China. Boodhism is even now the most widely spread religion of the world, and founded, as modern travellers think, more than five centuries before Christ by the Indian saint SakhyaMuni, it numbers even now among its votaries the Cingalese, Siamese and Burmese, a large portion of the vast population of China, and all the Mongolian nations of Central and Northern Asia!

It was in Asia that the words of the Almighty were first heard by the ear of man in accents of thunder; it was there that the enthusiast Mohammed unrolled his turban to be a banner for hosts, and a sacred sign for more millions than the earth counts Christians. It was by Asiatic Jews that the Gospel of our Saviour was first preached, and from their land it poured its heavenly blessings over the wide world.

With these great religions, Europe owes to Asia every one of those mighty impulses that, from time to time, have given fresh life to sinking empires, or new hopes to despairing nations. From the days when the Persian wars against Greece first set in motion a principle that was to find a limit to its power only at the end of the then known world, to the hour when the memorable words of the great apostle proclaimed from the Areopagus of Athens the Unknown God, Europe was but a pupil at the feet of her venerable master. Races in countless multitudes crossed the vast steppes that separate the two continents, and wave followed wave, until Europe was overflowing with men of new blood and youthful vigor. The Islam shouted its rhapsodies of triumphant fanaticism into the ears of the frightened Spaniard, and awakened that spirit which, in the Crusades, carried the nations of Europe to learn new wisdom and dearly

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bought experience on the shores of their mother-country. Fierce Mongols and still fiercer hordes of the same race, but different form, then invaded Russia, and planted in its vast territory the germ of future empires. Turks, from Asia, again dethroned the Mistress of the world in noble, old Byzanz, and, finally, there came, within the recollection of this generation, that last, peaceful conquest of Europe by Asiatic letters and Eastern wisdom.

It was then felt and first acknowledged that to Asia was due not only the faith and civilization, but the very speech of Europe also. All the principal European languages were found to have their relations in Asia; all the important idioms of our day were distinctly traced back, one by one, to a common fountain head, of which the Sanscrit furnished the oldest known form. A comparison of these languages showed, beyond doubt and dispute, their relation to the venerable Sanscrit, a fair mother, indeed, whose features they all bore, more or less distinctly, as they had left her sooner in their progress towards the West, or had lingered longer around her, near her ancient home. For it was found that those nations which now inhabit the western portions of Europe, like the Celts, must have left first the land of their fathers on the table-land west of the mountain ridges of Mustag and Belustag. Their idioms had, therefore, lost most of their original identity with their mother tongue, and developed their own forms the more independently and individually, the greater the distance was, in space and time, that separated them from their first home. They are, for the same reason, the last of the idioms whose relation to Asia has been successfully proved. Others, again, like the Persian and Indian,

which had been left longest in the land of their youth, are even now the interesting representatives of the original Indo-European family.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SANSCRIT, AS OLDEST OF INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES.

Early Studies of Sanscrit-Its Advantages for Comparative Philology-Its extensive Literature-Its present Representative in Europe-Its clear Organism, &c.

WITH the exception of a few less important branches, all the languages of Europe have thus been traced back to the Sanscrit, a language used by millions in Asia, fifteen hundred years before Christ, and considered effeminate and degenerate at the time of Alexander the Great! Spoken, even now, by no less than three hundred and sixty millions of men, her daughters cover the earth from the Brahmaputra through Central Asia and Asia Minor to the Atlantic, from the mouth of the Ganges to the Ferroe isles and Iceland, and thence to the Christian inhabitants of North America and her colonies, as far as they claim European blood.

Hydes, Bourchier and Fraser knew, no doubt, more or less of Sanscrit already in the early part of the eighteenth century; but all the correct information possessed by that age was due to the noble and disinterested energy of Anquetil du Perron. At the early age of 23, and actuated by an eager thirst of knowledge, he enlisted as private soldier on board an India-bound vessel,

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and endured, for years, incredible privations to win the goodwill and confidence of two Persian Magi, who, at last, rewarded this unparalleled zeal by allowing him to obtain some knowledge of the Zend, and of the sacred books of the Parsees. Halhed, in 1778, first opened the inestimable mines of Sanscrit literature, which Colebrook, Prinseps, and Wilson, afterwards made a most fruitful source of valuable knowledge. The Sanscrit has, ever since, been considered as the most important of all languages.

Of late, especially, much attention, and perhaps too much, has been given to it as containing a key to most of the prominent idioms of the world, of which it alone could give an understanding, and unveil the real origin, character, and meaning. Already Sir W. Jones thought the Sanscrit more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either. Mr. Brian Hodgson, a competent and impartial judge, called it a speech capable of giving a soul to objects of the senses, and a body to the abstractions of Metaphysics. The discovery of Sanscrit and its application to linguistic researches was considered as opening a new era in the history of Philology; and as soon as in the Sanscrit were heard the accents of a common mother-tongue, the broad fact of an intimate and original connection of all the Arian or Indo-European languages, was at once established, and under the guidance of this new loadstone have since sailed almost all the philologists of our day. In vain was it urged that Sanscrit had no history, that its roots were not primitive, but only known after at least a verbal change had taken place; that it was, in itself, no universal language, but a strictly Indian form of a tongue.

Some fierce, bold adversaries did not even hesitate to declare the Sanscrit a fictitious idiom, concocted by the Brahmins after the expedition of Alexander the Great into India, a theory which Schlegel calls as happy as that which would convert the pyramids of Egypt into natural crystallizations.

It has, ever since, maintained its place as the representative of the Indo-European languages, which are all inflecting, and, consequently, most highly developed. The advantages it offers for a comparative study of languages are certainly great, its merits as a standard, by which to judge others, undisputed. Its rich and long continued literature enables us to observe it in various forms, through a longer space of time than any other tongue. The hymns of Veda carry us back to days of hoary antiquity, when the first Arian settlers migrated to the north of India, and spoke what might possibly be called a primitive language. The Pali contains, at least, the most ancient words used by the nations of Western Hindostan; a fact for which the name of a scholar like Lassen is sufficient authority. In it were written the doctrines of Boodhism in Ceylon and Eastern India, and from thence carried, during the first century of our Christian era, into China, where modern researches have discovered some few works, written in the ancient Pali character. The Sanscrit of the Laws of Menu is no longer that of the Vedas, and soon changes into the language of the epic poems of later centuries, the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Then follow the peculiar forms used in the didactic, moral, and lyric effusions which reach down to the Alexandrian period, and a still greater change is observed in the popular dialects used in the Edicts of As'oka, at the time of the Boodhistic reformation,