XX. PLAN OF A COMPARATIVE VOCABULARY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. By Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH, President of the Society. Read on the 26th of May, 1806. [The following paper is republished here in compliance with the resolution of the Society that all the papers read before it should be printed. The reader (especially the Indian reader) ought to bear in mind that it was written before the great light thrown on the Indian languages by late inquirers, and by the versions of the Scriptures into languages, of which in 1806 the existence was unknown to most, if not to all Europeans. Notwithstanding the liberal support of the various governments of British India, particularly of Lord Minto and Lord William Bentinck, the results of the inquiry were not sufficient to form a separate publication; they were therefore transmitted by order of the Society to the late Dr. Leyden, then engaged in similar researches on a very large scale; for which he was probably better qualified than any other European who ever visited India.] THE Empress Catherine II. in the year 1784 conceived the idea of a work better adapted than any which had preceded it, to facilitate the comparison of languages, and to furnish certain means of determining their affinity and filiation. This work was a comparative vocabulary of all languages. It is obvious that so great a plan must have been altogether impracticable, if it had not been limited to a moderate number of words. Her Imperial Majesty herself selected, and wrote with her own hand, one hundred and thirty words, which she thought the best fitted for the purpose of the work; and the execution was committed to the celebrated Mr. Pallas, who has already published two volumes, exhibiting these words in two hundred languages of Europe and Asia. A third was promised, but has not yet been published, with those of America. This defect, however, may be supplied by Dr. B. S. Barton, professor of natural philosophy at Philadelphia, who is said to have collected vocabularies of a hundred American languages. It is needless to observe how much gratitude and admiration are due to the sovereign who, in the midst of the cares of government, found leisure for so noble an enterprise; and to the celebrated scholar who undertook and executed a task so laborious. These sentiments of gratitude and admiration are not abated by some inconveniences which belong to the plan chosen, and by some defects unavoidable in the first execution of a work of such magnitude. So few copies were printed, and such was the consequent scarcity of the book, that it was not to be found even in the public library at Paris, the greatest in the world. Another circumstance besides its rarity made it almost inaccessible to curious and ingenious men. A spirit of nationality, pardonable indeed, but inconvenient, had dictated the choice of the Russian characters, known to very few men of letters. It required no great diligence to conquer that obstacle, but the character is said not to be in itself well adapted to perform the functions of an universal alphabet, and seems (in common indeed with most other alphabets) very imperfectly to represent the sounds employed by many other nations. Very different degrees of accuracy were naturally to be expected in different parts of such a work. The authority of government was employed to collect specimens of the languages spoken through the vast extent of the Russian empire, and they may doubtless be presumed to be perfectly correct. The greatest exactness was also attainable in those languages of Sclavonic origin, which are analogous in their structure and genius to the Russian, and which are spoken by nations in the immediate neighbourhood of that great empire. And no difficulty could be found respecting the polished languages either of ancient or modern Europe; but the same correctness was not possible with regard to the languages of distant nations, either illiterate, or whose literature was unknown to learned Europeans. Defects and errors respecting them were inevitable; and they are confessed by the learned compiler with the candour natural to conscious and secure superiority. It is indeed obvious that in the hands of one man, or of one society, the work can never approach completeness. It never can be executed to the extent or with the exactness desirable, in any other manner than by committing several parts of it to different persons, who may each contribute specimens of the languages most accessible to them; but this distribution would occasion such difficulty and delay as altogether to defeat the Plan, if each contributor were only to take a single language. Nor is this at all necessary; the languages of the world are in general divided into classes, one of which extends over many neighbouring or connected countries; and which having been originally dialects of the same speech, or branches from the same stock, retain, even in their separate form, similarity sufficient to make it convenient that they should be considered together. Thus in Europe, from the Rhine to the North Cape, and from the Vistula to the Atlantic, the predominant speech is Teutonic, which has gradually diverged into German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, (not to mention the dialects of German,) the independent idioms of nations no longer intelligible to each other. This is a natural principle of classification. Besides, there is a practical convenience in committing to the same person or persons all the idioms spoken in the same empire, even when they have no natural analogy. This occurs in many cases in Russia; and even in our more contracted insular territories, we have the Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic, which, being Celtic dialects, are radically different from English. On either and perhaps on both these principles, from similarity of idiom and from local convenience, the languages of India become the proper province of the British nation. By Indian languages are meant, those spoken by that race of men, of which the majority professes the Braminical religion, and which inhabits the country extending from the Indus to the Burrampooter, and from the Northern Mountains to Cape Comorin. Whether the nations situated between the eastern frontier of Bengal and the Straits of Malacca ought to be comprehended in the Indian class, seems very doubtful; for though Bhuddism be either a sect of Braminism, or a modification of the same original religion, and though deep traces of Sanscrit language and learning are discoverable among these nations, yet they are so blended with others of Malay extraction towards the south, and so tinctured with Chinese manners and institutions towards the east, that it is doubtful whether they ought to be classed with the unmixed nations of Hindu race. All the Indian languages hitherto explored have a large mixture of Sanscrit; but in what relation they stand to that ancient and celebrated tongue, is a matter which has not yet been determined, and which indeed cannot be determined, without a more exact comparison than has yet been laid before the public. The mere coincidence of many words will not prove that they are descended from it; on that principle English would be a daughter of the Latin. Nor is a different grammatical structure a decisive proof that they are not so descended: for that difference subsists between Italian and Latin, between English and Saxon. Sanscrit may have been the ancient vernacular speech of all India, from which all her modern dialects are derived. It may have been the speech of one district, which being more cultivated and polished, was adopted as the written, though not as the vulgar language, of all the other provinces. It is thus that the Tuscan and Upper Saxon dialects are supposed to have become the written and polite languages of Italy and Germany, aided in the latter case by the great influence of Luther. It may have been the language of learning and refinement throughout India, insensibly formed out of the analogous spoken dialects which it left in undisturbed possession of vulgar use; this would be agreeable to the supposition of those German and Italian critics who have resisted the exclusive claims of Tuscany and Saxony. It may have been the speech of a conquering nation, which imposed its laws and religion on the vanquished, and imparted to them a great portion of its language. In this manner such multitudes of Norman words flowed into the Saxon, and, combining with it, gradually produced the modern English. Other suppositions might be made, and those which I have offered above might be variously combined; as, the Sanscrit might have grown up spontaneously in one part of India, while it might be introduced by conquest into another, and only by religion and learning into a third. But, of problems which depend on such subtle distinctions, it would be |