Gonda lecture by R.S. McGregor
The Formation of Modern Hindi
On 23 Nov. 2000, at 16.00 h., R.S. McGregor, emeritus Reader, in Hindi at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, will deliver the eighth Gonda lecture at the headquarters of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, under the title The Formation of Modern Hindi as Demonstrated in Early 'Hindi' Dictionaries.
The way in which modern Hindi came to public notice in the nineteenth-century (first through Western promotion and in the Western-controlled print culture, and later as it began to be used in Indian public life and in literature) led to misconceptions about its roots in earlier language usage and to an underrating of its potential as a wide-ranging language in the manner of Hindustani. These misconceptions have persisted to some extent, centring nowadays on difficulties that are seen in the use of neologisms and of Sanskritic style. In his lecture McGregor will pay attention to the formation of modern Hindi and will stress the continuities of language and of use of Devanagarž script and Sanskritic style, which underpinned, and indeed account for the nineteenth-century development of the language. He will be drawing chiefly on a variety of evidence for language usage that he encountered in little-known early dictionaries while working in early and modern Hindi lexicography. McGregor is the author of, among other things, Outline of Hindi Grammar (Oxford 1972, 3rd revised and enlarged edition, Oxford 1995), Hindi Literature of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Wiesbaden 1974; History of Indian Literature, ed. J. Gonda, V111, 2) and The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (ed.), Oxford 1993; electronic version, 2000, Committee on Institutional Co-operation, Champaign, Illinois). *
Admission to the lecture is free.
Those who want to attend the lecture are requested to give notice to the secretariat
of the Gonda Foundation,
Antwoordnummer 10785,
1000 RA Amsterdam
(tel.: +31-20-55 10 776 / 782).
Or via the Website of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences:
www.knaw.ni/06subsid/0601.htm