INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY. 295 CHAPTER XLVIII. 2. Indo-European Family.-Arian Group.-Indian Branch-Gypsy-Iranic Branch-Ossetic-Armenian. THE languages of Europe belong, as far as number and importance are considered, mainly to the great Indo-European family. The reasons which led to the adoption of that name have been elsewhere given; they are sometimes called Arian, from the vernacular name of their home (airja), which, however, refers too exclusively to the Indian and Iranic members of the family; Sanscrit, without regard to the common error, to which such a designation would be apt to lead, as if they were all descended from the Sanscrit or Japhetic, with reference to biblical names, but conveying neither a precise nor correct meaning. The great mass of idioms which form this most important class of languages, are subdivided into smaller branches according to certain differences in the laws of "Ablaut," or transmutation of sounds. A thorough investigation of the older forms of all these idioms has led to the conviction of their common descent from a common fountain-head, now no longer in existence. They do not all, however, partake alike of the peculiarities thus inherited from a common ancestor; the farther east they live, the more purely and fully have they preserved the original character, as in the Sanscrit of Eastern India; every degree farther west diminishes this resemblance, and the Celtic, the oldest and therefore the most remote daughter of the family, shows least of all of the Indo-European type. The subdivisions are again naturally arranged, two and two together, so that Indian and Iranic form the Arian group, Greeks and Romans the Pelasgic, Slavic and Lettic the Slavic, and lastly, not thus joined together, the Celtic and the German. Each of these groups has some representative in Europe, though necessarily of very unequal extent and importance. Arian Group. (a.) Indian. No language of the Indo-European family has been known through so many centuries and under so different aspects, as the eastern branch, the Sanscrit, which thus, and on account of its superior age, is commonly considered the most important for all linguistic purposes. The clear and transparent organization of the Sanscrit is the most successful instance of inflection in languages. Its oldest form is seen in the Vedas; from which the so-called classic Sanscrit differs essentially in words, forms, and laws of euphony. At a very early period, already, new shoots came forth from the old tree, perhaps in the same way in which the Romance languages have arisen from the Latin. They appeared first as popular dialects by the side of the old language, which remained then, as it still does, the language of science and of religion. The older daughters of the Sanscrit are the Pali, the language of the Boodistic books of Ceylon and India, according to Lassen, the oldest preserved form of the languages of Western Hindustanee, and the humbler dialects, known collectively as the Prâcrit, and found in ancient dramas quoted as the language of the lower classes. The numerous descendants of the Sanscrit, which now exist, have undergone radical changes, are all more or less different from their common ancestor, and without exception, largely mixed up with foreign elements. Thus the Hindustanee or Urdû, one of the twenty-five idioms of this class which are known to us, contains a large number of Arabic and Persian words. The idioms of Bengal, the Punjab, Guzerat, Mahratta, &c., exhibit the same symptoms, whilst, strangely enough, the Hindi, or Bridj Bhakha, the general language of the higher classes throughout all India, contains the purer forms of the old Sanscrit. The only representative of these Indian languages in Europe, is the humble and long despised dialect of the Gypsies, and it must certainly be considered a most remarkable trait in the character of that mysterious race, that they have so tenaciously preserved their tongue, at least as far as the main substance is concerned, through so many centuries of lawless, vagrant life. No nation on earth has so many names, most of which refer to their pretended home, Egypt; as the English (e) Gypsies and the Spanish (e) gitáno names are principally Sinte an Indian word, meaning "dwellers on the Sindhu" or Indus; Rôm, or Rommany, man by eminence; and Kálo, Sanscrit Kála, from their dark complexion. They are found in large numbers in Asia, Africa, and Europe; rarely on the American continent; history knows them only since the fifteenth century, but there are reasons to fix the date of their emigration from India at an earlier period. Their language had, at an early period, attracted the attention of learned men; Grellman, Richardson, and Marsden, made collections of words from their various dialects, and, of late, G. Borrow has given considerable attention to the subject. It is, however, to the careful and truly scientific researches of the learned Pots, that we owe almost all that is known of their language. He has obtained the following results: That all the various dialects spoken by Gypsies in different parts of the world, and mixed up with elements of numerous other idioms, but mainly with Sclavonic and Romaic, are essentially one and the same language. That it is not a fictitious, nor an artificial (robbers') language, but a national idiom; and finally That its descent can be safely and satisfactorily traced back, so as to connect it with the great tongues of Western Asia, and especially, in spite of all degeneration and admixture, with the Sanscrit itself. Most of the important words of their language are found, almost without change, in the Hindi and Hind üstanee of our day; others can easily be explained by analogous forms of the latter. Thus another triumph was achieved by the science of comparative Philology, inasmuch as the national origin of this strange race was traced and established solely by researches in their language. (b.) Iranic. The idioms called Iranic were originally, it is presumed, closely related to the Indian family, but differ now in certain great laws of euphony, which, as they distinguish them from the Iranic idioms, are their common and exclusive property Such are, for instance, the rule that requires dentals, d, or t, to be changed into s, when they precede the letter t; the Sanscrit baddha, bound, appears in Iranic as bacta, in the wedge inscriptions of the old Persian as basta, and in modern Persian as beste. Radicals is changed into h, as in the Greek тa and the Latin septem; thus Sanscrit saptan, Latin septem, is in old Persian hapta, in modern Persian heft (Eπтα). 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 elements. 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 |