The Indo-Aryan language family is a branch of the Indo-European phylum, and includes Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Gujarati. First published in 1875, this three-volume comparative grammar of the family was written by the British civil servant John Beames (1837-1902). From 1866 he spent twelve years in India, during which he gathered data for what he intended to be the first comprehensive and accurate Indo-Aryan grammar. Volume 1 focuses on phonetics and phonology, Volume 2, on nouns and pronouns, and Volume 3, on verbs. Beames' findings remain central to the work of general linguists, grammarians and language typologists.