[246] Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde. Renan, 219 seqq. Klaproth builds an argument for the Northern origin of the Arians on the word “birch,” which bears an analogous name “not only in the German and Slavonic tongues, but also in the Sanskrit—b’hurjja.... It seems birch was the only tree the invaders recognised, and could name, on the south side of the Himalaya; all others being new to them. The inference may be right or wrong—it is, at all events, ingenious.” Garnett’s Essays, p. 33. See Klaproth, Nouv. J. Asiat. v. 112. Pictet, Orig. Ind. i. 217. The fact that the words for oyster are derived from the same root in the European languages (Gk. ὄστρεον, Ang.-Sax. ostra, Irish oisridh, Cymr. œstren, Russ. üstersü, French huître, Germ. Auster, &c.), but not in the Sanskrit or Indian branch of the Arian family,—would seem to show that there was a great separation of Eastern and Western Arians before the family had reached the shores of the Caspian. A similar fact is observed in the name for flax, (Gr. λίνον, Lat. linum, Goth. lein, Ang.-Sax. lîn, Cym. llin, Russ. lenû, &c.), and shows that the Western Arians were the first of the family to desert pastoral for agricultural pursuits. Id. pp. 320, 516. Few studies are more interesting than the “linguistic palæontology,” which thus enables us to revive the form of an extinct language and civilisation.
[247] Renan, p. 235.
[248] Histoire des Langues Sém. pp. 1, 2.
[249] Müller’s Survey, p. 23 seqq.
[250] Hist. des Langues Sémitiques, pp. 70-90.
[251] The name was suggested by Baron Bunsen in 1847. Outlines, i. 64. He even argues for the Turanian character of the Chinese; “although it is certain that the same opposition exists between the two as there is between inorganic and organic life.” General laws, operative in the formation of all languages, ought not to be taken for indications of special affinity; who would maintain the identity of quadrupeds and birds from the analogy of their respiratory and digestive systems? In the formation of languages certain first principles were necessarily observed by all, and this of course leads to some general resemblances.
[252] “Turanian speech is rather a stage than a form of language; it seems to be the form into which human discourse, naturally, and, as it were, spontaneously throws itself.... The principle of agglutination, as it is called, which is its most marked characteristic, seems almost a necessary feature of any language in a constant state of flux and change, absolutely devoid of a literature, and maintaining itself in existence by means of the scanty conversation of Nomades.”—Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i. p. 645.
[253] It is rather strange that this name, so peculiarly appropriate, and so much preferable to the other, has not met with wider acceptation. It was suggested by Dr. Prichard, “the greatest of English ethnologists.”
[254] Dolly Pentreath, the last person who could speak Cornish, died in 1770.
[255] Bunsen, Outlines, ii. 92.