Lecture IV. The Classificatory Stage.
We traced, in our last lecture, the origin and progress of the empirical study of languages from the time of Plato and Aristotle to our own school-boy days. We saw at what time, and under what circumstances, the first grammatical analysis of language took place; how its component parts, the parts of speech, were named, and how, with the aid of a terminology, half philosophical and half empirical, a system of teaching languages was established, which, whatever we may think of its intrinsic value, has certainly answered that purpose for which it was chiefly intended.
Considering the process by which this system of grammatical science was elaborated, it could not be expected to give us an insight into the nature of language. The division into nouns and verbs, articles and conjunctions, the schemes of declension and conjugation, were a merely artificial network thrown over the living body of language. We must not look in the grammar of Dionysius Thrax for a correct and well-articulated skeleton of human speech. It is curious, however, to observe the striking coincidences between the grammatical terminology of the Greeks and the Hindús, which would seem to prove that there must be some true and natural foundation for the much-abused [pg 116] grammatical system of the schools. The Hindús are the only nation that cultivated the science of grammar without having received any impulse, directly or indirectly, from the Greeks. Yet we find in Sanskrit too the same system of cases, called vibhakti, or inflections, the active, passive, and middle voices, the tenses, moods, and persons, divided not exactly, but very nearly, in the same manner as in Greek.[100] In Sanskrit, grammar is called vyâkaraņa, which means analysis or taking to pieces. As Greek grammar owed its origin to the critical study of Homer, Sanskrit grammar arose from the study of the Vedas, the most ancient poetry of the Brahmans. The differences between the dialect of these sacred hymns and the literary Sanskrit of later ages were noted and preserved with a religious care. We still possess the first essays in the grammatical science of the Brahmans, the so-called prâtiśâkhyas. These works, though they merely profess to give rules on the proper pronunciation of the ancient dialect of the Vedas, furnish us at the same time with observations of a grammatical character, and particularly with those valuable lists of words, irregular or in any other way remarkable, the Gaņas. These supplied that solid basis on which successive generations of scholars erected the astounding structure that reached its perfection in the grammar of Pâņini. There is no form, regular or irregular, in the whole Sanskrit language, which is not provided for in the grammar of Pâņini and his commentators. It is the perfection of a merely empirical analysis of language, unsurpassed, nay even unapproached, by anything in the grammatical literature of other nations. Yet of [pg 117] the real nature, and natural growth of language, it teaches us nothing.
What then do we know of language after we have learnt the grammar of Greek or Sanskrit, or after we have transferred the network of classical grammar to our own tongue?
We know certain forms of language which correspond to certain forms of thought. We know that the subject must assume the form of the nominative, the object that of the accusative. We know that the more remote object may be put in the dative, and that the predicate, in its most general form, may be rendered by the genitive. We are taught that whereas in English the genitive is marked by a final s, or by the preposition of, it is in Greek expressed by a final ος, in Latin by is. But what this ος and is represent, why they should have the power of changing a nominative into a genitive, a subject into a predicate, remains a riddle. It is self-evident that each language, in order to be a language, must be able to distinguish the subject from the object, the nominative from the accusative. But how a mere change of termination should suffice to convey so material a distinction would seem almost incomprehensible. If we look for a moment beyond Greek and Latin, we see that there are in reality but few languages which have distinct forms for these two categories of thought. Even in Greek and Latin there is no outward distinction between the nominative and accusative of neuters. The Chinese language, it is commonly said, has no grammar at all, that is to say, it has no inflections, no declension and conjugation, in our sense of these words; it makes no formal distinction of the various parts of speech, noun, [pg 118] verb, adjective, adverb, &c. Yet there is no shade of thought that cannot be rendered in Chinese. The Chinese have no more difficulty in distinguishing between “James beats John,” and “John beats James,” than the Greeks and Romans or we ourselves. They have no termination for the accusative, but they attain the same by always placing the subject before, and the object after the verb, or by employing words, before or after the noun, which clearly indicate that it is to be taken as the object of the verb.[101] There are other languages [pg 119] which have more terminations even than Greek and Latin. In Finnish there are fifteen cases, expressive of every possible relation between the subject and the object; but there is no accusative, no purely objective case. In English and French the distinctive terminations of the nominative and accusative have been worn off by phonetic corruption, and these languages are obliged, like Chinese, to mark the subject and object by the collocation of words. What we learn therefore at school in being taught that rex in the nominative becomes regem in the accusative, is simply a practical rule. We know when to say rex, and when to say regem. But why the king as a subject should be called rex, and as an object regem, remains entirely [pg 120] unexplained. In the same manner we learn that amo means I love, amavi I loved; but why that tragical change from love to no love should be represented by the simple change of o to avi, or, in English, by the addition of a mere d, is neither asked nor answered.
Now if there is a science of language, these are the questions which it will have to answer. If they cannot be answered, if we must be content with paradigms and rules, if the terminations of nouns and verbs must be looked upon either as conventional contrivances or as mysterious excrescences, there is no such thing as a science of language, and we must be satisfied with what has been called the art (τέχνη) of language, or grammar.
Before we either accept or decline the solution of any problem, it is right to determine what means there are for solving it. Beginning with English we should ask, what means have we for finding out why I love should mean I am actually loving, whereas I loved indicates that that feeling is past and gone? Or, if we look to languages richer in inflections than English, by what process can we discover under what circumstances amo, I love, was changed, through the mere addition of an r, into amor, expressing no longer I love, but I am loved? Did declensions and conjugations bud forth like the blossoms of a tree? Were they imparted to man ready made by some mysterious power? Or did some wise people invent them, assigning certain letters to certain phases of thought, as mathematicians express unknown quantities by freely chosen algebraic exponents? We are here brought at once face to face with the highest and most difficult problem of our science, the origin of language. But it will be well [pg 121] for the present to turn our eyes away from theories, and fix our attention at first entirely on facts.
Let us keep to the English perfect, I loved, as compared with the present, I love. We cannot embrace at once the whole English grammar, but if we can track one form to its true lair, we shall probably have no difficulty in digging out the rest of the brood. Now, if we ask how the addition of a final d could express the momentous transition from being in love to being indifferent, the first thing we have to do, before attempting any explanation, would be to establish the earliest and most original form of I loved. This is a rule which even Plato recognized in his philosophy of language, though, we must confess, he seldom obeyed it. We know what havoc phonetic corruption may make both in the dictionary and the grammar of a language, and it would be a pity to waste our conjectures on formations which a mere reference to the history of language would suffice to explain. Now a very slight acquaintance with the history of the English language teaches us that the grammar of modern English is not the same as the grammar of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's English again may be traced back to what, with Sir Frederick Madden, we may call Middle English, from 1500 to 1330; Middle English to Early English, from 1330 to 1230; Early English to Semi-Saxon from 1230 to 1100; and Semi-Saxon to Anglo-Saxon.[102] It is evident that if we are to discover the original intention of the syllable which changes I love into I loved, we must consult the original form of that syllable wherever we can find it. We should never [pg 122] have known that priest meant originally an elder, unless we had traced it back to its original form presbyter, in which a Greek scholar at once recognizes the comparative of presbys, old. If left to modern English alone, we might attempt to connect priest with praying or preaching, but we should not thus arrive at its true derivation. The modern word Gospel conveys no meaning at all. As soon as we trace it back to the original Goddspell, we see that it is a literal translation of Evangelium, or good news, good tidings.[103] Lord would be nothing but an empty title in English, unless we could discover its original form and meaning in the Anglo-Saxon hlafford, meaning a giver of bread, from hlaf, a loaf, and ford, to give.
But even after this is done, after we have traced a modern English word back to Anglo-Saxon, it follows by no means that we should there find it in its original form, or that we should succeed in forcing it to disclose its original intention. Anglo-Saxon is not an original or aboriginal language. It points by its very name to the Saxons and Angles of the continent. We have, therefore, to follow our word from Anglo-Saxon through the various Saxon and Low-German dialects, till we arrive at last at the earliest stage of German which is within our reach, the Gothic of the fourth century after Christ. Even here we cannot rest. For, although we cannot trace Gothic back to any earlier Teutonic language, we see at once that Gothic, too, is a modern language, and that it must have passed [pg 123] through numerous phases of growth before it became what it is in the mouth of Bishop Ulfilas.
What then are we to do?—We must try to do what is done when we have to deal with the modern Romance languages. If we could not trace a French word back to Latin, we should look for its corresponding form in Italian, and endeavor to trace the Italian to its Latin source. If, for instance, we were doubtful about the origin of the French word for fire, feu, we have but to look to the Italian fuoco, in order to see at once that both fuoco and feu are derived from the Latin focus. We can do this, because we know that French and Italian are cognate dialects, and because we have ascertained beforehand the exact degree of relationship in which they stand to each other. Had we, instead of looking to Italian, looked to German for an explanation of the French feu, we should have missed the right track; for the German feuer, though more like feu than the Italian fuoco, could never have assumed in French the form feu.
Again, in the case of the preposition hors, which in French means without, we can more easily determine its origin after we have found that hors corresponds with the Italian fuora, the Spanish fuera. The French fromage, cheese, derives no light from Latin. But as soon as we compare the Italian formaggio,[104] we see that formaggio and fromage are derived from forma; cheese being made in Italy by keeping the milk in small baskets or forms. Feeble, the French faible, is clearly derived from Latin; but it is not till we see the Italian fievole that we are reminded of the Latin flebilis, tearful. We should never have found the etymology, [pg 124] that is to say the origin, of the French payer, the English to pay, if we did not consult the dictionary of the cognate dialects, such as Italian and Spanish. Here we find that to pay is expressed in Italian by pagare, in Spanish by pagar, whereas in Provençal we actually find the two forms pagar and payar. Now pagar clearly points back to Latin pacare, which means to pacify, to appease. To appease a creditor meant to pay him; in the same manner as une quittance, a quittance or receipt, was originally quietantia, a quieting, from quietus, quiet.
If, therefore, we wish to follow up our researches,—if, not satisfied with having traced an English word back to Gothic, we want to know what it was at a still earlier period of its growth,—we must determine whether there are any languages that stand to Gothic in the same relation in which Italian and Spanish stand to French;—we must restore, as far as possible, the genealogical tree of the various families of human speech. In doing this we enter on the second or classificatory stage of our science; for genealogy, where it is applicable, is the most perfect form of classification.
Before we proceed to examine the results which have been obtained by the recent labors of Schlegel, Humboldt, Bopp, Burnouf, Pott, Benfey, Prichard, Grimm, Kuhn, Curtius, and others in this branch of the science of language, it will be well to glance at what had been achieved before their time in the classification of the numberless dialects of mankind.
The Greeks never thought of applying the principle of classification to the varieties of human speech. They only distinguished between Greek on one side, [pg 125] and all other languages on the other, comprehended under the convenient name of “Barbarous.” They succeeded, indeed, in classifying four of their own dialects with tolerable correctness,[105] but they applied the term “barbarous” so promiscuously to the other more distant relatives of Greek, (the dialects of the Pelasgians, Carians, Macedonians, Thracians, and Illyrians,) that, for the purposes of scientific classification, it is almost impossible to make any use of the statements of ancient writers about these so-called barbarous idioms.[106]
Plato, indeed, in his Cratylus (c. 36), throws out a hint that the Greeks might have received their own words from the barbarians, the barbarians being older than the Greeks. But he was not able to see the full bearing of this remark. He only points out that some words, such as the names of fire, water, and dog, were the same in Phrygian and Greek; and he supposes that the Greeks borrowed them from the Phrygians (c. 26). The idea that the Greek language and that of the barbarians could have had a common source never entered his mind. It is strange that even so comprehensive a mind as that of Aristotle should have failed to perceive in languages some of that law and order which he tried to discover in every realm of nature. As Aristotle, however, did not attempt this, we need not wonder that it was not attempted by any one else for the next two thousand years. The Romans, in all scientific [pg 127] matters, were merely the parrots of the Greeks. Having themselves been called barbarians, they soon learnt to apply the same name to all other nations, except, of course, to their masters, the Greeks. Now barbarian is one of those lazy expressions which seem to say everything but in reality say nothing. It was applied as recklessly as the word heretic during the Middle Ages. If the Romans had not received this convenient name of barbarian ready made for them, they would have treated their neighbors, the Celts and Germans, with more respect and sympathy: they would, at all events, have looked at them with a more discriminating eye. And, if they had done so, they would have discovered, in spite of outward differences, that these barbarians were, after all, not very distant cousins. There was as much similarity between the language of Cæsar and the barbarians against whom he fought in Gaul and Germany as there was between his language and that of Homer. A man of Cæsar's sagacity would have seen this, if he had not been blinded by traditional phraseology. I am not exaggerating. For let us look at one instance only. If we take a verb of such constant occurrence as to have, we shall find the paradigms almost identical in Latin and Gothic:—
I have in Latin is habeo, in Gothic haba.
Thou hast in Latin is habes, in Gothic habais.
He has in Latin is habet, in Gothic habaiþ.
We have in Latin is habemus, in Gothic habam.
You have in Latin is habetis, in Gothic habaiþ.
They have in Latin is habent, in Gothic habant.
It surely required a certain amount of blindness, or rather of deafness, not to perceive such similarity, and [pg 128] that blindness or deafness arose, I believe, entirely from the single word barbarian. Not till that word barbarian was struck out of the dictionary of mankind, and replaced by brother, not till the right of all nations of the world to be classed as members of one genus or kind was recognized, can we look even for the first beginnings of our science. This change was effected by Christianity. To the Hindú, every man not twice-born was a Mlechha; to the Greek, every man not speaking Greek was a barbarian; to the Jew, every person not circumcised was a Gentile; to the Mohammedan, every man not believing in the prophet is a Giaur or Kaffir. It was Christianity which first broke down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, between Greek and barbarian, between the white and the black. Humanity is a word which you look for in vain in Plato or Aristotle; the idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, is a science which, without Christianity, would never have sprung into life. When people had been taught to look upon all men as brethren, then, and then only, did the variety of human speech present itself as a problem that called for a solution in the eyes of thoughtful observers; and I, therefore, date the real beginning of the science of language from the first day of Pentecost. After that day of cloven tongues a new light is spreading over the world, and objects rise into view which had been hidden from the eyes of the nations of antiquity. Old words assume a new meaning, old problems a new interest, old sciences a new purpose. The common origin of mankind, the differences of race and language, the susceptibility of [pg 129] all nations of the highest mental culture, these become, in the new world in which we live, problems of scientific, because of more than scientific, interest. It is no valid objection that so many centuries should have elapsed before the spirit which Christianity infused into every branch of scientific inquiry produced visible results. We see in the oaken fleet which rides the ocean the small acorn which was buried in the ground hundreds of years ago, and we recognize in the philosophy of Albertus Magnus,[107] though nearly 1200 years after the death of Christ, in the aspirations of Kepler,[108] and in the researches of the greatest philosophers of our own age, the sound of that key-note of thought which had been struck for the first time by the apostle of the [pg 130] Gentiles:[109] “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.”
But we shall see that the science of language owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded “to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian Church. Translations of the Lord's Prayer or of the Bible into every dialect of the world, form even now the most valuable materials for the comparative philologist. As long as the number of known languages was small, the idea of [pg 131] classification hardly suggested itself. The mind must be bewildered by the multiplicity of facts before it has recourse to division. As long as the only languages studied were Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, the simple division into sacred and profane, or classical and oriental, sufficed. But when theologians extended their studies to Arabic, Chaldee, and Syriac, a step, and a very important step, was made towards the establishment of a class or family of languages.[110] No one could help seeing that these languages [pg 132] were most intimately related to each other, and that they differed from Greek and Latin on all points on which they agreed among themselves. As early as 1606 we find Guichard,[111] in his “Harmonie Etymologique,” placing Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac as a class of languages by themselves, and distinguishing besides between the Romance and Teutonic dialects.
What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of language was the idea that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. The fathers of the Church never expressed any doubt on this point. St. Jerome, in one of his epistles to Damasus,[112] writes: “the whole of antiquity (universa antiquitas) affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech.” Origen, in his eleventh Homily on the book of Numbers, expresses his belief that the Hebrew language, originally [pg 133] given through Adam, remained in that part of the world which was the chosen portion of God, not left like the rest to one of His angels.[113] When, therefore, the first attempts at a classification of languages were made, the problem, as it presented itself to scholars such as Guichard and Thomassin, was this: “As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek, and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”
It is astonishing what an amount of real learning and ingenuity was wasted on this question during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It finds, perhaps, but one parallel in the laborious calculations and constructions of early astronomers, who had to account for the movements of the heavenly bodies, always taking it for granted that the earth must be the fixed centre of our planetary system. But, although we know now that the labors of such scholars as Thomassin were, and could not be otherwise than fruitless, it would be a most discouraging view to take of the progress of the human race, were we to look upon the exertions of eminent men in former ages, though they may have been in a wrong direction, as mere vanity and vexation of spirit. We must not forget that the very fact of the failure of such men contributed powerfully to a general conviction that there must be something wrong in the problem itself, till at last a bolder genius inverted the problem and thereby solved it. When books after books had been [pg 134] written to show how Greek and Latin and all other languages were derived from Hebrew,[114] and when not one single system proved satisfactory, people asked at last—“Why then should all languages be derived from Hebrew?”—and this very question solved the problem. It might have been natural for theologians in the fourth and fifth centuries, many of whom knew neither Hebrew nor any language except their own, to take it for granted that Hebrew was the source of all languages, but there is neither in the Old nor the New Testament a single word to necessitate this view. Of the language of Adam we know nothing; but if Hebrew, as we know it, was one of the languages that sprang from the confusion of tongues at Babel, it could not well have been the language of Adam or of the whole earth, “when the whole earth was still of one speech.”[115]
Although, therefore, a certain advance was made towards a classification of languages by the Semitic scholars of the seventeenth century, yet this partial advance became in other respects an impediment. The purely scientific interest in arranging languages according to their characteristic features was lost sight of, and erroneous ideas were propagated, the influence of which has even now not quite subsided.
The first who really conquered the prejudice that [pg 135] Hebrew was the source of all language was Leibniz, the cotemporary and rival of Newton. “There is as much reason,” he said, “for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp, in 1580, to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.”[116] In a letter to Tenzel, Leibniz writes: “To call Hebrew the primitive language, is like calling branches of a tree primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead of trees. Such ideas may be conceived, but they do not agree with the laws of nature, and with the harmony of the universe, that is to say with the Divine Wisdom.”[117]
But Leibniz did more than remove this one great stumbling-block from the threshold of the science of language. He was the first to apply the principle of sound inductive reasoning to a subject which before him had only been treated at random. He pointed [pg 136] out the necessity of collecting, first of all, as large a number of facts as possible.[118] He appealed to missionaries, travellers, ambassadors, princes, and emperors, to help him in a work which he had so much at heart. The Jesuits in China had to work for him. Witsen,[119] the traveller, sent him a most precious present, a translation of the Lord's Prayer into the jargon of the Hottentots. “My friend,” writes Leibniz in thanking him, “remember, I implore you, and remind your Muscovite friends, to make researches in order to procure specimens of the Scythian languages, the Samoyedes, Siberians, Bashkirs, Kalmuks, Tungusians, and others.” Having made the acquaintance of Peter the Great, Leibniz wrote to him the following letter, dated Vienna, October the 26th, 1713:—
“I have suggested that the numerous languages, hitherto almost entirely unknown and unstudied, which are current in the empire of your Majesty and on its frontiers, should be reduced to writing; also that dictionaries, or at least small vocabularies, should be collected, and translations be procured in such languages of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostolic Symbolum, and other parts of the Catechism, [pg 137] ut omnis lingua laudet Dominum. This would increase the glory of your Majesty, who reigns over so many nations, and is so anxious to improve them; and it would, likewise, by means of a comparison of languages, enable us to discover the origin of those nations who from Scythia, which is subject to your Majesty, advanced into other countries. But principally it would help to plant Christianity among the nations speaking those dialects, and I have, therefore, addressed the Most Rev. Metropolitan on the same subject.”[120]
Leibniz drew up a list of the most simple and necessary terms which should be selected for comparison in various languages. At home, while engaged in historical researches, he collected whatever could throw light on the origin of the German language, and he encouraged others, such as Eccard, to do the same. He pointed out the importance of dialects, and even of provincial and local terms, for elucidating the etymological structure of languages.[121] Leibniz never undertook a systematic classification of the whole realm of language, nor was he successful in classing the dialects with which he had become acquainted. He distinguished between a Japhetic and Aramaic class, the former occupying the north, the latter the south, of the continent of Asia and Europe. He believed in a common origin of languages, and in a migration of the human race from east to west. But he failed to distinguish [pg 138] the exact degrees of relationship in which languages stood to each other, and he mixed up some of the Turanian dialects, such as Finnish and Tataric, with the Japhetic family of speech. If Leibniz had found time to work out all the plans which his fertile and comprehensive genius conceived, or if he had been understood and supported by cotemporary scholars, the science of language, as one of the inductive sciences, might have been established a century earlier. But a man like Leibniz, who was equally distinguished as a scholar, a theologian, a lawyer, an historian, and a mathematician, could only throw out hints as to how language ought to be studied. Leibniz was not only the discoverer of the differential calculus. He was one of the first to watch the geological stratification of the earth. He was engaged in constructing a calculating machine, the idea of which he first conceived as a boy. He drew up an elaborate plan of an expedition to Egypt, which he submitted to Louis XIV. in order to avert his attention from the frontiers of Germany. The same man was engaged in a long correspondence with Bossuet to bring about a reconciliation between Protestants and Romanists, and he endeavored, in his Theodicée and other works, to defend the cause of truth and religion against the inroads of the materialistic philosophy of England and France. It has been said, indeed, that the discoveries of Leibniz produced but little effect, and that most of them had to be made again. This is not the case, however, with regard to the science of language. The new interest in languages, which Leibniz had called into life, did not die again. After it had once been recognized as a desideratum to bring together a complete Herbarium [pg 139] of the languages of mankind, missionaries and travellers felt it their duty to collect lists of words, and draw up grammars wherever they came in contact with a new race. The two great works in which, at the beginning of our century, the results of these researches were summed up, I mean the Catalogue of Languages by Hervas, and the Mithridates of Adelung, can both be traced back directly to the influence of Leibniz. As to Hervas, he had read Leibniz carefully, and though he differs from him on some points, he fully acknowledges his merits in promoting a truly philosophical study of languages. Of Adelung's Mithridates and his obligations to Leibniz we shall have to speak presently.
Hervas lived from 1735 to 1809. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a Jesuit by profession. While working as a missionary among the Polyglottous tribes of America, his attention was drawn to a systematic study of languages. After his return, he lived chiefly at Rome in the midst of the numerous Jesuit missionaries who had been recalled from all parts of the world, and who, by their communications on the dialects of the tribes among whom they had been laboring, assisted him greatly in his researches.
Most of his works were written in Italian, and were afterwards translated into Spanish. We cannot enter into the general scope of his literary labors, which are of the most comprehensive character. They were intended to form a kind of Kosmos, for which he chose the title of “Idea del Universo.” What is of interest to us is that portion which treats of man and language as part of the universe; and here, again, chiefly his Catalogue of Languages, in six volumes, published in Spanish in the year 1800.
If we compare the work of Hervas with a similar work which excited much attention towards the end of the last century, and is even now more widely known than Hervas, I mean Court de Gebelin's “Monde Primitif,”[122] we shall see at once how far superior the Spanish Jesuit is to the French philosopher. Gebelin treats Persian, Armenian, Malay, and Coptic as dialects of Hebrew; he speaks of Bask as a dialect of Celtic, and he tries to discover Hebrew, Greek, English, and French words in the idioms of America. Hervas, on the contrary, though embracing in his catalogue five times the number of languages that were known to Gebelin, is most careful not to allow himself to be carried away by theories not warranted by the evidence before him. It is easy now to point out mistakes and inaccuracies in Hervas, but I think that those who have blamed him most are those who ought most to have acknowledged their obligations to him. To have collected specimens and notices of more than 300 languages is no small matter. But Hervas did more. He himself composed grammars of more than forty languages.[123] He was the first to point out that the true affinities of languages must be determined chiefly by grammatical evidence, not by mere similarity of words.[124] He proved, by a comparative [pg 141] list of declensions and conjugations, that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic.[125] He scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish, three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family.[126] He had proved that Bask was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and rivers.[127] Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208 degrees of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America,[128] was made by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.
Hervas was likewise aware of the great grammatical similarity between Sanskrit and Greek, but the imperfect information which he received from his friend, the Carmelite missionary, Fra Paolino de San Bartolomeo, the author of the first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790, prevented him from seeing the full meaning of this grammatical similarity. How near Hervas was to the discovery of the truth may be seen from his comparing such words as theos, God, in Greek, with Deva, God, in Sanskrit. He identified the Greek auxiliary verb eimi, eis, esti, I am, thou art, he is, with the Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti. He even pointed out that the terminations of the three genders[129] in Greek, os, ē, on, are the same as the Sanskrit, as, â, am. But believing, as he did, that the Greeks derived their philosophy and mythology from India,[130] he supposed that they had likewise borrowed from the Hindus some of their words, and even the art of distinguishing the gender of words.
The second work which represents the science of language at the beginning of this century, and which is, to a still greater extent, the result of the impulse which Leibniz had given, is the Mithridates of Adelung.[131] Adelung's work depends partly on Hervas, [pg 143] partly on the collections of words which had been made under the auspices of the Russian government. Now these collections are clearly due to Leibniz. Although Peter the Great had no time or taste for philological studies, the government kept the idea of collecting all the languages of the Russian empire steadily in view.[132] Still greater luck was in store for the science of language. Having been patronized by Cæsar at Rome, it found a still more devoted patroness in the great Cesarina of the North, Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Even as Grand-duchess Catherine was engrossed with the idea of a Universal Dictionary, on the plan suggested by Leibniz. She encouraged the chaplain of the British Factory at St. Petersburg, the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq, to undertake the work, and he is said to have published, at her desire, a “Comparative Vocabulary of Eastern Languages,” in quarto; a work, however, which, if ever published, is now completely lost. The reputed author died in London in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-four. When Catherine came to the throne, her plans of conquest hardly absorbed more of her time than her philological studies; and she once shut herself up nearly a year, devoting all her time to the compilation of her Comparative Dictionary. A letter of hers to Zimmermann, dated the 9th of May, 1785, may interest some of my hearers:—
“Your letter,” she writes, “has drawn me from the solitude in which I had shut myself up for nearly nine months, and from which I found it hard to stir. You [pg 144] will not guess what I have been about. I will tell you, for such things do not happen every day. I have been making a list of from two to three hundred radical words of the Russian language, and I have had them translated into as many languages and jargons as I could find. Their number exceeds already the second hundred. Every day I took one of these words and wrote it out in all the languages which I could collect. This has taught me that the Celtic is like the Ostiakian: that what means sky in one language means cloud, fog, vault, in others; that the word God in certain dialects means Good, the Highest, in others, sun or fire. (Up to here her letter is written in French; then follows a line of German.) I became tired of my hobby, after I had read your book on Solitude. (Then again in French.) But as I should have been sorry to throw such a mass of paper in the fire;—besides, the room, six fathoms in length, which I use as a boudoir in my hermitage, was pretty well warmed—I asked Professor Pallas to come to me, and after making an honest confession of my sin, we agreed to publish these collections, and thus make them useful to those who like to occupy themselves with the forsaken toys of others. We are only waiting for some more dialects of Eastern Siberia. Whether the world at large will or will not see in this work bright ideas of different kinds, must depend on the disposition of their minds, and does not concern me in the least.”
If an empress rides a hobby, there are many ready to help her. Not only were all Russian ambassadors instructed to collect materials; not only did German professors[133] supply grammars and dictionaries, but [pg 145] Washington himself, in order to please the empress, sent her list of words to all governors and generals of the United States, enjoining them to supply the equivalents from the American dialects. The first volume of the Imperial Dictionary[134] appeared in 1787, containing a list of 285 words translated into fifty-one European, and 149 Asiatic languages. Though full credit should be given to the empress for this remarkable undertaking, it is but fair to remember that it was the philosopher who, nearly a hundred years before, sowed the seed that fell into good ground.
As collections, the works of Hervas, of the Empress Catherine, and of Adelung, are highly important, though, such is the progress made in the classification of languages during the last fifty years, that few people would now consult them. Besides, the principle of classification which is followed in these works can hardly claim to be called scientific. Languages are arranged geographically, as the languages of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, though, at the same time, natural affinities are admitted which would unite dialects spoken at a distance of 208 degrees. Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents. This is a most critical period in the history of every science, and if it [pg 146] had not been for a happy accident, which, like an electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular forms, it is more than doubtful whether the long list of languages and dialects, enumerated and described in the works of Hervas and Adelung, could long have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the ancient language of the Hindus. It had ceased to be a spoken language at least 300 b. c. At that time the people of India spoke dialects standing to the ancient Vedic Sanskrit in the relation of Italian to Latin. We know some of these dialects, for there were more than one in various parts of India, from the inscriptions which the famous King Aśoka had engraved on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri, and which have been deciphered by Prinsep, Norris, Wilson, and Burnouf. We can watch the further growth of these local dialects in the so-called Pâli, the sacred language of Buddhism in Ceylon, and once the popular dialect of the country where Buddhism took its origin, the modern Behár, the ancient Magadha.[135] We meet the same local dialects again in what are called the Prâkrit idioms, used in the later plays, in the sacred literature of the Jainas, and in a few poetical compositions; and we see at last how, through a mixture with the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and Turkish, and through a concomitant corruption of their grammatical system, they were changed into the modern Hindí, Hindustání, Mahrattí, and Bengálí. During all this time, however, Sanskrit continued as the literary language of the [pg 147] Brahmans. Like Latin, it did not die in giving birth to its numerous offspring; and even at the present day, an educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in Bengálí. Sanskrit was what Greek was at Alexandria, what Latin was during the Middle Ages. It was the classical and at the same time the sacred language of the Brahmans, and in it were written their sacred hymns, the Vedas, and the later works, such as the laws of Manu and the Purâņas.
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 [pg 148] 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 [pg 149] 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 [pg 151] 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 [pg 152] 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 [pg 153] 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 [pg 154] 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, [pg 155] 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 [pg 156] 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 [pg 157] 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 [pg 158] 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 [pg 159] 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, [pg 161] 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 [pg 162] 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 [pg 163] 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. [pg 164] 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. [pg 165] 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.