A Grammar of the Pukhto, Pushto, Or Language of the Afgháns ...: Together with Translations from the Articles of War, &c., and Remarks on the Language, Literature, and Descent of the Afghán Tribes, Volume 1

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J. Thomas, 1855 - 423 pages
Henry George Raverty (1825-1906) was an army officer in British India who, as a self-educated amateur scholar, made important contributions to the study of the languages, history, and cultures of India (present-day India and Pakistan) and Afghanistan. He sailed for India at the age of 15 or 16. After mastering Hindustani, Persian, Gujarati, and Marathi during his service in India, in 1849 he was transferred to Peshawar and the Northwest Frontier, where he turned his attention to Pushto and the language, history, and ethnology of Afghanistan. In 1855 he published volume one of his A Grammar of the Pukhto, Pushto, or Language of the Afgháns, which also includes a 50-page introduction on "the language, literature, and descent of the Afghan tribes." To complete the grammar, Raverty is credited with collecting and systematizing a body of grammatical and lexical material never previously assembled. Volume two of the grammar was published in 1856. The book was produced by subscription, and the first pages of volume one list the names of the subscribers, the chief of which was the government of India, which reserved 150 copies. The beginning of volume two contains a slip reminding subscribers to pay for their copies of the book, along with the necessary postage. Presented here are both tomes, which were printed at the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). The second volume is still in its original binding; the first was rebound by the Library of Congress. Raverty issued a revised second edition of the grammar in 1860, and a third edition in 1867. His other major works include a monumental Dictionary of the Pushto or Afghan Language (1860; second edition 1867), an anthology of Pushto prose and poetry in English translation entitled Gulshan i Roh (1860); another book of translations, Poetry of the Afghans from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (1862); and Notes on Afghanistan and Baluchistan, issued in four installments between 1881 and 1888.

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Page 10 - And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul.
Page 10 - And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly : and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he : from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.
Page 1 - I am not very willing that any language should be totally extinguished. The similitude and derivation of languages afford the most indubitable proof of the traduction of nations, and the genealogy of mankind. They add often physical certainty to historical evidence; and often supply the only evidence of ancient migrations, and of the revolutions of ages which left no written monuments behind them.
Page 10 - And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him...
Page 11 - David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith.
Page 47 - Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
Page 34 - I do not mean to say, that, if we are unable to attain a profound knowledge of each idiom, we should on this account entirely suspend our judgment: I only insist on it that we should not prescribe to ourselves arbitrary limits, and imagine that we are forming our judgment on a firm basis, while it is in reality insufficient.
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