h"
was in the Anglo-Norman kingdom in England in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. French was the language of the Anglo-Norman court
of London, as Persian of the court of Delhi or Agra; the Frenchified
King's English was the court form of the vernacular in England, as the
Persianised Hindustani in North India. It was this _lingua franca_ that
Europeans in India set themselves to acquire.

[Sidenote: Urdu literature]

Continuing the English parallel--the Hindustani of Delhi, the capital,
Persianised as the English of London was Frenchified, became the
recognised literary medium for North India. The special name _Urdu_,
however, has now superseded the term _Hindustani_, when we think of the
language as a literary medium. _Urdu_ is the name for literary
Hindustani; in the Calcutta University Calendar, for example, the name
_Hindustani_ never occurs.

[Sidenote: Hindi language and literature]

About the beginning of the nineteenth century another dialect of
Hindustani, called _Hindi_, also gained a literary standing. It contains
much less of Persian than Urdu does, leaning rather to Sanscrit; it is
written in the deva-nagari or Sanscrit character; is associated with
Hindus and with the eastern half of Hindustan; whereas Urdu is written
in the Persian character, and is associated with Mahomedans and the
western half of Hindustan.[32]

[Sidenote: The Brahmans]

Another series of terms are likewise a puzzle to the uninitiated. To
Westerns, the _brahmans_[33] are best known as the priests of the
Hindus; more correctly, however, the name _brahman_ signifies not the
performer of priestly duties, but the caste that possesses a monopoly of
the performance. The brahman caste is the Hindu _Tribe of Levi_. Every
accepted Hindu priest is a brahman, although it is far from being the
case that every brahman is a priest. As a matter of fact, at the Census
of 1901 it was found that the great majority of brahmans have turned
aside from their traditional calling. In Bengal proper, only about 16
per cent. of the brahmans were following priestly pursuits; in the
Madras Presidency, 11.4 per cent.; and in the Bombay Presidency, 22 per
cent.

[Sidenote: Brahmanism.]

_Brahmanism_ is being employed by a number of recent writers in place of
the older _Hinduism_. Sir Alfred Lyall uses _Brahmanism_ in that sense;
likewise Professor Menzies in his recent book, _Brahmanism and
Buddhism_. Sir Alfred Lyall's employment of the term _Brah