beginnings, he finds himself carried back to the very dawn of history, before he can lay his hand on the roots of the old Tree of knowledge. Looking_only_at_the principal elements of modern society, we see that the Law of the present day, in spite of all innovations and revolutions, flows in its main channels either from the sacred customs of the Teutonic race, or from the codes of Roman emperors. These codes again were based on rogations, which at an earlier period of history were carried in the Senate or in the noisy forum of Rome; nay the laws of succession and inheritance, of paternal authority and filial duty point back to still more remote times, when Numa was listening to Egeria, and when the mythic ancestors of the Latin people immigrated into Italy. The high-roads of our commerce which are now mapped down in the guide-books of peaceful travellers, follow in many cases the footsteps of Roman armies or Phoenician caravans; and the purest models in our modern school of art, what are they but the very creations which we hear the joyous people of Athens applauding at the foot of the Parthenon, fresh from the chisel of Phidias and Praxiteles? But nowhere is this view of modern history more strongly confirmed than if applied to language. There is an uninterrupted continuity in the growth, or, so to say, in the life of language, much more than in any succession of historical facts. For although it is in the power of one individual to change empires, to abolish laws, to introduce new customs, new forms of government and new ideas, no King or Dictator has ever been able to change the smallest law of language. Language belongs in this respect to the realm of nature, whose laws are invariable, and can be deduced as such, by repeated observation.* The laws of history on the contrary are not invariable, or, at all events, it is impossible to deduce them by observation ever so

* • The phenomena of our globe declare, that the laws of Nature, or the operations of secondary causes, physical or physiological, have not been invariably uniform, or absolutely similar; some peculiar to the nascent world, all more intense; the collective life of all classes of animated beings endued with the vigour and flexibility of individual youth. Species and their varieties seem to have been produced by an inward nisus, which decreased with the advancing age of the world. The like with respect to languages. The process of linguistic formation did not suddenly terminate. A certain degree of vitality, now lost to us, was still subsisting; somewhat also of the generative energy of speech, "until" about the era when the Canon of Holy Scripture was closed by the last mysterious book of Prophecy.' - Palgrave's History of Normandy and England, vol. i. c. 2. 'On the Roman Language.' Where is the evidence of this until'?

1851.

Antiquity of Modern Languages.

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minute. Moreover the history of man is retrogressive as well as progressive. It is in the power of one generation to bring an art to the highest pitch of perfection, while the next generation may allow it to relapse, till a new genius takes it up again with increased ardour. This is not the case with language. New languages have arisen, but like the young shoots round a decayed trunk, they are but new forms of the old stock. As far as we can follow the history of the world, there has never been an absolutely new language, nor has any addition been made to those radical elements by means of which languages are formed. It is only out of the tombs of dead languages that new languages arise, like new towns, built on the ruins of ancient cities. The bricks with which the modern city of Baghdad is built on the borders of the Tigris, bear all, as Colonel Rawlinson* tells us, the cuneiform legend of Nebuchadnezzar, stamped upon them, for they had been taken from the ruins of the ancient cities built by this Assyrian monarch. In the same way, if we examine the structure of modern dialects, we shall find that each word bears still the unmistakeable stamp of an older language whose decayed fragments have furnished the materials for a new

structure.

These preliminary observations were necessary in order to determine the point of view from which we may look on languages whether ancient or modern, as historical documents, and they will explain how it is possible, by laying hold of the nearest points of our own language, to communicate, as it were telegraphically, with the remotest antiquity of the human race.

We begin with the Sclavonic word for God, which is 'Bog.' This word, which is used by the different branches of the Sclavonic family to express the idea of God, was employed by

* 'It was a custom, borrowed from Assyria, that the bricks used in building the ancient cities on the Lower Tigris and Euphrates should be stamped with the name and titles of the royal founder. With regard to Babylonia Proper, it is a remarkable fact, that every ruin from some distance north of Baghdad, as far south as the Birs Nimroud, is of the age of Nebuchadnezzar. I have examined the bricks in situ, belonging, perhaps, to one hundred different towns and cities within this area, and I never found any other legend than that of Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopalassar, King of Babylon. At Baghdad itself the right bank of the river within the town is formed for the space of nearly one hundred yards of an enormous mass of brickwork, which until lately was supposed to be of the time of the Caliphs, but which I found on examining the bricks to date from the age of Nebuchadnezzar.' On the Inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia. Journal of the Royal Asiatic 'Society,' vol. xii. p. 476.

*

the early inhabitants of the Russian Empire as a name of their heathen deities. According to Schaffarik, in his excellent work on Sclavonic Antiquities, it can be proved that the old Sarmatic tribes worshipped a supreme God,—the creator of heaven and earth, though they admitted at the same time several lesser gods, who were the mediators between man and the Supreme Being, and who received sacrifices, consisting of cattle and fruits. The old Slaves believed in a resurrection, and in rewards and punishments after death. Now this name Bog, which we find spread over the immense area of the Sclavonic empire, has its origin not in the steppes of Russia, but in the valleys of Northern India. It is known that the Sclavonic dialects belong to the Arian family, and, in Sanskrit, Bhaga means originally the sun. For instance, Rig-veda, i. 136. 2. The wide-shining Dawn has been seen ascending to the sky,'the path of the Eternal is full of rays; full of rays is the eye of Bhaga.' Bhaga is, indeed, among the principal deities of the Veda; and in the epic poem, also, his name is by no means forgotten. The word bhaga is derived from a root bhaj, to divide, and signifies the divider, distributor, or ruler. There are many similar names given to the sun by the old nations of the world, who looked upon this celestial luminary as the emblem of order, the divider of day and night, the author of the seasons, the source of time, and the ruler of the heavens. But the same word bhaga is also used in the Veda as a general term for deity; and in the Zendavesta, where it occurs as baga, it has entirely adopted the abstract meaning of God. The same form, baga, is found again on the rock inscriptions of the Persian kings. The upper inscription on the sepulchre of Darius at Nakshi-Rustam, begins with the following words: Baga wazarka Auramazdá, hya imám bumim adá, hya awam 'asmánam adá, hya martiyam adá, hya shiyátim adá martiyahyá, hya Dáryavum khsháyathiyam akunaush, aivam pauruvanám khshayathiyam, aivam paruvanám framátaram.' A great

66

God is Ormazd, who created this earth, who created that heaven, who created man, who gave life to man, who made 'Darius king, -the only king of the people, the only law'giver of the people.' In the inscription of Behistun, which Colonel Rawlinson has decyphered with such singular ingenuity and so vast an amount of learning, we find the same word

* There are even traces of human sacrifices among some tribes on the shore of the Baltic. But Schaffarik thinks that this barbarous custom does not occur among the pure Russians, that it had been introduced from without, and, at all events, that it did not last for a long period.

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Sclavonic and Teutonic Names of God.

6

39

in the plural also, bagâha, meaning the gods.' For instance, Says Darius the king, On that account Örmazd brought help ' and the other gods which are, because that I was not a heretic, nor was I a liar, nor was I a tyrant.' The very name of the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western frontiers of Media, on the high-road conducting from Babylonia to the eastward, where Darius had the royal charter of the Achæmenian dynasty engraved in arrow-head characters, was originally bhaga'stháná,' 'the abode of the gods,' or, according to Diodorus Siculus, the abode of Zeus.'* Here, in the name of Behi-stun, we see the old word bhaga, much more changed and corrupted than in the Sclavonic bog; and we learn from this, that the name by which God is invoked by the present Czar of Russia, is the very same word which was used by Darius, by Zoroaster, and by the poets of the Veda; that is to say, we find the roots of a word which lives in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, in the fourth, the eighth, and the fourteenth century before Christ.

It is much more difficult to trace the Teutonic word, 'God,' back to its origin. There is no doubt that the Supreme Being has always been called by this name in all German tongues. We have gut in Gothic, god in Anglo-Saxon, cot in Old-High German, gud in Swedish and Danish, and gott in modern German. The most natural supposition, if we took into account our modern languages only, would be to take god as the same word, or as derived from the same root, as good. This may, indeed, be considered as the common Christian etymology of the word 'god,' and an apparent authority has been found for it in the passage in the gospel of St. Mark, there is none good but one, that is God.'† But this etymology is indeed essentially Christian, and the occurrence of the same German word in the old heathen world, and for the old heathen gods, is fatal to it. Besides, although God and good have a very similar sound in English, the two words diverge, if we trace them back to the ancient German languages. Good in Gothic is not gup but gods, in Anglo-Saxon not god but gôd, in Old-High German not cot but cuot, in Danish not gud but god, in Dutch not god but goed. However, Comparative Philology has not yet been able to substitute a better etymology. The most common opinion of comparative philologists—we are not able to say with whom it originated that the Teutonic God is the same as the Persian

* Diodorus speaks of τὸ δὲ Βαγίστανον ὄρος, ἔστι μὲν ἱερὸν Διός. - Cf. Rawlinson's Memoirs, p. 187.

† In Anglo-Saxon, 'Nis nan man gôd buton god âna.' Gothic, Ni hvashun þiuþeigs alja ains guð.'

Khodá-is equally untenable. Khodá means, indeed, God in Persian; but it is a word which, according to the phonetic laws of the Iranian tongue, must have sounded hvadâ or hvadâta in the old language of Darius or Zoroaster. Its meaning would be self-produced.' But how is it credible that a word,. which only after the time of Darius could possibly have taken the form of Khodá* in Persian, should, under this peculiarly Persian and modern Persian form, have been transmitted to the old Teutonic nations? Another etymology has been attempted by bringing the Teutonic word at once into connexion with the Sanskrit Gûdha,' which means hidden, concealed, a mystery.' But this word again is much too metaphysical to furnish a real and natural explanation of so primitive a word as God.' We can only say, therefore, that God' was probably an old Teutonic word, used long before the introduction of Christianity, to signify either one Supreme Being, or gods in general. Indeed, we find that in the Old Norse, god in the neuter means a graven image, an idol, while gud in the masculine signifies God. Other Teutonic nations, after they had been converted, called their old heathen gods abgotts (Old-High German apcot), which makes it still more likely that god had been used by them before in the abstract sense of deus. In modern German an idol is called ein Götze, which is evidently derived from Gott; and Luther translates the verse from the Fifth Book of Moses, And ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods' by 'die Götzen ihrer Götter.'

The third word which we have still to consider, is the Latin deus, together with its modern derivations in Italian, Spanish, and French. The history of this term can be traced much more satisfactorily than the Teutonic word; and it allows us a deep insight into the silent vegetation not only of words and roots, but also of names and ideas.

There is an old root in Sanskrit-div, to shine which, according to a general rule of Sanskrit grammar, may be changed into dyu. From this root comes the Greek word Zeus, which, by a regular transition of letters, is nothing but the root dyu or yu with the s of the nominative, and corresponds, therefore, exactly to the Sanskrit Dyaus. The Greek language does not

* Le mot Khodai, seigneur, qui sous les Sassanides avait été appliqué aux rois, ne servait, depuis l'introduction de l'Islamisme, que pour designer Dieu; de sorte que Firdousi pouvait craindre qu'on ne lui reprochât comme un blasphème le titre de la source principale de son ouvrage (Khodai námeh), et toute accusation d'impiété, si frivole qu'elle fût, était grave pour le poëte au milieu de la cour jalouse et bigote de Mahmoud.'-J. Mohl, Shah-nameh, Introduction, p. x.