Considering the knowledge required, and the difficulties to be overcome in forging a language in such a manner as to impose, even for a time, upon the credulity of others, we shall conclude that nothing less than direct proof is requisite for establishing such a forgery as a real fact. Now, what arguments have been set forth for declaring the language of the Desátir to be nothing else than “an artificial idiom invented to support an imposture?”
Silvestre de Sacy says:[40] “It is difficult indeed, not to perceive that the multiplied relations which exist between the Asmáni, ‘heavenly,’ and Persian languages are the result of a systematic operation, and not the effect of hazard, nor that of time, which proceeds with less regularity in the alterations to which language is subjected.”
I must apologise for here interrupting this celebrated author, for the purpose of referring to what nobody better than himself has established as a peremptory condition of existence for any language, and what he certainly never meant to deny, but may perhaps here be supposed to forget—namely, that a language is not “the effect of hazard,” and although “not the result of systematic combination,” yet, as an instinctive creation, shows surprising regularity, and that an evident rule predominates in the alterations which time produces in languages.
Silvestre de Sacy proceeds: “The grammar of the Mahabadian language is evidently, for the whole etymological part, and even (which is singularly striking) in what concerns the anomalous verbs, traced from (calquée sur) the Persian grammar, and as to the radical words, if there be many of them the origin of which is unknown, there is also a great number of them in which the Persian root, more or less altered, may be recognised without any effort.”
Erskine examined, without the least communication with the French critic, the Mahabadian language, and says:[41] “In its grammar it approaches very nearly to the modern Persian, as well in the inflection of the nouns and verbs, as in its syntax.” Norris[42] takes the very same view of it.
These highly respectable critics published their judgment upon the Mahabadian language before the comparison of several languages with the Sanscrit and between each other had been made by able philologers, creators of the new science of comparative philology. According to the latter, the proofs of the real affinity of language, that is, the proofs that two languages belong to the same family, are to be principally and can be properly deduced, from their grammatical system. Thus, for instance, the forms of the Greek and Latin languages are in several parts nearly identical with the Sanscrit, the first bearing a greater resemblance in one respect, the latter in another; the Greek verbs in mi, the Latin declension of some nouns appear, to use the expression of the illustrious author, “traced from each other (calqués l’un sur l’autre).” These two languages seem to have divided between them the whole system of the ancient grammar, which is most perfectly preserved in the Sanscrit. This language itself is probably, with the two mentioned, derived from a more ancient language; we meet in them three sisters recognised by their striking likeness. This, although more or less weakened and even obliterated in some features, remains upon the whole still perceptible in a long series of their relations: I mean in all those languages which are distinguished by the name of Indo-germanic, to which the Persian belongs.
But, in deciding upon the affinity of languages, not only the grammatical forms are to be examined, but also the system of sounds is to be studied, and the words must be considered in their roots and derivations. The three critics mentioned agree that the language of the Desátir is very similar to the Persian or Deri, not only in grammar, but also in etymology; a great number of the verbal and nominal roots are the same in both. This similarity would, according to comparative philology, lead to the conclusion that either the one is derived from the other, or that both proceed from a common parent; but nothing hitherto here alleged can justify the supposition of invention, forgery, or fabrication of the so-called Mahabadian language.
We continue to quote the strictures of Silvestre de Sacy: “There is however a yet stronger proof of the systematic operation which produced the factitious idiom. This proof I derive from the perfect and constant identity which prevails between the Persian phraseology and that of the Mahabadian idiom. The one and the other are, whenever the translation does not degenerate into paraphrase or commentary, which frequently happens, traced from each other (calqués l’un sur l’autre) in such a manner that each phrase, in both, has always the same number of words, and these words are always arranged in the same order. For producing such a result, we must admit two idioms, the grammar of which should be perfectly alike, as weil with respect to the etymological part as to the syntax, and their respective dictionaries offering precisely the same number of words, whether nouns, verbs, or particles: which would suppose two nations, having precisely the same number of ideas, whether absolute or relative, and conceiving but the same kind and the same number of relations.”
If what we have already stated be not unfounded, the last quoted paragraph, which the author calls “a yet stronger proof of the systematic operations which produced the factitious idiom” must be acknowledged not to have the weight which he would attribute to it. If the Mahabadian and Persian be languages related to each other, “a perfect and constant identity of phraseology between them both,” if even so great as it is said to be, is not only possible, but may be fairly expected in the avowed translation of the Desátir into Persian. Such identity is most religiously aimed at in versions of a sacred text. Need I adduce modern examples of translations which, in point of phraseological conformity with their original, may vie with the Persian version of the Mahabadian text? The supposition that two nations have the same number of ideas, absolute or relative, is far from being absurd: it is really the fact with all nations who are upon the same level of civilisation; but the present question is of the writings of the same nation, which, possessing at all times a sort of government and religion fundamentally the same, might easily count an obsolete language of its own among the monuments of its antiquity.
On that account, we cannot see what the former arguments of the critic gain in strength by the addition: “that the perfect identity of conception falls in a very great part upon abstract and metaphysical ideas, in which such a coincidence is infinitely more difficult than when the question is only of objects and relations perceptible to the senses.”—A great similarity is remarked in all forms of thinking. Little chance of being contradicted can be incurred in saying, that the fundamental ideas of metaphysics are common to all mankind, and inherent in human reason. The encyclopedian contents of the Dabistán, concerning the opinions of so many nations, would furnish a new proof of it, were this generally acknowledged fact in need of any further support.