the accent systems of the different Bengali dialects, which naturally show traces of that ethnic miscegenation to which the anthropological history of the people, bears an unmistakable testimony, the more so as tone and accent are among what may be called tertiary racial characters of speech, and in their deep working predispositions, and relative stability, supply fit material for experimental variations of this sort.
In the course of these lectures, I have dealt with the more important topics relating to the origins of the Bengali language, explaining my own views and conclusions, rather than combating the theories that hold the field, and I have used the illustrative material briefly and suggestively, rather than exhaustively.
A few words may be necessary to explain the occasion of the present publication. It was in 1909 that I first gave a definite shape to the results of my study of the Bengali language and its history, but certain eye troubles which began at about that time, interfered with the immediate completion of my plans. Three or four years later, after those troubles had ceased with the total loss of eye-sight, I turned to my materials again, and worked at them, till in 1917, not knowing what to do with these unpublished papers, I sent them at the instance of a friend, to the Hon'ble Sir Asutosh Mukerjee, President of the Council of Post-Graduate Teaching in Arts in the University of Calcutta to see if any use could be made of them in connection with that scientific study of the Vernacular, which had long been one of Sir Asutosh's cherished projects in his scheme of University reconstruction and extension. To my great surprise, not unmixed with thankfulness, I found myself called upon, months later, to deliver a course of lectures on the History of the Bengali Language, in the Post-Graduate Department in the University of Calcutta.
