In submitting my Grammar of the Pukkhto or Pukshto language to the notice of the public, it is necessary that I should offer a few words of explanation as to the object of the work, and the reasons that have induced me to publish it. During ten years’ service, more or less continuously on the Trans-Indus Frontier of British India, it has often occurred to me as a notable fact, that comparatively very few of the Frontier officials possessed any knowledge of the language of the people they ruled, or at all events, amongst whom they dwelt. And this the more so, as the Pukkhto Works of Vaughan and Raverty has already appeared, and for the past decade, at least, have been well known to Frontier officers. But, notwithstanding the aid to be derived from these Works in the study of the language of the Afghans, the number of Pukkhto-speaking officers is, nevertheless, at the present time very small, though, in all probability, greater now than at any preceding period since our tenure of the Trans-Indus States.
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