabi, along the Himalaya to West and Central Pahari groups, to Nepali and Assamese, south to Bengali and Oriya, westward again across the Gangetic plain through Bihari, Maithill, Bhojpuri, Hindi to the Rajasthäni dialects, south again through Gujarati to Marathi and Konkani, and finally to Sinhalese (whose closer linguistic connexion is rather with the eastern languages, especially Oriya) and out in the Indian Ocean to the dialect spoken in the Maldive Islands.
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