Chapter V: Preface (5)

The existence of such a language as the ancient idiom of the country, and the vehicle of a large literature, was known at all times; and if there are still any doubts, like those expressed by Dugald Stewart in his “Conjectures concerning the Origin of the Sanskrit,”(136) as to its age and authenticity, they will be best removed by a glance at the history of India, and at the accounts given by the writers of different nations that became successively acquainted with the language and literature of that country.

The argument that nearly all the names of persons and places in India mentioned by Greek and Roman writers are pure Sanskrit, has been handled so fully and ably by others, that nothing more remains to be said.

The next nation after the Greeks that became acquainted with the language and literature of India was the Chinese. Though Buddhism was not recognized as a third state-religion before the year 65 A. D., under the Emperor Ming-ti,(137) Buddhist missionaries reached China from India as early as the third century B. C. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese annals in the year 217; and about the year 120 B. C., a Chinese general, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of Buddha. The very name of Buddha, changed in Chinese into Fo-t’o and Fo,(138) is pure Sanskrit, and so is every word and every thought of that religion. The language which the Chinese pilgrims went to India to study, as the key to the sacred literature of Buddhism, was Sanskrit. They call it Fan; but Fan, as M. Stanislas Julien has shown, is an abbreviation of Fan-lan-mo, and this is the only way in which the Sanskrit Brahman could be rendered in Chinese.(139) We read of the Emperor Ming-ti, of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsaï-in and other high officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha. They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matânga and Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were translated by them into Chinese. The intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern continent of Asia continued uninterrupted for several centuries. Missions were sent from China to India to report on the religious, political, social, and geographical state of the country; and the chief object of interest, which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the Himalayan mountains, was the religion of Buddha. About 300 years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti, the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers to the travels of Fa-hian, who visited India towards the end of the fourth century. His travels were translated into French by A. Remusat. After Fa-hian, we have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in 518, by command of the empress, with the view of collecting sacred books and relics. Then followed Hiouen-thsang, whose life and travels, from 629-645, have been rendered so popular by the excellent translation of M. Stanislas Julien. After Hiouen-thsang the principal works of Chinese pilgrims are the Itineraries of the Fifty-six Monks, published in 730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head of 300 pilgrims.

That the language employed for literary purposes in India during all this time was Sanskrit, we learn, not only from the numerous names and religious and philosophical terms mentioned in the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, but from a short paradigm of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit which one of them (Hiouen-thsang) has inserted in his diary.

As soon as the Muhammedans entered India, we hear of translations of Sanskrit works into Persian and Arabic.(140) Harun-al-Rashid (786-809) had two Indians, Manka and Saleh, at his court as physicians. Manka translated the classical work on medicine, Suśruta, and a treatise on poisons, ascribed to Châņakya, from Sanskrit into Persian.(141) During the Chalifate of Al Mámúm, a famous treatise on Algebra was translated by Muhammed ben Musa from Sanskrit into Arabic (edited by F. Rosen).

About 1000 A. D., Abu Rihan al Birúni (born 970, died 1038) spent forty years in India, and composed his excellent work, the Taríkhu-l-Hind, which gives a complete account of the literature and sciences of the Hindus at that time. Al Birúni had been appointed by the Sultan of Khawarazm to accompany an embassy which he sent to Mahmud of Ghazni and Masud of Lahore. The learned Avicenna had been invited to join the same embassy, but had declined. Al Birúni must have acquired a complete knowledge of Sanskrit, for he not only translated one work on the Sânkhya, and another on the Yoga philosophy, from Sanskrit into Arabic, but likewise two works from Arabic into Sanskrit.(142)

About 1150 we hear of Abu Saleh translating a work on the education of kings from Sanskrit into Arabic.(143)

Two hundred years later, we are told that Firoz Shah, after the capture of Nagarcote, ordered several Sanskrit works on philosophy to be translated from Sanskrit by Maulána Izzu-d-din Khalid Khani. A work on veterinary medicine ascribed to Sálotar,(144) said to have been the tutor of Suśruta, was likewise translated from Sanskrit in the year 1381. A copy of it was preserved in the Royal Library of Lucknow.

Two hundred years more bring us to the reign of Akbar (1556-1605). A more extraordinary man never sat on the throne of India. Brought up as a Muhammedan, he discarded the religion of the Prophet as superstitious,(145) and then devoted himself to a search after the true religion. He called Brahmans and fire-worshippers to his court, and ordered them to discuss in his presence the merits of their religions with the Muhammedan doctors. When he heard of the Jesuits at Goa, he invited them to his capital, and he was for many years looked upon as a secret convert to Christianity. He was, however, a rationalist and deist, and never believed anything, as he declared himself, that he could not understand. The religion which he founded, the so-called Ilahi religion, was pure Deism mixed up with the worship of the sun(146) as the purest and highest emblem of the Deity. Though Akbar himself could neither read nor write,(147) his court was the home of literary men of all persuasions. Whatever book, in any language, promised to throw light on the problems nearest to the emperor’s heart, he ordered to be translated into Persian. The New Testament(148) was thus translated at his command; so were the Mahâbhârata, the Râmâyaņa, the Amarakosha,(149) and other classical works of Sanskrit literature. But though the emperor set the greatest value on the sacred writings of different nations, he does not seem to have succeeded in extorting from the Brahmans a translation of the Veda. A translation of the Atharva-veda(150) was made for him by Haji Ibrahim Sirhindi; but that Veda never enjoyed the same authority as the other three Vedas; and it is doubtful even whether by Atharva-veda is meant more than the Upanishads, some of which may have been composed for the special benefit of Akbar. There is a story which, though evidently of a legendary character, shows how the study of Sanskrit was kept up by the Brahmans during the reign of the Mogul emperors.

“Neither the authority (it is said) nor promises of Akbar could prevail upon the Brahmans to disclose the tenets of their religion: he was therefore obliged to have recourse to artifice. The stratagem he made use of was to cause an infant, of the name of _Feizi_, to be committed to the care of these priests, as a poor orphan of the sacerdotal line, who alone could be initiated into the sacred rites of their theology. Feizi, having received the proper instructions for the part he was to act, was conveyed privately to Benares, the seat of knowledge in Hindostan; he was received into the house of a learned Brahman, who educated him with the same care as if he had been his son. After the youth had spent ten years in study, Akbar was desirous of recalling him; but he was struck with the charms of the daughter of his preceptor. The old Brahman laid no restraint on the growing passion of the two lovers. He was fond of Feizi, and offered him his daughter in marriage. The young man, divided between love and gratitude, resolved to conceal the fraud no longer, and, falling at the feet of the Brahman, discovered the imposture, and asked pardon for his offences. The priest, without reproaching him, seized a poniard which hung at his girdle, and was going to plunge it in his heart, if Feizi had not prevented him by taking hold of his arm. The young man used every means to pacify him, and declared himself ready to do anything to expiate his treachery. The Brahman, bursting into tears, promised to pardon him on condition that he should swear never to translate the _Vedas_, or sacred volumes, or disclose to any person whatever the symbol of the Brahman creed. Feizi readily promised him: how far he kept his word is not known; but the sacred books of the Indians have never been translated.”(151)

We have thus traced the existence of Sanskrit, as the language of literature and religion of India, from the time of Alexander to the reign of Akbar. A hundred years after Akbar, the eldest son of Shah Jehan, the unfortunate Dárá, manifested the same interest in religious speculations which had distinguished his great grandsire. He became a student of Sanskrit, and translated the Upanishads, philosophical treatises appended to the Vedas, into Persian. This was in the year 1657, a year before he was put to death by his younger brother, the bigoted Aurengzebe. This prince’s translation was translated into French by Anquetil Duperron, in the year 1795, the fourth year of the French Republic; and was for a long time the principal source from which European scholars derived their knowledge of the sacred literature of the Brahmans.

At the time at which we have now arrived, the reign of Aurengzebe (1658-1707), the cotemporary and rival of Louis XIV., the existence of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature was known, if not in Europe generally, at least to Europeans in India, particularly to missionaries. Who was the first European, that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say. When Vasco de Gama landed at Calicut, on the 9th of May, 1498, Padre Pedro began at once to preach to the natives, and had suffered a martyr’s death before the discoverer of India returned to Lisbon. Every new ship that reached India brought new missionaries; but for a long time we look in vain in their letters and reports for any mention of Sanskrit or Sanskrit literature. Francis, now St. Francis Xavier, was the first to organize the great work of preaching the Gospel in India (1542); and such were his zeal and devotion, such his success in winning the hearts of high and low, that his friends ascribed to him, among other miraculous gifts, the gift of tongues(152)—a gift never claimed by St. Francis himself. It is not, however, till the year 1559 that we first hear of the missionaries at Goa studying, with the help of a converted Brahman,(153) the theological and philosophical literature of the country, and challenging the Brahmans to public disputations.

The first certain instance of a European missionary having mastered the difficulties of the Sanskrit language, belongs to a still later period,—to what may be called the period of Roberto de Nobili, as distinguished from the first period, which is under the presiding spirit of Francis Xavier. Roberto de Nobili went to India in 1606. He was himself a man of high family, of a refined and cultivated mind, and he perceived the more quickly the difficulties which kept the higher castes, and particularly the Brahmans, from joining the Christian communities formed at Madura and other places. These communities consisted chiefly of men of low rank, of no education, and no refinement. He conceived the bold plan of presenting himself as a Brahman, and thus obtaining access to the high and noble, the wise and learned, in the land. He shut himself up for years, acquiring in secret a knowledge, not only of Tamil and Telugu, but of Sanskrit. When, after a patient study of the language and literature of the Brahmans, he felt himself strong enough to grapple with his antagonists, he showed himself in public, dressed in the proper garb of the Brahmans, wearing their cord and their frontal mark, observing their diet, and submitting even to the complicated rules of caste. He was successful, in spite of the persecutions both of the Brahmans, who were afraid of him, and of his own fellow-laborers, who could not understand his policy. His life in India, where he died as an old blind man, is full of interest to the missionary. I can only speak of him here as the first European Sanskrit scholar. A man who could quote from Manu, from the Purâņas, and even from works such as the Âpastamba-sûtras, which are known even at present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda,(154) which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system which he came to conquer. It is surprising that the reports which he sent to Rome, in order to defend himself against the charge of idolatry, and in which he drew a faithful picture of the religion, the customs, and literature of the Brahmans, should not have attracted the attention of scholars. The “Accommodation Question,” as it was called, occupied cardinals and popes for many years; but not one of them seems to have perceived the extraordinary interest attaching to the existence of an ancient civilization so perfect and so firmly rooted as to require accommodation even from the missionaries of Rome. At a time when the discovery of one Greek MS. would have been hailed by all the scholars of Europe, the discovery of a complete literature was allowed to pass unnoticed. The day of Sanskrit had not yet come.

The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of European scholars to the extraordinary discovery that had been made were the French Jesuit missionaries, whom Louis XIV. had sent out to India after the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697.(155) Father Pons drew up a comprehensive account of the literary treasures of the Brahmans; and his report, dated Karikal (dans le Maduré), November 23, 1740, and addressed to Father Duhalde, was published in the “Lettres édifiantes.”(156) Father Pons gives in it a most interesting and, in general, a very accurate description of the various branches of Sanskrit literature,—of the four Vedas, the grammatical treatises, the six systems of philosophy, and the astronomy of the Hindus. He anticipated, on several points, the researches of Sir William Jones.

But, although the letter of Father Pons excited a deep interest, that interest remained necessarily barren, as long as there were no grammars, dictionaries, and Sanskrit texts to enable scholars in Europe to study Sanskrit in the same spirit in which they studied Greek and Latin. The first who endeavored to supply this want was a Carmelite friar, a German of the name of Johann Philip Wesdin, better known as Paulinus a Santo Bartholomeo. He was in India from 1776 to 1789; and he published the first grammar of Sanskrit at Rome, in 1790. Although this grammar has been severely criticised, and is now hardly ever consulted, it is but fair to bear in mind that the first grammar of any language is a work of infinitely greater difficulty than any later grammar.(157)

We have thus seen how the existence of the Sanskrit language and literature was known ever since India had first been discovered by Alexander and his companions. But what was not known was, that this language, as it was spoken at the time of Alexander, and at the time of Solomon, and for centuries before his time, was intimately related to Greek and Latin, in fact, stood to them in the same relation as French to Italian and Spanish. The history of what may be called European Sanskrit philology dates from the foundation of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, in 1784.(158) It was through the labors of Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins, Forster, Colebrooke, and other members of that illustrious Society, that the language and literature of the Brahmans became first accessible to European scholars; and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the literature, excited the deepest and most lasting interest. It was impossible to look, even in the most cursory manner, at the declensions and conjugations, without being struck by the extraordinary similarity, or, in some cases, by the absolute identity of the grammatical forms in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. As early as 1778, Halhed remarked, in the preface to his Grammar of Bengalí,(159) “I have been astonished to find this similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek; and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutuation of refined arts and improved manners might have occasionally introduced; but in the main groundwork of language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as could be first discriminated on the immediate dawn of civilization.” Sir William Jones (died 1794), after the first glance at Sanskrit, declared that whatever its antiquity, it was a language of most wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity. “No philologer,” he writes, “could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.”

But how was that affinity to be explained? People were completely taken by surprise. Theologians shook their heads; classical scholars looked sceptical; philosophers indulged in the wildest conjectures in order to escape from the only possible conclusion which could be drawn from the facts placed before them, but which threatened to upset their little systems of the history of the world. Lord Monboddo had just finished his great work(160) in which he derives all mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from a language originally framed by some Egyptian gods,(161) when the discovery of Sanskrit came on him like a thunder-bolt. It must be said, however, to his credit, that he at once perceived the immense importance of the discovery. He could not be expected to sacrifice his primæval monkeys or his Egyptian idols; but, with that reservation, the conclusions which he drew from the new evidence placed before him by his friend Mr. Wilkins, the author of one of our first Sanskrit grammars, are highly creditable to the acuteness of the Scotch judge. “There is a language,” he writes(162) (in 1792), “still existing, and preserved among the Bramins of India, which is a richer and in every respect a finer language than even the Greek of Homer. All the other languages of India have a great resemblance to this language, which is called the Shanscrit. But those languages are dialects of it, and formed from it, not the Shanscrit from them. Of this, and other particulars concerning this language, I have got such certain information from India, that if I live to finish my history of man, which I have begun in my third volume of ‘Antient Metaphysics,’ I shall be able clearly to prove that the Greek is derived from the Shanscrit, which was the antient language of Egypt, and was carried by the Egyptians into India, with their other arts, and into Greece by the colonies which they settled there.”

A few years later (1795) he had arrived at more definite views on the relation of Sanskrit to Greek; and he writes,(163) “Mr. Wilkins has proved to my conviction such a resemblance betwixt the Greek and the Shanscrit, that the one must be a dialect of the other, or both of some original language. Now the Greek is certainly not a dialect of the Shanscrit, any more than the Shanscrit is of the Greek. They must, therefore, be both dialects of the same language; and that language could be no other than the language of Egypt, brought into India by Osiris, of which, undoubtedly, the Greek was a dialect, as I think I have proved.”

Into these theories of Lord Monboddo’s on Egypt and Osiris, we need not inquire at present. But it may be of interest to give one other extract, in order to show how well, apart from his men with, and his monkeys without, tails, Lord Monboddo could sift and handle the evidence that was placed before him:—

“To apply these observations to the similarities which Mr. Wilkins has discovered betwixt the Shanscrit and the Greek;—I will begin with these words, which must have been original words in all languages, as the things denoted by them must have been known in the first ages of civility, and have got names; so that it is impossible that one language could have borrowed them from another, unless it was a derivative or dialect of that language. Of this kind are the names of numbers, of the members of the human body, and of relations, such as that of father, mother, and brother. And first, as to numbers, the use of which must have been coeval with civil society. The words in the Shanscrit for the numbers from one to ten are, _ek_, _dwee_, _tree_, _chatoor_, _panch_, _shat_, _sapt_, _aght_, _nava_, _das_, which certainly have an affinity to the Greek or Latin names for those numbers. Then they proceed towards twenty, saying ten and one, ten and two, and so forth, till they come to twenty; for their arithmetic is decimal as well as ours. Twenty they express by the word _veensatee_. Then they go on till they come to thirty, which they express by the word _treensat_, of which the word expressing three is part of the composition, as well as it is of the Greek and Latin names for those numbers. And in like manner they go on expressing forty, fifty, &c., by a like composition with the words expressing simple numerals, namely, four, five, &c., till they come to the number one hundred, which they express by _sat_, a word different from either the Greek or Latin name for that number. But, in this numeration, there is a very remarkable conformity betwixt the word in Shanscrit expressing twenty or twice ten, and the words in Greek and Latin expressing the same number; for in none of the three languages has the word any relation to the number two, which, by multiplying ten, makes twenty; such as the words expressing the numbers thirty, forty, &c., have to the words expressing three or four; for in Greek the word is _eikosi_, which expresses no relation to the number two; nor does the Latin _viginti_, but which appears to have more resemblance to the Shanscrit word _veensatee_. And thus it appears that in the anomalies of the two languages of Greek and Latin, there appears to be some conformity with the Shanscrit.”

Lord Monboddo compares the Sanskrit _pada_ with the Greek _pous_, _podos_; the Sanskrit _nâsa_ with the Latin _nasus_; the Sanskrit _deva_, god, with the Greek _Theos_ and Latin _deus_; the Sanskrit _ap_, water, with the Latin _aqua_; the Sanskrit _vidhavâ_ with the Latin _vidua_, widow. Sanskrit words such as _gonia_, for angle, _kentra_, for centre, _hora_, for hour, he points out as clearly of Greek origin, and imported into Sanskrit. He then proceeds to show the grammatical coincidences between Sanskrit and the classical languages. He dwells on compounds such as _tripada_, from _tri_, three, and _pada_, foot—a tripod; he remarks on the extraordinary fact that Sanskrit, like Greek, changes a positive into a negative adjective by the addition of the _a_ privative; and he then produces what he seems to consider as the most valuable present that Mr. Wilkins could have given him, namely, the Sanskrit forms, _asmi_, I am; _asi_, thou art; _asti_, he is; _santi_, they are; forms clearly of the same origin as the corresponding forms, _esmi_, _eis_, _esti_, in Greek, and _sunt_ in Latin.

Another Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, was much less inclined to yield such ready submission. No doubt it must have required a considerable effort for a man brought up in the belief that Greek and Latin were either aboriginal languages, or modifications of Hebrew, to bring himself to acquiesce in the revolutionary doctrine that the classical languages were intimately related to a jargon of mere savages; for such all the subjects of the Great Mogul were then supposed to be. However, if the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had been put together, after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch-forgers and liars the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition. I mention this fact, because it shows, better than anything else, how violent a shock was given by the discovery of Sanskrit to prejudices most deeply ingrained in the mind of every educated man. The most absurd arguments found favor for a time, if they could only furnish a loophole by which to escape from the unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The first who dared boldly to face both the facts and the conclusions of Sanskrit scholarship was the German poet, Frederick Schlegel. He had been in England during the peace of Amiens (1801-1802), and had learned a smattering of Sanskrit from Mr. Alexander Hamilton. After carrying on his studies for some time at Paris, he published, in 1808, his work, “On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians.” This work became the foundation of the science of language. Though published only two years after the first volume of Adelung’s “Mithridates,” it is separated from that work by the same distance which separates the Copernican from the Ptolemæan system. Schlegel was not a great scholar. Many of his statements have proved erroneous; and nothing would be easier than to dissect his essay and hold it up to ridicule. But Schlegel was a man of genius; and when a new science is to be created, the imagination of the poet is wanted, even more than the accuracy of the scholar. It surely required somewhat of poetic vision to embrace with _one_ glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and to rivet them together by the simple name of Indo-Germanic. This was Schlegel’s work; and in the history of the intellect, it has truly been called “the discovery of a new world.”

We shall see, in our next lecture, how Schlegel’s idea was taken up in Germany, and how it led almost immediately to a genealogical classification of the principal languages of mankind.

LECTURE V. GENEALOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.

We traced, in our last Lecture, the history of the various attempts at a classification of languages to the year 1808, the year in which Frederick Schlegel published his little work on “The Language and Wisdom of the Indians.” This work was like the wand of a magician. It pointed out the place where a mine should be opened; and it was not long before some of the most distinguished scholars of the day began to sink their shafts, and raise the ore. For a time, everybody who wished to learn Sanskrit had to come to England. Bopp, Schlegel, Lassen, Rosen, Burnouf, all spent some time in this country, copying manuscripts at the East-India House, and receiving assistance from Wilkins, Colebrooke, Wilson, and other distinguished members of the old Indian Civil Service. The first minute and scholar-like comparison of the grammar of Sanskrit with that of Greek and Latin, Persian, and German, was made by Francis Bopp, in 1816.(164) Other essays of his followed; and in 1833 appeared the first volume of his “Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Slavonic, Gothic, and German.” This work was not finished till nearly twenty years later, in 1852;(165) but it will form forever the safe and solid foundation of comparative philology. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the brother of Frederick Schlegel, used the influence which he had acquired as a German poet, to popularize the study of Sanskrit in Germany. His “Indische Bibliothek” was published from 1819 to 1830, and though chiefly intended for Sanskrit literature, it likewise contained several articles on Comparative Philology. This new science soon found a still more powerful patron in William von Humboldt, the worthy brother of Alexander von Humboldt, and at that time one of the leading statesmen in Prussia. His essays, chiefly on the philosophy of language, attracted general attention during his lifetime; and he left a lasting monument of his studies in his great work on the Kawi language, which was published after his death, in 1836. Another scholar who must be reckoned among the founders of Comparative Philology is Professor Pott, whose “Etymological Researches” appeared first in 1833 and 1836.(166) More special in its purpose, but based on the same general principles, was Grimm’s “Teutonic Grammar,” a work which has truly been called colossal. Its publication occupied nearly twenty years, from 1819 to 1837. We ought, likewise, to mention here the name of an eminent Dane, Erasmus Rask, who devoted himself to the study of the northern languages of Europe. He started, in 1816, for Persia and India, and was the first to acquire a knowledge of Zend, the language of the Zend-Avesta; but he died before he had time to publish all the results of his learned researches. He had proved, however, that the sacred language of the Parsis was closely connected with the sacred language of the Brahmans, and that, like Sanskrit, it had preserved some of the earliest formations of Indo-European speech. These researches into the ancient Persian language were taken up again by one of the greatest scholars that France ever produced, by Eugène Burnouf. Though the works of Zoroaster had been translated before by Anquetil Duperron, his was only a translation of a modern Persian translation of the original. It was Burnouf who, by means of his knowledge of Sanskrit and Comparative Grammar, deciphered for the first time the very words of the founder of the ancient religion of light. He was, likewise, the first to apply the same key with real success to the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes; and his premature death will long be mourned, not only by those who, like myself, had the privilege of knowing him personally and attending his lectures, but by all who have the interest of oriental literature and of real oriental scholarship at heart.

I cannot give here a list of all the scholars who followed in the track of Bopp, Schlegel, Humboldt, Grimm, and Burnouf. How the science of language has flourished and abounded may best be seen in the library of any comparative philologist. There has been for the last ten years a special journal of Comparative Philology in Germany. The Philological Society in London publishes every year a valuable volume of its transactions; and in almost every continental university there is a professor of Sanskrit who lectures likewise on Comparative Grammar and the science of language.

But why, it may naturally be asked, why should the discovery of Sanskrit have wrought so complete a change in the classificatory study of languages? If Sanskrit had been the primitive language of mankind, or at least the parent of Greek, Latin, and German, we might understand that it should have led to quite a new classification of these tongues. But Sanskrit does not stand to Greek, Latin, the Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic languages in the relation of Latin to French, Italian, and Spanish. Sanskrit, as we saw before, could not be called their parent, but only their elder sister. It occupies with regard to the classical languages a position analogous to that which Provençal occupies with regard to the modern Romance dialects. This is perfectly true; but it was exactly this necessity of determining distinctly and accurately the mutual relation of Sanskrit and the other members of the same family of speech, which led to such important results, and particularly to the establishment of the laws of phonetic change as the only safe means for measuring the various degrees of relationship of cognate dialects, and thus restoring the genealogical tree of human speech. When Sanskrit had once assumed its right position, when people had once become familiarized with the idea that there must have existed a language more primitive than Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, and forming the common background of these three, as well as of the Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic branches of speech, all languages seemed to fall by themselves into their right position. The key of the puzzle was found, and all the rest was merely a work of patience. The same arguments by which Sanskrit and Greek had been proved to hold co-ordinate rank were perceived to apply with equal strength to Latin and Greek; and after Latin had once been shown to be more primitive on many points than Greek, it was easy to see that the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the Slavonic languages also, contained each a number of formations which it was impossible to derive from Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin. It was perceived that all had to be treated as co-ordinate members of one and the same class.

The first great step in advance, therefore, which was made in the classification of languages, chiefly through the discovery of Sanskrit, was this, that scholars were no longer satisfied with the idea of a general relationship, but began to inquire for the different degrees of relationship in which each member of a class stood to another. Instead of mere _classes_, we hear now for the first time of well regulated _families_ of language.

A second step in advance followed naturally from the first. Whereas, for establishing in a general way the common origin of certain languages, a comparison of numerals, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and the most essential nouns and verbs, had been sufficient, it was soon found that a more accurate standard was required for measuring the more minute degrees of relationship. Such a standard was supplied by Comparative Grammar; that is to say, by an intercomparison of the grammatical forms of languages supposed to be related to each other; such intercomparison being carried out according to certain laws which regulate the phonetic changes of letters.

A glance at the modern history of language will make this clearer. There could never be any doubt that the so-called Romance languages, Italian, Wallachian, Provençal, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, were closely related to each other. Everybody could see that they were all derived from Latin. But one of the most distinguished French scholars, Raynouard, who has done more for the history of the Romance languages and literature than any one else, maintained that Provençal only was the daughter of Latin; whereas French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese were the daughters of Provençal. He maintained that Latin passed, from the seventh to the ninth century, through an intermediate stage, which he called Langue Romane, and which he endeavored to prove was the same as the Provençal of Southern France, the language of the Troubadours. According to him, it was only after Latin had passed through this uniform metamorphosis, represented by the Langue Romane or Provençal, that it became broken up into the various Romance dialects of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. This theory, which was vigorously attacked by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, and afterwards minutely criticised by Sir Cornewall Lewis, can only be refuted by a comparison of the Provençal grammar with that of the other Romance dialects. And here, if you take the auxiliary verb _to be_, and compare its forms in Provençal and French, you will see at once that, on several points, French has preserved the original Latin forms in a more primitive state than Provençal, and that, therefore, it is impossible to classify French as the daughter of Provençal, and as the granddaughter of Latin. We have in Provençal:—

_sem_, corresponding to the French _nous sommes_, _etz_, corresponding to the French _vous êtes_, _son_, corresponding to the French _ils sont_,

and it would be a grammatical miracle if crippled forms, such as _sem_, _etz_, and _son_, had been changed back again into the more healthy, more primitive, more Latin, _sommes_, _êtes_, _sont_; _sumus_, _estis_, _sunt_.

Let us apply the same test to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; and we shall see how their mutual genealogical position is equally determined by a comparison of their grammatical forms. It is as impossible to derive Latin from Greek, or Greek from Sanskrit, as it is to treat French as a modification of Provençal. Keeping to the auxiliary verb _to be_, we find that _I am_ is in

Sanskrit Greek Lithuanian _asmi_ _esmi_ _esmi_.

The root is _as_, the termination _mi_.

Now, the termination of the second person is _si_, which, together with _as_, or _es_, would make,

_as-si_ _es-si_ _es-si_.

But here Sanskrit, as far back as its history can be traced, has reduced _assi_ to _asi_; and it would be impossible to suppose that the perfect, or, as they are sometimes called, organic, forms in Greek and Lithuanian, _es-si_, could first have passed through the mutilated state of the Sanskrit _asi_.

The third person is the same in Sanskrit, Greek, and Lithuanian, _as-ti_ or _es-ti_; and, with the loss of the final _i_, we recognize the Latin _est_, Gothic _ist_, and Russian _est’_.

The same auxiliary verb can be made to furnish sufficient proof that Latin never could have passed through the Greek, or what used to be called the Pelasgic stage, but that both are independent modifications of the same original language. In the singular, Latin is less primitive than Greek; for _sum_ stands for _es-um_, _es_ for _es-is_, _est_ for _es-ti_. In the first person plural, too, _sumus_ stands for _es-umus_, the Greek _es-mes_, the Sanskrit _’smas_. The second person _es-tis_, is equal to Greek _es-te_, and more primitive than Sanskrit _stha_. But in the third person plural Latin is more primitive than Greek. The regular form would be _as-anti_; this, in Sanskrit, is changed into _santi_. In Greek, the initial _s_ is dropped, and the Æolic _enti_, is finally reduced to _eisi_. The Latin, on the contrary, has kept the radical _s_, and it would be perfectly impossible to derive the Latin _sunt_ from the Greek _eisi_.

I need hardly say that the modern English, _I am_, _thou art_, _he is_, are only secondary modifications of the same primitive verb. We find in Gothic—

_im_ for _ism_ _is_ for _iss_ _ist_.

The Anglo-Saxon changes the _s_ into _r_, thus giving—

_eom_ for _eorm_, plural _sind_ for _isind_. _eart_ for _ears_, plural _sind_ _is_ for _ist_, plural _sind_

By applying this test to all languages, the founders of comparative philology soon reduced the principal dialects of Europe and Asia to certain families, and they were able in each family to distinguish different branches, each consisting again of numerous dialects, both ancient and modern.

There are many languages, however, which as yet have not been reduced to families, and though there is no reason to doubt that some of them will hereafter be comprehended in a system of genealogical classification, it is right to guard from the beginning against the common, but altogether gratuitous supposition, that the principle of genealogical classification must be applicable to all. Genealogical classification is no doubt the most perfect of all classifications, but there are but few branches of physical science in which it can be carried out, except very partially. In the science of language, genealogical classification must rest chiefly on the formal or grammatical elements, which, after they have been affected by phonetic change, can be kept up only by a continuous tradition. We know that French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese must be derived from a common source, because they share grammatical forms in common, which none of these dialects could have supplied from their own resources, and which have no meaning, or, so to say, no life, in any one of them. The termination of the imperfect _ba_ in Spanish, _va_ in Italian, by which _canto_, I sing, is changed into _cantaba_ and _cantava_, has no separate existence, and no independent meaning in either of these modern dialects. It could not have been formed with the materials supplied by Spanish and Italian. It must have been handed down from an earlier generation in which this _ba_ had a meaning. We trace it back to Latin _bam_, in _cantabam_, and here it can be proved that _bam_ was originally an independent auxiliary verb, the same which exists in Sanskrit _bhavâmi_, and in the Anglo-Saxon _beom_, I am. Genealogical classification, therefore, applies properly only to decaying languages, to languages in which grammatical growth has been arrested, through the influence of literary cultivation; in which little new is added, everything old is retained as long as possible, and where what we call growth or history is nothing but the progress of phonetic corruption. But before languages decay, they have passed through a period of growth; and it seems to have been completely overlooked, that dialects which diverged during that early period, would naturally resist every attempt at genealogical classification. If you remember the manner in which, for instance, the plural was formed in Chinese and other languages examined by us in a former Lecture, you will see that where each dialect may choose its own term expressive of plurality, such as _heap_, _class_, _kind_, _flock_, _cloud_, &c., it would be unreasonable to expect similarity in grammatical terminations, after these terms have been ground down by phonetic corruption to mere exponents of plurality. But, on the other hand, it would by no means follow that therefore these languages had no common origin. Languages may have a common origin, and yet the words which they originally employed for marking case, number, person, tense, and mood, having been totally different, the grammatical terminations to which these words would gradually dwindle down could not possibly yield any results if submitted to the analysis of comparative grammar. A genealogical classification of such languages is, therefore, from the nature of the case, simply impossible, at least, if such classification is chiefly to be based on grammatical or formal evidence.

It might be supposed, however, that such languages, though differing in their grammatical articulation, would yet evince their common origin by the identity of their radicals or roots. No doubt, they will in many instances. They will probably have retained their numerals in common, some of their pronouns, and some of the commonest words of every-day life. But even here we must not expect too much, nor be surprised if we find even less than we expected. You remember how the names for father varied in the numerous Friesian dialects. Instead of _frater_, the Latin word for brother, you find _hermano_ in Spanish. Instead of _ignis_, the Latin word for fire, you have in French _feu_, in Italian, _fuoco_. Nobody would doubt the common origin of German and English; yet the English numeral “the first,” though preserved in _Fürst_, _prïnceps_, prince, is quite different from the German “Der Erste;” “the second” is quite different from “Der Zweite;” and there is no connection between the possessive pronoun _its_, and the German _sein_. This dialectical freedom works on a much larger scale in ancient and illiterate languages; and those who have most carefully watched the natural growth of dialects will be the least surprised that dialects which had the same origin should differ, not only in their grammatical framework, but likewise in many of those test-words which are very properly used for discovering the relationship of literary languages. How it is possible to say anything about the relationship of such dialects we shall see hereafter. For the present, it is sufficient if I have made it clear why the principle of genealogical classification is not of necessity applicable to all languages; and secondly, why languages, though they cannot be classified genealogically, need not therefore be supposed to have been different from the beginning. The assertion so frequently repeated that the impossibility of classing all languages genealogically proves the impossibility of a common origin of language, is nothing but a kind of scientific dogmatism, which, more than anything else, has impeded the free progress of independent research.

But let us see now how far the genealogical classification of languages has advanced, how many families of human speech have been satisfactorily established. Let us remember what suggested to us the necessity of a genealogical classification. We wished to know the original intention of certain words and grammatical forms in English, and we saw that before we could attempt to fathom the origin of such words as “I love,” and “I loved,” we should have to trace them back to their most primitive state. We likewise found, by a reference to the history of the Romance dialects, that words existing in one dialect had frequently been preserved in a more primitive form in another, and that, therefore, it was of the highest importance to bring ancient languages into the same genealogical connection by which French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are held together as the members of one family.

Beginning, therefore, with the living language of England, we traced it, without difficulty, to Anglo-Saxon. This carries us back to the seventh century after Christ, for it is to that date that Kemble and Thorpe refer the ancient English epic, the Beowulf. Beyond this we cannot go on English soil. But we know that the Saxons, the Angles, and Jutes came from the continent, and there their descendants, along the northern coast of Germany, still speak _Low-German_, or Nieder-Deutsch, which in the harbors of Antwerp, Bremen, and Hamburg, has been mistaken by many an English sailor for a corrupt English dialect. The Low-German comprehends many dialects in the north or the lowlands of Germany; but in Germany proper they are hardly ever used for literary purposes. The Friesian dialects are Low-German, so are the Dutch and Flemish. The Friesian had a literature of its own as early at least as the twelfth century, if not earlier.(167) The Dutch, which is still a national and literary language, though confined to a small area, can be traced back to literary documents of the sixteenth century. The Flemish, too, was at that time the language of the court of Flanders and Brabant, but has since been considerably encroached upon, though not yet extinguished, by the official languages of the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. The oldest literary document of Low-German on the Continent is the Christian epic, the _Heljand_ (Heljand = Heiland, the Healer or Saviour), which is preserved to us in two MSS. of the ninth century, and was written at that time for the benefit of the newly converted Saxons. We have traces of a certain amount of literature in Saxon or Low-German from that time onward through the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. But little only of that literature has been preserved; and, after the translation of the Bible by Luther into High-German, the fate of Low-German literature was sealed.

The literary language of Germany is, and has been ever since the days of Charlemagne, the _High-German_. It is spoken in various dialects all over Germany.(168) Its history may be traced through three periods. The present, or New High-German period dates from Luther; the Middle High-German period extends from Luther backwards to the twelfth century; the Old High-German period extends from thence to the seventh century.

Thus we see that we can follow the High-German, as well as the Low-German branch of Teutonic speech, back to about the seventh century after Christ. We must not suppose that before that time there was _one_ common Teutonic language spoken by all German tribes, and that it afterwards diverged into two streams,—the High and Low. There never was a common, uniform, Teutonic language; nor is there any evidence to show that there existed at any time a uniform High-German or Low-German language, from which all High-German and Low-German dialects are respectively derived. We cannot derive Anglo-Saxon, Friesian, Flemish, Dutch, and Platt-Deutsch from the ancient Low-German, which is preserved in the continental Saxon of the ninth century. All we can say is this, that these various Low-German dialects in England, Holland, Friesia, and Lower Germany, passed at different times through the same stages, or, so to say, the same latitudes of grammatical growth. We may add that, with every century that we go back, the convergence of these dialects becomes more and more decided; but there is no evidence to justify us in admitting the historical reality of _one_ primitive and uniform Low-German language from which they were all derived. This is a mere creation of grammarians who cannot understand a multiplicity of dialects without a common type. They would likewise demand the admission of a primitive High-German language, as the source, not only of the literary Old, Middle, and Modern High-German, but likewise of all the local dialects of Austria, Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia. And they would wish us to believe that, previous to the separation into High and Low German, there existed one complete Teutonic language, as yet neither High nor Low, but containing the germs of both. Such a system may be convenient for the purposes of grammatical analysis, but it becomes mischievous as soon as these grammatical abstractions are invested with an historical reality. As there were families, clans, confederacies, and tribes, before there was a nation; so there were dialects before there was a language. The grammarian who postulates an historical reality for the one primitive type of Teutonic speech, is no better than the historian who believes in a _Francus_, the grandson of Hector, and the supposed ancestor of all the Franks, or in a _Brutus_, the mythical father of all the Britons. When the German races descended, one after the other, from the Danube and from the Baltic, to take possession of Italy and the Roman provinces,—when the Goths, the Lombards, the Vandals, the Franks, the Burgundians, each under their own kings, and with their own laws and customs, settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain, to act their several parts in the last scene of the Roman tragedy,—we have no reason to suppose that they all spoke one and the same dialect. If we possessed any literary documents of those ancient German races, we should find them all dialects again, some with the peculiarities of High, others with those of Low, German. Nor is this mere conjecture: for it so happens that, by some fortunate accident, the dialect of one at least of those ancient German races has been preserved to us in the Gothic translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilas.

I must say a few words on this remarkable man. The accounts of ecclesiastical historians with regard to the date and the principal events in the life of Ulfilas are very contradictory. This is partly owing to the fact that Ulfilas was an Arian bishop, and that the accounts which we possess of him come from two opposite sides, from Arian and Athanasian writers. Although in forming an estimate of his character it would be necessary to sift this contradictory evidence, it is but fair to suppose that, when dates and simple facts in the life of the Bishop have to be settled, his own friends had better means of information than the orthodox historians. It is, therefore, from the writings of his own co-religionists that the chronology and the historical outline of the Bishop’s life should be determined.

The principal writers to be consulted are Philostorgius, as preserved by Photius, and Auxentius, as preserved by Maximinus in a MS. lately discovered by Professor Waitz(169) in the Library at Paris. (Supplement. Latin. No. 594.) This MS. contains some writings of Hilarius, the two first books of Ambrosius De fide, and the acts of the Council of Aquileja (381). On the margin of this MS. Maximinus repeated the beginning of the acts of the Council of Aquileja, adding remarks of his own in order to show how unfairly Palladius had been treated in that council by Ambrose. He jotted down his own views on the Arian controversy, and on fol. 282, seq., he copied an account of Ulfilas written by Auxentius, the bishop of Dorostorum (Silistria on the Danube), a pupil of Ulfilas. This is followed again by some dissertations of Maximinus, and on foll. 314-327, a treatise addressed to Ambrose by a Semi-arian, a follower of Eusebius, possibly by Prudentius himself, was copied and slightly abbreviated for his own purposes by Maximinus.