Gaurian

Gaurian, a general name for the Neo-Sanskritic languages of India, proposed by Professor Hoernle and accepted by Bishop Caldwell and other recent philologists. The five chief languages of the Gaurian group are Hindi, including Hindustani; Bengali; Uriya of Orissa; Gujarati; and Panjabi; and these are the Panch Gaura, or "five Gaurian tongues" of the natives. They are all derived from Sanskrit through intermediate Prakritic (vulgar) idioms by analytical processes and phonetic changes analogous to those by which the Romance (Neo-Latin) tongues flow from Latin. The oldest extant monument of a Gaurian language is the Chand Bardai, a Hindi poem by Prithiraja Raso, who flourished in the 12th century. (E. L. Brandreth, The Gaurian compared with the Romance Languages, in Jour. Asiatic Soc., August, 1879.)