The great Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy, on reviewing the Desátir,[32] says: “We are in a manner frightened by the multitude and gravity of the questions which we shall have to solve, or at least to discuss; for every thing is here a problem: What is the age of the book? Who is its author? Is it the work of several persons; or the divers parts of which it is composed, are they written by one and the same author, although attributed to different individuals, who succeeded each other at long intervals? The language in which it was written, was it, at any epoch, that of the inhabitants of Persia, or of any of the countries comprised in the empire of Iran? Or is it nothing but a factitious language, invented to support an imposture? At what epoch were made the Persian translation accompanying the original text, and the commentary joined to this translation? Who is the author of the one and the other? Are not this translation and this commentary themselves pseudonymous and apocryphal books; or may not the whole be the work of an impostor of the latter centuries? All these questions present themselves in a crowd to my mind; and if some of them appear to be easily answered, others offer more than common difficulties.”
Well may a person, even with far greater pretensions than mine can be, hesitate to attempt the discussion of a subject which frightened the illustrious Silvestre de Sacy; but as the Desátir is one of the principal sources from which the author of the Dabistán drew his account of the Persian religion and its divers sects—a considerable part of his work—I cannot dispense with presenting the subject in the state in which the discussions hitherto published, by very respectable critics, have left it. If I venture to offer a few remarks of my own upon it, it is only in the hope of provoking further elucidations by philologers who shall examine the Mahabadian text itself, and by arguments drawn from its fundamentals decide the important question—whether we shall have one language more or less to count among the relics of antiquity?
Instead of following the order in which the questions are stated above, I will begin by that which appears to me the most important, namely: “the language in which the Desátir is written, is it nothing but a factitious language invented to support an imposture?”
The forgery of a language, so bold an imposture, renders any other fraud probable; through a false medium no truth can be expected, nor even sought. But, in order to guard against the preconception of a forgery having taken place, a preconception the existence of which may, with too good a foundation, be apprehended, I shall first examine, as a general thesis, whether the invention of a language, by one individual or by a few individuals, is in itself probable and credible. I shall only adduce those principles which have received the sanction of great philologers, among whom it may be sufficient to name baron William Humboldt, and claim the reader’s indulgence, if, in endeavoring to be clear, I should not have sufficiently avoided trite observations.
Tracing languages up to their first origin, it has been found that they are derived from sounds expressive of feelings; these are preserved in the roots, from which, in the progressive development of the faculty of speech, verbs, nouns, and the whole language, are formed. In every speech, even in the most simple one, the individual feeling has a connection with the common nature of mankind; speech is not a work of reflection: it is an instinctive creation. The infallible presence of the word required on every occasion is certainly not a mere act of memory; no human memory would be capable of furnishing it, if man did not possess in himself instinctively the key, not only for the formation of words, but also for a continued process of association: upon this the whole system of human language is founded. By entering into the very substance of existing languages, it appears evident that they are intellectual creations, which do not at all pass from one individual to others, but can only emerge from the coexisting self-activity of all.
“— — That one the names of things contrived,
And that from him their knowledge all derived,
‘Tis fond to think.”[33]
As long as the language lives in the mouth of a nation, the words are a progressive production and reproduction of the faculty to form words. In this manner only can we explain, without having recourse to a supernatural cause, how millions of men can agree to use the same words for every object, the same locution for every feeling.
Language in general is the sensible exterior vestment of thought; it is the product of the intelligence, and the expression of the character of mankind; in particular it may be considered as the exterior manifestation of the genius of nations: their language is their genius, and their genius is their language. We see of what use the investigation of idioms may be in tracing the affinities of nations. History and geography must be taken as guides in the researches upon tongues; but these researches would be futile, if languages were the irregular product of hazard. No: profound feeling and immediate clearness of vivid intuition act with wonderful regularity, and follow an unerring analogy. The genesis of languages may be assimilated to that of works of genius—I mean, of that creative faculty which gives rules to an art. Thus is it the language which dictates the grammar. Moreover, the utmost perfection of which an idiom is susceptible is a line like that of beauty, which, once attained, can never be surpassed. This was the case with some ancient tongues. Since that time, mankind appear to have lost a faculty or a talent, inasmuch as they are no more actuated by that urgency of keen feeling which was the very principle of the high perfection of those languages.