Page 29 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

1.3.1 Traditional approach
Beames (1868), Grierson (1883; 1884a-b and 1903), Nirbhik (1975), Ojha

(1982), Marhé (1985), Tripathy (1987), Awadhut (1994), Srivastava (1999), Ashk et
al. (2002-3), Anjoria (2004a and b), Vairagi (2004), Lohar (2006), Sharma and Ashk
(2007) and Buddhoo (2011) have almost based their description and analysis of the

Bhojpuri grammar on traditional model. The grammars of Bhojpuri presented on this
model by different grammarians have roughly the following common characteristics:

(a) Bhojpuri is treated as a dialect of either Hindi (Beames, 1868) or Bihari
(Grierson, 1883) preliminarily, but as an independent language by other

grammarians later.
(b) The geographical boundary of the Bhojpuri natives' territory is surveyed by

Beames (1868) and Grierson (1883 and 1903) to a greater extent within India.
(c) Grammar is primarily based on Sanskrit tradition in terms of writing system,
description of parts of speech, case-marking system and other grammatical

items.
(d) Grammar is prescriptive as footprints of the language to use it in purity.

(e) The grammar is mainly classified in terms of phonology and morphology.
As these studies are preliminary and traditional, they certainly have some limitations

as follows:
(a) Bhojpuri is neither dialect of Hindi nor of Bihari. It has now become the third

national language of Nepal and an independent language in the world arena.
(b) What Bhojpuri natives' territory has been traced out, it lacks Nepalese
territory.

(c) Though Bhojpuri has a great affinity with Sanskrit, it is doubtful whether it
has been a Sanskrit descendent. Grierson (1883) suggests that Sanskrit cannot

be called as the origin of vernaculars of India as Sanskrit and Prakrit were the
languages from the same origin but in literary and spoken forms and that each
of the two influenced the other. That is why, tʌtsʌmʌ and tʌdb ̤ ʌvʌ are not from

the same sources but from Sanskrit and Prakrit respectively in the separate
forms from the very beginning. In this way, it is not Prakrit only that has

cultivations of Sanskrit but also the vice versa: ɡeɦʌ from Prakrit is found to
be used at the place of ɡriɦʌ in Sanskrit for 'house' (Grierson, 1883:4). So,

grammar of Bhojpuri should be written in its own way.

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