The enormous variety of the languages and their dialects, which are spoken by the teeming millions inhabiting the Indian Sub-continent, bas led, during the past two centuries, to an ever-increasing recognition of this area as being a veritable paradise where more and more extensive and deeper and deeper synchronic studies could be instituted, most advantageously, for carrying on investigations into the different main aspects of languages, namely, monosyllabic, agglutinative and inflectional. This recognition was eloquently voiced forth in the form of a special resolution which was adopted by the Congress of Orientalists at its Vienna Session, held in 1885, urging the great need of a thoroughgoing linguistic survey of India being undertaken. This resolution was proposed by Buhler, seconded by Weber and further supported by a number of other eminent Indologists of the day including Barth, Bendall, Cowell, Cust, Grierson, Hoernle, Max Müller, Monier-Williams, Rost, Sayce and Sonart. Twelve years later, the Government of India undertook to have the said survey carried out and put Grierson in charge of the same.
The epoch-making Linguistic Survey of India, which Grierson produced, in due course, as a result of the said assignment, could with ample justification be described as having been the rock-foundation of all studies and researches carried on, during the past three quarters of a century, in the vast domain of Indian major languages and their innumerable dialects. By virtue of the short but self-contained discussions made in this book regarding the name, habitat, number of speakers, history, family relationship, literature, bibliography, pronunciation and grammar in respect of, practically, every language and main dialect of the Indian Sub-continent, Grierson has certainly made no "vain boast", in claiming that, "what has been done in it for India has been done for no other country in the world". After the gigantic materials had been collected for the purposes of this book and made ready for being gradually passed through the various stages of organisation and formulation, it was, issued, during the 25 years from 1903 to 1928 in 11 volumes, altogether sub-divided into 19 parts and running to nearly 10,000 pages.
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