The research project in connection with his D. Litt. dissertation on the Vedic grammatico-phonetic manuals (Pratisakhyas) had ha developed ped the the taste taste in the mind of Dr. Siddheshwar Varma for the study of Vedic Language and literature in general and its linguistic aspects in particular. The thorough study of Vedic language and afterwards his inclination entirely towards linguistic brought him the honour of being called in the literary world "a true lover of knowledge, the king of Indian linguistics and the founder of Hindi terminology". As one goes through the various types of works from the pen of Dr. Varma and comes across that Dr. Varma had a deep and sound knowledge of ten Indian languages and eleven European languages, everyone without any hesitation can assert that he was a linguist in real sense. In the field of linguistics his main endeavour was to explore the peculiarities of the non-literary languages and dialects. This was the reason that in the prime of his youth, he started on the most difficult and dangerous research expeditions to North-Western Himalayan regions at his own expenses for the collection of multifarious linguistic materials. In the series of these research expeditions Dr. Varma was enabled to reap the rich harvest in the form of some abstruse infor- mation of dialects of this area which were published from time to time through our Institute either in the form of books or research papers in Vishveshvaranand Indological Journal. He also discovered 27 dialects of which sixteen belong to Pahari group, six to Kashmiri and five to the Kangra valley region. He prepared the dictionaries of these dialects, having three parts according to the region and entrusted the same to Acharya Vishva Bandhu Ji, the Founder Director of V. V. R. I., as the Institute began to function as the "clearing house" for Dr. Varma voluminous literary writings.
The Institute could not take up this work for publication for a long period because of its very highly technical nature particularly the phonetic symbols used in the work. Now, with the advent of modern technology in the printing, the Institute ventured to undertake this work for publication, as the present work is of great historical importance.
Durign the period 1928-1942, the present writer had the apportunity to do some field work in a number of Kashmiri dialects, ranging from Kishtwar in the east to a village name Wampura, seven miles from Srinagar, as the sketch will indicate. The dialects intensively surveyed were two: (1) Dialect of the Banihal Pass. The informant was Abdul Aziz, resident of the village Darshipora, Tehsil Ramban, District Udhampur, (2) Dialect of the Kashmir vally rural areas. The informant was Harijan Nath Kol, resident of village Wampura, seven miles from Sringagar. Besides the above two main dialtcts, the dialect of Srinagar was also roughly surveryed from time to time. The following informants from this city may be mentioned :-(1) Shahbana, of Barzala, Srinagar, (2) Brij Kishen Kaul, (3) Pt. Dina Nath Mattoo. Though this last gentleman elucidated to the present writer only literary texts, ancient and modern he had the gift of discerning the sphere of Kashmiri words, specifiying the sphere to which a word belonged, e.g. whether it was purely colloquial, or purely literary, or confined only to certain speech-groups, as women of certain religious communities.
Besides Sringar, rapid surveys were made in some localities like the following (1) Balmat Kot. This village, situated in Riasii District, is a curious focus of two remarkable dialects, one pertaining to Pahari, the other to Kashmiri.
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