6 'with the great Aramaic tribes of Asia, whose languages have 'been comprised under the general expression of Semitic, or the language of the family of Shem; and it is equally con'nected by identity of origin with those still more numerous and illustrious tribes which occupy now the greatest part of Europe, and may perhaps, alone, or with other families, have a right to be called the family of Japhet (the Indo-European languages).' According to his view, Egypt is a colony which started from the central plains of Asia, before mankind was divided into the families of Shem and Japhet: the language, therefore, contains the undeveloped type of the Semitic and the Indo-European. This theory (the completion of which we may expect in the last volume of the Egypt') evidently implies the common origin of the Semitic and Indo-European languages, and would show, that the Egyptologic discoveries give a considerable support to the hypothesis of the original unity of mankind, and of a common origin of all languages on the globe.' We are most willing to accept these prospective views. But we must, nevertheless, insist on this, that if the method of Comparative Grammar is the only means by which the connexion of languages can be safely and firmly established, we are still very far from a scientific and complete solution of this problem; and that, in its present state, Comparative Philology can neither shake our belief in the unity of mankind, nor, on the other hand, materially confirm it. We must therefore allow, that, like many other sciences, Comparative Philology is still incomplete, and that its final success will depend on further researches. And as such are being carried on at the present moment with great zeal in different quarters, there is good hope of their finally issuing in a favourable result. In our remaining space we shall restrict ourselves to that branch of Comparative Philology, which has been brought to a certain degree of completeness and perfection, and where we have before us definite results, which are no longer exposed to the fluctuations of new discoveries, we mean the languages of the Indo-European or Arian family. This branch is of by far the greatest interest, since it comprises the languages most familiar to ourselves, the principal tongues of Europe, together with those of Asia-Minor, Persia, and India. Out of a large number of works which have been written on this family of languages, particularly in Germany, we have selected, for the present article, Professor F. Bopp's Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages, because it is univer 1851. Arian Family of Languages. 17 sally considered as the classical work on this branch of Comparative Philology. We have to thank the Earl of Ellesmere, the noble President of the Royal Asiatic Society, for the translation of this important work. It is with him that the design originated. He has borne a share in its execution, and taken a warm and liberal interest in its completion. The main part of the translation devolved on Lieutenant Eastwick, now Professor of Urdu in the East India College at Haileybury; and in the name of Professor H. H. Wilson, who has conducted it through the press, we have the further guarantee, that nothing has been neglected to make it a faithful reproduction of the original. Anybody as yet unacquainted with the nature and principles of Comparative Grammar, and who connects with the latter word certain unpleasant recollections of tiresome hours spent in acquiring the declensions and conjugations of a foreign language, will certainly be rather astonished to hear, that there is such a thing as a grammar of eight languages. We have been told that at one of the London bookshops, Bopp's New Grammar, by which eight languages might be learnt at once, has been asked for, together with such happy compendiums as, 'French comparatively in no time,' German made easy,' Italian without a master.' There is no doubt, however, that the purchaser must have been severely disappointed in his expectations. Comparative Grammar presupposes a knowledge of language, and, so far from giving us a new idiom, it rather teaches us, that we must return to the nursery of knowledge, and endeavour to gain a new acquaintance with our own mother-tongue. Our former instances were taken from the French, but we might just as well have chosen them from our own language. Everybody knows the difference between I love' and I loved:' but, who could explain, how this change of feeling, which it requires three volumes of a novel, or five acts of a tragedy, to describe, could be expressed by the small and insignificant letter d! We know also the very essential difference between a rich man and a richer man, between pound and pounds. But, how a mere er should have the power of making a rich man richer, an s, of changing a pound into pounds, is a question which probably few have put to themselves, still fewer have answered. Yet, on the whole, the Grammar of the English Language is not a difficult one, nay, we are frequently told, that it has no grammar at all. Our Future, for instance, I shall love' is much more distinct and intelligible, in its origin and meaning, than the French j'aimerai. But the French j'aimerai, is again much easier than the Latin ama-bo. And although every schoolboy is able to conjugate amare through all its tenses, moods, and persons, yet there are few classical scholars who could account for the origin and meaning of those mysterious syllables, which have been the fate and the fortune of so many Abelards. Now we have already seen, how the formation of the French language may be explained by a reference to the other Romance languages; and a perusal of Diez's Comparative Grammar will show, that, by a careful analytical comparison, the historical growth of each of these Latin dialects can be explained in all its detail. It will also show, that, in cases where the Latin does not furnish the clue, the older vernaculars, particularly the Provençal, are the most instructive, because they have preserved the growing language in a more transparent and intelligible form. The same applies to the old languages. Forms and words, which are difficult to explain in Latin, find frequently a more intelligible analogue in Greek, and vice versa. In other cases the Lithuanian, Gothic, the old Sclavonic dialects, the Persian, and most of all, the Sanskrit, will come in, and throw light on the complicated ramifications of the Arian languages, so much so that in the work before us Professor Bopp could treat eight languages under the form of one grammatical organisation. Before attempting to follow the learned grammarian into some of his ingenious deductions, we must request the patience of our readers, whilst we give a short outline of the component members of the great Arian family. The first is the Sanskrit, with all the different dialects, which have sprung from it in the course of nearly four thousand years. We find the Sanskrit as a fully developed language in the hymns of the Veda, at the time when the first Arian settlers immigrated into the north of India. We find it changed already in the laws of Manu, and in the epical poems of the Mahábhárata and Rámáyana. We see it again, under a different form, in the popular dialects, at the time of the Buddhistic reformation, in the edicts of As'oka, carved on the rocks of Kapurdigiri, Dhauli, and Girnár, and in the soft and melodious Prakrit idioms, spoken by the heroines and the inferior characters of the Indian drama. Even in the dialects now spoken all over India, with the exception of the Dekkan, we still recognise the same original language, though deprived of its former richness in form and expression, and depraved by the admixture of foreign elements. The second branch of the Arian family is the Persian language, which may equally be followed, in its historical growth and decay, through different periods of literature. The language of the Zendavesta, most intimately connected as it is with the language of the Veda, the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and 1851. Members of the Arian Family. 19 Xerxes, the Pázend or pure Persian, spoken under the Sassanian dynasty, the grand epic poem of Firdusi, and the language, now spoken in the country, exhibit a complete biography of the Persian tongue. There are some other scions of the Arian stock which struck root in the soil of Asia, before the Arians reached the shores of Europe; but they are of far less interest, because they do not exhibit in their literature, the gradual progress of a growing language. Although the Armenian may boast of a rich literature, yet we can scarcely speak of a history of the Armenian language in the same sense as of the Sanskrit and Persian. Another Arian language, the Ossetic, has never produced any literature at all, but has been collected only from the mouths of the people, on account of its linguistic importance. This language, spoken in the valleys of Mount Caucasus, and surrounded by tongues of different origin, is one of the most startling phenomena of Comparative Philology. It stands out, like a block of granite errant in the midst of sandstone strata, as a strayed landmark of the migrations of the Arian tribes. So much importance was attributed to this fact, which had first been indicated by Klaproth, that the Berlin Academy sent an expedition to the Caucasus, with the principal object of studying this language. The results of this expedition, as published by Dr. Rosen and Professor Bopp, have proved the connexion of the Ossetic with the Arian languages to any one who has but the slightest knowledge of Sanskrit grammar. * * We may mention, as a curiosity, that Dr. Latham, without pretending to any knowledge of either Sanskrit or Chinese, and in the face of Dr. Prichard's researches, still expresses his belief that the 'Ossetic is more Chinese than Indo-European.' The same author admits, however, that the extension of the Seriform (Chinese) group, so as to include the Caucasian, Georgians, and Circassians, on the one side, and the Indians of Hindostan, on the other, is one of the points for which he is responsible, and which he promises to prove elsewhere. It would be very desirable that in these future articles a proper distinction should be made between the Ossetic, on one side, and the Iberian or Circassian languages, on the other. Though geographically united, these two classes of languages require to be treated separately, as much as Celtic and Anglo-Saxon. No one has ever doubted the Indo-Germanic character of the Ossetic language; while Professor Bopp's analysis of the Iberian languages, especially the Georgian, has met with much contradiction. For the edification of Chinese scholars, we subjoin some grammatical forms from the Ossetic, which they will be astonished to learn are more Chinese 'than Indo-European.' Staw in Ossetic means to praise; it is the same root as the Sanskrit stu, to praise. From this we have, B Much more instructive, however, for an analytic study of the Arian language, is the Greek. We have here the particular advantage that various coexistent dialects have happily been preserved to us in their undying literature. We thus gain a most curious insight into the original individuality of the Greek language. Other tongues were once spoken in Asia Minor, and on the borders of Greece, and had their fame in the history of nations. But they have left no written documents, so that we must content ourselves with the scanty fragments, preserved by Greek lexicographers. These are, however, sufficient to prove that Arian blood was running in the veins of some of the most important of these languages, as the Maeonian or Lydian, the Cappadocian, the Thracian and Macedonian, while the old Epirotic and Illyrian are considered to be still living in the Skippetarian, Albanian or Arnaut. Another group of Arian languages has taken possession of Italy. Its principal representative is of course the Latin. But a sufficient number of fragments has been preserved, to prove that Italy, fruitful in so much else, was the mother of more than one language. Long before the time of Rome, the Apennine peninsula was peopled by a variety of dialects; and some of them, like the Oscan, were still spoken under the Roman Emperors. It has been shown, that the Umbrian and Oscan were sisters of the Latin; and the languages of Etruria and Messapia, though widely differing from the other Italic dialects, in case their Singular. The termination of the Comparative TEρos, Persian der. The declension is Nom. fid, father. Gen. fidi, father's. Plural. sṭawam, we praise. stawut, you praise. stawinc, they praise. is der, in Sanskrit tara, Greek This language, then, is called aptotic by Dr. Latham, aptotic being derived from a=not, and ptosis-case. And if by the application of 'the vaunted laws concerning the permutation and transition of letters,' the termination am in sṭawam, we praise, is compared with amus in amamus, ut of stawut, you praise, with atis in amatis, inc in sṭawine, they praise, with ant in amant; Dr. Latham calls this method philological leger-de-main, and gives vent to complaints as to the retrograde direction of scholarship! Surely there seems to be a falling back from classical scholarship, if in analogy with aptotic, without inflection, a word is formed like ana-ptotic, which Dr. Latham explains by ana= back, and ptosis=a case; falling back from inflexion.' |