Now it is quite true that Sanskrit and Hebrew had a separate existence long before they reached the tertiary stratum, before they became thoroughly inflectional; and that consequently they can share nothing in common that is peculiar to the inflectional stratum in each, nothing that is the result of phonetic decay, which sets in after combinatory formations have become unintelligible and traditional. I mean, supposing that the pronoun of the first person had been originally the same in the Semitic and Aryan languages, supposing that in the Hebrew an-oki (Assyrian an-aku, Phen. anak) the last portion, oki, was originally identical with the Sanskrit ah in aham, the Greek ἐγ in ἐγ-ώ, it would still be useless to attempt to derive the termination of the first person singular, whether in kâtal-ti or in ektôl, from the same type which in Sanskrit appears as mi or am or a, in tudâ-mi, atud-am, tutod-a. There cannot be between Hebrew and Sanskrit the same relationship as between Sanskrit and Greek, if indeed the term of relationship is applicable even to Sanskrit and Greek, which are really mere dialectic varieties of one and the same type of speech.
The question then arises, Could the Semitic and Aryan languages have been identical during the second or combinatory period? Here, as before, the answer must be, I believe, decidedly negative, for not only are the empty words which are used for derivative purposes different in each, but, what is far more characteristic, the manner in which they are added to the stems is different too. In the Aryan languages formative elements are attached to the ends of words only; in the Semitic languages they are found both at the end and at the beginning. In the Aryan languages grammatical compounds are all according to the formula rρ; in the Semitic we have formations after the formulas rρ, ρr, and ρrρ.
There remains, therefore, the first or isolating stage only in which Semitic and Aryan speech might have been identical. But even here we must make a distinction. All Aryan roots are monosyllabic, all Semitic roots have been raised to triliteral form. Therefore it is only previous to the time when the Semitic roots assumed this secondary triliteral form that any community could possibly be admitted between these two streams of language. Supposing we knew as an historical fact that at this early period—a period which transcends the limits of everything we are accustomed to call historical—Semitic and Aryan speech had been identical, what evidence of this union could we expect to find in the actual Semitic and Aryan languages such as we know them in their inflectional period? Let us recollect that the 100,000 words of English, nay, the many hundred thousand words in all the dictionaries of the other Aryan languages, have been reduced to about 500 roots, and that this small number of roots admits of still further reduction. Let us, then, bear in mind that the same holds good with regard to the Semitic languages, particularly if we accept the reduction of all triliteral to biliteral roots. What, then, could we expect in our comparison of Hebrew and Sanskrit but a small number of radical coincidences, a similarity in the form and meaning of about 500 radical syllables, everything else in Hebrew and Sanskrit being an after-growth, which could not begin before the two branches of speech were severed once and forever.
But more, if we look at these roots we shall find that their predicative power is throughout very general, and therefore liable to an infinite amount of specification. A root that means to fall (Sk. pat, πί-πτ-ω) comes to mean to fly (Sk. ut-pat, πέτομαι). The root dâ, which means to give, assumes, after the preposition â, the sense of taking. The root yu, which means to join, means to separate if preceded by the preposition vi. The root ghar, which expresses brightness, may supply, and does supply in different Aryan languages, derivations expressive of brightness (gleam), warmth (Sk. gharma, heat), joy (χαίρειν), love (χάρις), of the colors of green (Sk. hari), yellow (gilvus, flavus), and red (Sk. harit, fulvus), and of the conception of growing (ger-men). In the Semitic languages this vagueness of meaning in the radical elements forms one of the principal difficulties of the student, for according as a root is used in its different conjugations, it may convey the most startling variety of conception. It is also to be taken into account that out of the very limited number of roots which at that early time were used in common by the ancestors of the Aryan and Semitic races, a certain portion may have been lost by each, so that the fact that there are roots in Hebrew of which no trace exists in Sanskrit, and vice versâ, would again be perfectly natural and intelligible.
It is right and most essential that we should see all this clearly, that we should understand how little evidence we are justified in expecting in support of a common origin of the Semitic and Aryan languages, before we commit ourselves to any opinion on this important subject. I have by no means exhausted all the influences that would naturally, nay necessarily, have contributed towards producing the differences between the radical elements of Aryan and Semitic speech, always supposing that the two sprang originally from the same source. Even if we excluded the ravages of phonetic decay from that early period of speech, we should have to make ample allowances for the influence of dialectic variety. We know in the Aryan languages the constant play between gutturals, dentals, and labials (quinque, Sk. panca, πέντε, Æol. πέμπε, Goth. fimf). We know the dialectic interchange of Aspirate, Media, and Tenuis, which, from the very beginning, has imparted to the principal channels of Aryan speech their individual character (τρεῖς, Goth. threis, High German drei).[25] If this and much more could happen within the dialectic limits of one more or less settled body of speech, what must have been the chances beyond those limits? Considering how fatal to the identity of a word the change of a single consonant would be in monosyllabic languages, we might expect that monosyllabic roots, if their meaning was so general, vague, and changeable, would all the more carefully have preserved their consonantal outline. But this is by no means the case. Monosyllabic languages have their dialects no less than polysyllabic ones; and from the rapid and decisive divergence of such dialects, we may learn how rapid and decisive the divergence of language must have been during the isolating period. Mr. Edkins, who has paid particular attention to the dialects of Chinese, states that in the northern provinces the greatest changes have taken place, eight initial and one final consonant having been exchanged for others, and three finals lost. Along the southern bank of the Yang-tsï-kiang, and a little to the north of it, the old initials are all preserved, as also through Chekiang to Fuh-kien. But among the finals, m is exchanged for n; t and p are lost, and also k, except in some country districts. Some words have two forms, one used colloquially, and one appropriated to reading. The former is the older pronunciation, and the latter more near to Mandarin. The cities of Su-cheu, Hang-cheu, Ningpo, and When-cheu, with the surrounding country, may be considered as having one dialect, spoken probably by thirty millions of people, i.e., by more than the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland. The city of Hwei-cheu has a dialect of its own, in which the soft initial consonants are exchanged for hard and aspirated ones, a process analogous to what we call Lautverschiebung in the Aryan languages. At Fu-cheu-fu, in the eastern part of the province of Kiang-si, the soft initials have likewise been replaced by aspirates. In many parts of the province of Hunan the soft initials still linger on; but in the city of Chang-sha the spoken dialect has the five tones of Mandarin, and the aspirated and other initials distributed in the same manner. In the island of Hai-nan there is a distinct approach to the form which Chinese words assume in the language of Annam. Many of the hard consonants are softened, instead of the reverse taking place as in many other parts of China. Thus ti, di, both ti in Mandarin, are both pronounced di in Hai-nan. B and p are both used for many words whose initials are w and f in Mandarin. In the dialects of the province of Fuhkien the following changes take place in initial consonants: k is used for h; p for f; m, b, for w; j for y; t for ch; ch for s; ng for i, y, w; n for j.[26] When we have clearly realized to ourselves what such changes mean in words consisting of one consonant and one vowel, we shall be more competent to act as judges, and to determine what right we have to call for more ample and more definite evidence in support of the common origin of languages which became separated during their monosyllabic or isolating stages, and which are not known to us before they are well advanced in the inflectional stage.
It might be said,—Why, if we make allowance for all this, the evidence really comes to nothing, and is hardly deserving of the attention of the scholar. I do not deny that this is, and always has been my own opinion. All I wish to put clearly before other scholars is, that this is not our fault. We see why there can be no evidence, and we find there is no evidence, or very little support of a common origin of Semitic and Aryan speech. But that is very different from dogmatic assertions, so often and so confidently repeated, that there can be no kind of relationship between Sanskrit and Hebrew, that they must have had different beginnings, that they represent, in fact, two independent species of human speech. All this is pure dogmatism, and no true scholar will be satisfied with it, or turn away contemptuously from the tentative researches of scholars like Ewald, Raumer, and Ascoli. These scholars, particularly Raumer and Ascoli, have given us, as far as I can judge, far more evidence in support of a radical relationship between Hebrew and Sanskrit than, from my point of view, we are entitled to expect. I mean this as a caution in both directions. If, on one side, we ought not to demand more than we have a right to demand, we ought, on the other, not to look for, nor attempt to bring forward, more evidence than the nature of the case admits of. We know that words which have identically the same sound and meaning in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German, cannot be the same words, because they would contravene those phonetic laws that made these languages to differ from each other. To doom cannot have any connection with the Latin damnare; to call cannot be the Greek καλεῖν, the Latin calare; nor Greek φαῦλος the German faul; the English care cannot be identified with Latin cura, nor the German Auge with the Greek αὐγή. The same applies, only with a hundred-fold greater force, to words in Hebrew and Sanskrit. If any triliteral root in Hebrew were to agree with a triliteral word in Sanskrit, we should feel certain, at once, that they are not the same, or that their similarity is purely accidental. Pronouns, numerals, and a few imitative rather than predicative names for father and mother, etc., may have been preserved from the earliest stage by the Aryan and Semitic speakers; but if scholars go beyond, and compare such words as Hebrew barak, to bless, and Latin precari; Hebrew lab, heart, and the English liver; Hebrew melech, king, and the Latin mulcere, to smoothe, to quiet, to subdue, they are in great danger, I believe, of proving too much.
Attempts have lately been made to point out a number of roots which Chinese shares in common with Sanskrit. Far be it from me to stigmatize even such researches as unscientific, though it requires an effort for one brought up in the very straitest school of Bopp, to approach such inquiries without prejudice. Yet, if conducted with care and sobriety, and particularly with a clear perception of the limits within which such inquiries must be confined, they are perfectly legitimate; far more so than the learned dogmatism with which some of our most eminent scholars have declared a common origin of Sanskrit and Chinese as out of the question. I cannot bring myself to say that the method which Mr. Chalmers adopts in his interesting work on the “Origin of Chinese” is likely to carry conviction to the mind of the bonà fide skeptic. I believe, before we compare the words of Chinese with those of any other language, every effort should be made to trace Chinese words back to their most primitive form. Here Mr. Edkins has pointed out the road that ought to be followed, and has clearly shown the great advantage to be derived from an accurate study of Chinese dialects. The same scholar has done still more by pointing out how Chinese should at first be compared with its nearest relatives, the Mongolian of the North-Turanian, and the Tibetan of the South-Turanian class, before any comparisons are attempted with more distant colonies that started during the monosyllabic period of speech. “I am now seeking to compare,” he writes, “the Mongolian and Tibetan with the Chinese, and have already obtained some interesting results:—
“1. A large proportion of Mongol words are Chinese. Perhaps a fifth are so. The identity is in the first syllable of the Mongol words, that being the root. The correspondence is most striking in the adjectives, of which perhaps one half of the most common are the same radically as in Chinese; e.g., sain, good; begen, low; ic‘hi, right; sologai, left; c‘hihe, straight; gadan, outside; c’hohon, few; logon, green; hung-gun, light (not heavy). But the identity is also extensive in other parts of speech, and this identity of common roots seems to extend into the Turkish, Tatar, etc.; e.g., su, water; tenri, heaven.
“2. To compare Mongol with Chinese it is necessary to go back at least six centuries in the development of the Chinese language. For we find in common roots final letters peculiar to the old Chinese, e.g., final m. The initial letters also need to be considered from another standpoint than the Mandarin pronunciation. If a large number of words are common to Chinese, Mongol, and Tatar, we must go back at least twelve centuries to obtain a convenient epoch of comparison.
“3. While the Mongol has no traces of tones, they are very distinctly developed in Tibetan. Csoma de Körös and Schmidt do not mention the existence of tones, but they plainly occur in the pronunciation of native Tibetans resident in Peking.