baddha, bound, appears in Iranic as bacta, in the wedge inscriptions of the old Persian as basta, and in modern Persian as beste. Radical s is changed into h, as in the Greek era and the Latin septem; thus Sanscrit saptan, Latin septem, is in old Persian hapta, in modern Persian heft (errα).

The principal languages of this branch were in times of comparative antiquity, the Zend, the language of the sacred books, of the Persians, the Zend-avesta, and the old Persian, in which the numerous and now well known wedge-inscriptions of the Achaemenidan Kings are written. Among the still existing idioms, the modern Persian is richest in literature, though much impoverished in grammar, and largely mixed with Arabic ele ments. The language spoken in Kurdistan is nearly related to the latter; that of Afghanistan, which belongs, likewise, to this branch, has developed itself in a peculiar and original manner. The Armenian, though much changed in form and structure from the original Iranic, has still enough of the family likeness left to connect it beyond doubt with the same family. It is a singular fact that the original character of these idioms is most purely preserved and best represented in

The Ossetic, the language of a small nation on the very confines of Europe, and almost completely separated from the great mass of Iranic tongues. The Ossetes dwell in the heart of the Caucasus, surrounded by Caucasian races, and meeting in the West nothing but Tataric inhabitants. History knows but little of their origin and fate. Their language, on the contrary, shows both at the first glance. They call themselves with the old family name, Iron, and their grammar is almost identical with that of the older dialects; their idiom being, in fact, better pre

served than even the Eastern representative of the Iranic, the New Persian. It is unfortunately not a written language, and Ossetic grammars compiled principally for linguistic purposes, are written with Georgian or Russian letters. It possesses no literature, and hence the influence of the Caucasian idioms, by which it is surrounded on all sides, makes itself daily more felt. Thus it has adopted, though an Indo-European language, the whole system of euphony belonging to the Georgian or Caucasian tongues.

The Armenian is the only other representative of the Iranic branch in Europe. It is not spoken by a nation, but by so many thousand Armenians, engaged in trade and commerce all over Eastern Europe, and in so important colonies especially in Hungary, that it seemed to deserve a place among the languages of Europe. It must be borne in mind, also, that the renowned convent of the Mechitarians, on the Island of San Lazzaro, near Venice, publishes annually a large number of valuable scientific and religious works in Armenian, which are sold and read, not only in Armenia proper, but in numerous districts of Europe and Asia. Smaller colonies are scattered all over Russia, Turkey, Galicia, and Hungary; and the city of Nachitschewan on the mouth of the Don is surrounded by many villages and a large neighborhood, settled exclusively by Armenians. Similar settlements, including populous cities, are found in Transylvania. It is a harsh and not harmonious language; the ancient Armenian is now considered a dead language, its modern form, in four smaller dialects, is much mixed with Turkish words, and its structure entirely that of the Turkish. The Armenians call themselves Haj. and their land Hajstaan, the land of the Haj.

They write with peculiar letters, resembling and partly consisting of Greek letters, and possess a rich literature, especially in history. The Armenian version of the Bible, made in 511, is still considered as a model of pure Armenian.

CHAPTER XLIX.

PELASGIC GROUP.

Greek-Romaik-Albanese.

THE two languages which constitute this group are designated as the Pelasgic, in the sense in which the latter signified, according to Greek usage, the most ancient. At a period anterior to history, it is now believed, the Greek in its oldest and the Latin in its earliest form, very closely resembled each other, and what they then had in common, and what, consequently, distinguished them from other Indo-European idioms, is thus called Pelasgic. It is well known that the Latin generally bears the stamp of higher antiquity than the so-called classic Greek, and that, therefore, the oldest forms of the latter, as the Æolic, resemble it more than the later dialects. The opinion, that the Latin is a descendant of the Greek, finds but few advocates among the scholars of our day; and the successful study of early contemporaries of the Latin among the Italian dialects, the Oscan, Etruscan and others, has but added new and irrefutable arguments against it.

Well defined and strictly enforced laws of euphony distin

guish the two idioms from each other, and here also the Latin has, in most instances, the older, original sound, the Greek a later or secondary one. Thus the Latin preserves s, where the Greek changes it already into h or rejects it altogether; sus and us, septem and eπта, -arum (from -asum), and ŵv are familiar, though not the most striking examples. If the Greek possesses a series of aspirants, which the Latin did not originally know (ch, th, ph are of later date), it is, on the other hand, almost without any spirans, having lost j and V altogether and rejecting s(h) wherever it can safely be done. Modern Greek in its vulgar form knows even the h, the spiritus asper, no longer. This is, therefore, one of the most distinctive features in the two languages. The Greek has aspirates and no spirans; the Latin preserves the latter and knows no aspirates. This distinction is one of those which most frequently separate cognate idioms, but it is never found to mark the descent of one from the other.

(a.) Greek. Modern Greek is, of course, but a faint echo of ancient Greek, but that also was already in the period of decline, and had, to a great extent, lost its youthful beauty and vigor, when it produced the so-called classic literature. It possessed no longer any spirans, without which no language can be considered perfect, the loss being, on the other hand, considered a common sign of decay, as in the Pracrit and the Romance languages, from all of which, as from the Greek, the j has disappeared. It had already an article, another sure sign of decline. Of its real antiquity we have no knowledge; especially because the Greeks did not begin to write their language, but at an advanced period of their national existence, and then only with foreign letters. This defect shows the more strikingly the

supe

riority of the Indian languages, which possess a literature belonging to that period of which the Greek has not even a history. There is, however, material enough in existence, to enable us to conclude by analogy and tracing back results to their first causes, what must have been the Greek in that Pelasgic or archaic period. It was no doubt already independent as a tongue, and possessed of characteristic features which distinguished it from the other Indo-European idioms. But the language had not departed from its great mother-tongue, and developed itself with the same independence and originality in all its parts, and was moreover broken up into dialects. The Doric and the Eolic had more or less faithfully preserved their ancient heirloom of Indian times; the Ionic, on the other hand, departed more and more from it, and the Attic, in its laws of euphony elosely following the Ionic, suffered irreparable losses in forms and general structure. The difference is seen here, as in the Germanic tongues, most readily in the change of the original t into the cognate sibilants, as in τv and συ, φατί, τύπτοντι and φησί, τύπτουσι οι ἔδδει and ὄζει. This period of dialectic life, during which the Greek had its classic literature, is commonly called the Hellenic, to distinguish it from the first, the Pelasgic. It is well known how subsequently the Attic alone prevailed for all purposes of literature and social intercourse, and how it soon degenerated, when used by such numbers of Greeks, who were not themselves from Attica, until it became finally known as the common Greek, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος. A later form of this κown, used by foreigners also, and mixed up with numerous barbarisms, the so-called Hellenistic, shows already considerable and radical decay; much more, of