Lectures on The Science of Language Part 4

Having been patronized by Caesar at Rome, it found a still more devoted patroness in the great Cesarina of the North, Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Even as Grand-d.u.c.h.ess Catherine was engrossed with the idea of a Universal Dictionary, on the plan suggested by Leibniz. She encouraged the chaplain of the British Factory at St. Petersburg, the Rev.

Daniel Dumaresq, to undertake the work, and he is said to have published, at her desire, a "Comparative Vocabulary of Eastern Languages," in quarto; a work, however, which, if ever published, is now completely lost. The reputed author died in London in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

When Catherine came to the throne, her plans of conquest hardly absorbed more of her time than her philological studies; and she once shut herself up nearly a year, devoting all her time to the compilation of her Comparative Dictionary. A letter of hers to Zimmermann, dated the 9th of May, 1785, may interest some of my hearers:-

"Your letter," she writes, "has drawn me from the solitude in which I had shut myself up for nearly nine months, and from which I found it hard to stir. You will not guess what I have been about. I will tell you, for such things do not happen every day. I have been making a list of from two to three hundred radical words of the Russian language, and I have had them translated into as many languages and jargons as I could find. Their number exceeds already the second hundred. Every day I took one of these words and wrote it out in all the languages which I could collect. This has taught me that the Celtic is like the Ostiakian: that what means sky in one language means cloud, fog, vault, in others; that the word G.o.d in certain dialects means Good, the Highest, in others, sun or fire. (Up to here her letter is written in French; then follows a line of German.) I became tired of my hobby, after I had read your book on Solitude. (Then again in French.) But as I should have been sorry to throw such a ma.s.s of paper in the fire;-besides, the room, six fathoms in length, which I use as a boudoir in my hermitage, was pretty well warmed-I asked Professor Pallas to come to me, and after making an honest confession of my sin, we agreed to publish these collections, and thus make them useful to those who like to occupy themselves with the forsaken toys of others. We are only waiting for some more dialects of Eastern Siberia. Whether the world at large will or will not see in this work bright ideas of different kinds, must depend on the disposition of their minds, and does not concern me in the least."

If an empress rides a hobby, there are many ready to help her. Not only were all Russian amba.s.sadors instructed to collect materials; not only did German professors(133) supply grammars and dictionaries, but Was.h.i.+ngton himself, in order to please the empress, sent her list of words to all governors and generals of the United States, enjoining them to supply the equivalents from the American dialects. The first volume of the Imperial Dictionary(134) appeared in 1787, containing a list of 285 words translated into fifty-one European, and 149 Asiatic languages. Though full credit should be given to the empress for this remarkable undertaking, it is but fair to remember that it was the philosopher who, nearly a hundred years before, sowed the seed that fell into good ground.

As collections, the works of Hervas, of the Empress Catherine, and of Adelung, are highly important, though, such is the progress made in the cla.s.sification of languages during the last fifty years, that few people would now consult them. Besides, the principle of cla.s.sification which is followed in these works can hardly claim to be called scientific.

Languages are arranged geographically, as the languages of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, though, at the same time, natural affinities are admitted which would unite dialects spoken at a distance of 208 degrees. Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents. This is a most critical period in the history of every science, and if it had not been for a happy accident, which, like an electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular forms, it is more than doubtful whether the long list of languages and dialects, enumerated and described in the works of Hervas and Adelung, could long have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the ancient language of the Hindus. It had ceased to be a spoken language at least 300 B. C. At that time the people of India spoke dialects standing to the ancient Vedic Sanskrit in the relation of Italian to Latin. We know some of these dialects, for there were more than one in various parts of India, from the inscriptions which the famous King Asoka had engraved on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri, and which have been deciphered by Prinsep, Norris, Wilson, and Burnouf. We can watch the further growth of these local dialects in the so-called _Pali_, the sacred language of Buddhism in Ceylon, and once the popular dialect of the country where Buddhism took its origin, the modern Behar, the ancient Magadha.(135) We meet the same local dialects again in what are called the Prakrit idioms, used in the later plays, in the sacred literature of the Jainas, and in a few poetical compositions; and we see at last how, through a mixture with the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and Turkish, and through a concomitant corruption of their grammatical system, they were changed into the modern Hindi, Hindustani, Mahratti, and Bengali. During all this time, however, Sanskrit continued as the literary language of the Brahmans. Like Latin, it did not die in giving birth to its numerous offspring; and even at the present day, an educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in Bengali. Sanskrit was what Greek was at Alexandria, what Latin was during the Middle Ages. It was the cla.s.sical and at the same time the sacred language of the Brahmans, and in it were written their sacred hymns, the Vedas, and the later works, such as the laws of Manu and the Puranas.

The existence of such a language as the ancient idiom of the country, and the vehicle of a large literature, was known at all times; and if there are still any doubts, like those expressed by Dugald Stewart in his "Conjectures concerning the Origin of the Sanskrit,"(136) as to its age and authenticity, they will be best removed by a glance at the history of India, and at the accounts given by the writers of different nations that became successively acquainted with the language and literature of that country.

The argument that nearly all the names of persons and places in India mentioned by Greek and Roman writers are pure Sanskrit, has been handled so fully and ably by others, that nothing more remains to be said.

The next nation after the Greeks that became acquainted with the language and literature of India was the Chinese. Though Buddhism was not recognized as a third state-religion before the year 65 A. D., under the Emperor Ming-ti,(137) Buddhist missionaries reached China from India as early as the third century B. C. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese annals in the year 217; and about the year 120 B. C., a Chinese general, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of Buddha.

The very name of Buddha, changed in Chinese into Fo-t'o and Fo,(138) is pure Sanskrit, and so is every word and every thought of that religion.

The language which the Chinese pilgrims went to India to study, as the key to the sacred literature of Buddhism, was Sanskrit. They call it Fan; but Fan, as M. Stanislas Julien has shown, is an abbreviation of Fan-lan-mo, and this is the only way in which the Sanskrit Brahman could be rendered in Chinese.(139) We read of the Emperor Ming-ti, of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsa-in and other high officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha. They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matanga and Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were translated by them into Chinese. The intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern continent of Asia continued uninterrupted for several centuries. Missions were sent from China to India to report on the religious, political, social, and geographical state of the country; and the chief object of interest, which attracted public emba.s.sies and private pilgrims across the Himalayan mountains, was the religion of Buddha. About 300 years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti, the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers to the travels of Fa-hian, who visited India towards the end of the fourth century. His travels were translated into French by A. Remusat. After Fa-hian, we have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in 518, by command of the empress, with the view of collecting sacred books and relics. Then followed Hiouen-thsang, whose life and travels, from 629-645, have been rendered so popular by the excellent translation of M. Stanislas Julien.

After Hiouen-thsang the princ.i.p.al works of Chinese pilgrims are the Itineraries of the Fifty-six Monks, published in 730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head of 300 pilgrims.

That the language employed for literary purposes in India during all this time was Sanskrit, we learn, not only from the numerous names and religious and philosophical terms mentioned in the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, but from a short paradigm of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit which one of them (Hiouen-thsang) has inserted in his diary.

As soon as the Muhammedans entered India, we hear of translations of Sanskrit works into Persian and Arabic.(140) Harun-al-Ras.h.i.+d (786-809) had two Indians, Manka and Saleh, at his court as physicians. Manka translated the cla.s.sical work on medicine, Susruta, and a treatise on poisons, ascribed to Chanakya, from Sanskrit into Persian.(141) During the Chalifate of Al Mamum, a famous treatise on Algebra was translated by Muhammed ben Musa from Sanskrit into Arabic (edited by F. Rosen).

About 1000 A. D., Abu Rihan al Biruni (born 970, died 1038) spent forty years in India, and composed his excellent work, the Tarikhu-l-Hind, which gives a complete account of the literature and sciences of the Hindus at that time. Al Biruni had been appointed by the Sultan of Khawarazm to accompany an emba.s.sy which he sent to Mahmud of Ghazni and Masud of Lah.o.r.e. The learned Avicenna had been invited to join the same emba.s.sy, but had declined. Al Biruni must have acquired a complete knowledge of Sanskrit, for he not only translated one work on the Sankhya, and another on the Yoga philosophy, from Sanskrit into Arabic, but likewise two works from Arabic into Sanskrit.(142)

About 1150 we hear of Abu Saleh translating a work on the education of kings from Sanskrit into Arabic.(143)

Two hundred years later, we are told that Firoz Shah, after the capture of Nagarcote, ordered several Sanskrit works on philosophy to be translated from Sanskrit by Maulana Izzu-d-din Khalid Khani. A work on veterinary medicine ascribed to Salotar,(144) said to have been the tutor of Susruta, was likewise translated from Sanskrit in the year 1381. A copy of it was preserved in the Royal Library of Lucknow.

Two hundred years more bring us to the reign of Akbar (1556-1605). A more extraordinary man never sat on the throne of India. Brought up as a Muhammedan, he discarded the religion of the Prophet as superst.i.tious,(145) and then devoted himself to a search after the true religion. He called Brahmans and fire-wors.h.i.+ppers to his court, and ordered them to discuss in his presence the merits of their religions with the Muhammedan doctors. When he heard of the Jesuits at Goa, he invited them to his capital, and he was for many years looked upon as a secret convert to Christianity. He was, however, a rationalist and deist, and never believed anything, as he declared himself, that he could not understand. The religion which he founded, the so-called Ilahi religion, was pure Deism mixed up with the wors.h.i.+p of the sun(146) as the purest and highest emblem of the Deity. Though Akbar himself could neither read nor write,(147) his court was the home of literary men of all persuasions.

Whatever book, in any language, promised to throw light on the problems nearest to the emperor's heart, he ordered to be translated into Persian.

The New Testament(148) was thus translated at his command; so were the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Amarakosha,(149) and other cla.s.sical works of Sanskrit literature. But though the emperor set the greatest value on the sacred writings of different nations, he does not seem to have succeeded in extorting from the Brahmans a translation of the Veda. A translation of the Atharva-veda(150) was made for him by Haji Ibrahim Sirhindi; but that Veda never enjoyed the same authority as the other three Vedas; and it is doubtful even whether by Atharva-veda is meant more than the Upanishads, some of which may have been composed for the special benefit of Akbar. There is a story which, though evidently of a legendary character, shows how the study of Sanskrit was kept up by the Brahmans during the reign of the Mogul emperors.

"Neither the authority (it is said) nor promises of Akbar could prevail upon the Brahmans to disclose the tenets of their religion: he was therefore obliged to have recourse to artifice. The stratagem he made use of was to cause an infant, of the name of _Feizi_, to be committed to the care of these priests, as a poor orphan of the sacerdotal line, who alone could be initiated into the sacred rites of their theology. Feizi, having received the proper instructions for the part he was to act, was conveyed privately to Benares, the seat of knowledge in Hindostan; he was received into the house of a learned Brahman, who educated him with the same care as if he had been his son. After the youth had spent ten years in study, Akbar was desirous of recalling him; but he was struck with the charms of the daughter of his preceptor. The old Brahman laid no restraint on the growing pa.s.sion of the two lovers. He was fond of Feizi, and offered him his daughter in marriage. The young man, divided between love and grat.i.tude, resolved to conceal the fraud no longer, and, falling at the feet of the Brahman, discovered the imposture, and asked pardon for his offences. The priest, without reproaching him, seized a poniard which hung at his girdle, and was going to plunge it in his heart, if Feizi had not prevented him by taking hold of his arm. The young man used every means to pacify him, and declared himself ready to do anything to expiate his treachery. The Brahman, bursting into tears, promised to pardon him on condition that he should swear never to translate the _Vedas_, or sacred volumes, or disclose to any person whatever the symbol of the Brahman creed. Feizi readily promised him: how far he kept his word is not known; but the sacred books of the Indians have never been translated."(151)

We have thus traced the existence of Sanskrit, as the language of literature and religion of India, from the time of Alexander to the reign of Akbar. A hundred years after Akbar, the eldest son of Shah Jehan, the unfortunate Dara, manifested the same interest in religious speculations which had distinguished his great grandsire. He became a student of Sanskrit, and translated the Upanishads, philosophical treatises appended to the Vedas, into Persian. This was in the year 1657, a year before he was put to death by his younger brother, the bigoted Aurengzebe. This prince's translation was translated into French by Anquetil Duperron, in the year 1795, the fourth year of the French Republic; and was for a long time the princ.i.p.al source from which European scholars derived their knowledge of the sacred literature of the Brahmans.

At the time at which we have now arrived, the reign of Aurengzebe (1658-1707), the cotemporary and rival of Louis XIV., the existence of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature was known, if not in Europe generally, at least to Europeans in India, particularly to missionaries. Who was the first European, that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say. When Vasco de Gama landed at Calicut, on the 9th of May, 1498, Padre Pedro began at once to preach to the natives, and had suffered a martyr's death before the discoverer of India returned to Lisbon. Every new s.h.i.+p that reached India brought new missionaries; but for a long time we look in vain in their letters and reports for any mention of Sanskrit or Sanskrit literature. Francis, now St. Francis Xavier, was the first to organize the great work of preaching the Gospel in India (1542); and such were his zeal and devotion, such his success in winning the hearts of high and low, that his friends ascribed to him, among other miraculous gifts, the gift of tongues(152)-a gift never claimed by St. Francis himself. It is not, however, till the year 1559 that we first hear of the missionaries at Goa studying, with the help of a converted Brahman,(153) the theological and philosophical literature of the country, and challenging the Brahmans to public disputations.

The first certain instance of a European missionary having mastered the difficulties of the Sanskrit language, belongs to a still later period,-to what may be called the period of Roberto de n.o.bili, as distinguished from the first period, which is under the presiding spirit of Francis Xavier.

Roberto de n.o.bili went to India in 1606. He was himself a man of high family, of a refined and cultivated mind, and he perceived the more quickly the difficulties which kept the higher castes, and particularly the Brahmans, from joining the Christian communities formed at Madura and other places. These communities consisted chiefly of men of low rank, of no education, and no refinement. He conceived the bold plan of presenting himself as a Brahman, and thus obtaining access to the high and n.o.ble, the wise and learned, in the land. He shut himself up for years, acquiring in secret a knowledge, not only of Tamil and Telugu, but of Sanskrit. When, after a patient study of the language and literature of the Brahmans, he felt himself strong enough to grapple with his antagonists, he showed himself in public, dressed in the proper garb of the Brahmans, wearing their cord and their frontal mark, observing their diet, and submitting even to the complicated rules of caste. He was successful, in spite of the persecutions both of the Brahmans, who were afraid of him, and of his own fellow-laborers, who could not understand his policy. His life in India, where he died as an old blind man, is full of interest to the missionary.

I can only speak of him here as the first European Sanskrit scholar. A man who could quote from Manu, from the Puranas, and even from works such as the apastamba-sutras, which are known even at present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda,(154) which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system which he came to conquer. It is surprising that the reports which he sent to Rome, in order to defend himself against the charge of idolatry, and in which he drew a faithful picture of the religion, the customs, and literature of the Brahmans, should not have attracted the attention of scholars. The "Accommodation Question," as it was called, occupied cardinals and popes for many years; but not one of them seems to have perceived the extraordinary interest attaching to the existence of an ancient civilization so perfect and so firmly rooted as to require accommodation even from the missionaries of Rome. At a time when the discovery of one Greek MS. would have been hailed by all the scholars of Europe, the discovery of a complete literature was allowed to pa.s.s unnoticed. The day of Sanskrit had not yet come.

The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of European scholars to the extraordinary discovery that had been made were the French Jesuit missionaries, whom Louis XIV. had sent out to India after the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697.(155) Father Pons drew up a comprehensive account of the literary treasures of the Brahmans; and his report, dated Karikal (dans le Madure), November 23, 1740, and addressed to Father Duhalde, was published in the "Lettres edifiantes."(156) Father Pons gives in it a most interesting and, in general, a very accurate description of the various branches of Sanskrit literature,-of the four Vedas, the grammatical treatises, the six systems of philosophy, and the astronomy of the Hindus. He antic.i.p.ated, on several points, the researches of Sir William Jones.

But, although the letter of Father Pons excited a deep interest, that interest remained necessarily barren, as long as there were no grammars, dictionaries, and Sanskrit texts to enable scholars in Europe to study Sanskrit in the same spirit in which they studied Greek and Latin. The first who endeavored to supply this want was a Carmelite friar, a German of the name of Johann Philip Wesdin, better known as Paulinus a Santo Bartholomeo. He was in India from 1776 to 1789; and he published the first grammar of Sanskrit at Rome, in 1790. Although this grammar has been severely criticised, and is now hardly ever consulted, it is but fair to bear in mind that the first grammar of any language is a work of infinitely greater difficulty than any later grammar.(157)

We have thus seen how the existence of the Sanskrit language and literature was known ever since India had first been discovered by Alexander and his companions. But what was not known was, that this language, as it was spoken at the time of Alexander, and at the time of Solomon, and for centuries before his time, was intimately related to Greek and Latin, in fact, stood to them in the same relation as French to Italian and Spanish. The history of what may be called European Sanskrit philology dates from the foundation of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, in 1784.(158) It was through the labors of Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins, Forster, Colebrooke, and other members of that ill.u.s.trious Society, that the language and literature of the Brahmans became first accessible to European scholars; and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the literature, excited the deepest and most lasting interest.

It was impossible to look, even in the most cursory manner, at the declensions and conjugations, without being struck by the extraordinary similarity, or, in some cases, by the absolute ident.i.ty of the grammatical forms in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. As early as 1778, Halhed remarked, in the preface to his Grammar of Bengali,(159) "I have been astonished to find this similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek; and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutuation of refined arts and improved manners might have occasionally introduced; but in the main groundwork of language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as could be first discriminated on the immediate dawn of civilization." Sir William Jones (died 1794), after the first glance at Sanskrit, declared that whatever its antiquity, it was a language of most wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity. "No philologer," he writes, "could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family."

But how was that affinity to be explained? People were completely taken by surprise. Theologians shook their heads; cla.s.sical scholars looked sceptical; philosophers indulged in the wildest conjectures in order to escape from the only possible conclusion which could be drawn from the facts placed before them, but which threatened to upset their little systems of the history of the world. Lord Monboddo had just finished his great work(160) in which he derives all mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from a language originally framed by some Egyptian G.o.ds,(161) when the discovery of Sanskrit came on him like a thunder-bolt. It must be said, however, to his credit, that he at once perceived the immense importance of the discovery. He could not be expected to sacrifice his primaeval monkeys or his Egyptian idols; but, with that reservation, the conclusions which he drew from the new evidence placed before him by his friend Mr. Wilkins, the author of one of our first Sanskrit grammars, are highly creditable to the acuteness of the Scotch judge. "There is a language," he writes(162) (in 1792), "still existing, and preserved among the Bramins of India, which is a richer and in every respect a finer language than even the Greek of Homer. All the other languages of India have a great resemblance to this language, which is called the Shanscrit. But those languages are dialects of it, and formed from it, not the Shanscrit from them. Of this, and other particulars concerning this language, I have got such certain information from India, that if I live to finish my history of man, which I have begun in my third volume of 'Antient Metaphysics,' I shall be able clearly to prove that the Greek is derived from the Shanscrit, which was the antient language of Egypt, and was carried by the Egyptians into India, with their other arts, and into Greece by the colonies which they settled there."

A few years later (1795) he had arrived at more definite views on the relation of Sanskrit to Greek; and he writes,(163) "Mr. Wilkins has proved to my conviction such a resemblance betwixt the Greek and the Shanscrit, that the one must be a dialect of the other, or both of some original language. Now the Greek is certainly not a dialect of the Shanscrit, any more than the Shanscrit is of the Greek. They must, therefore, be both dialects of the same language; and that language could be no other than the language of Egypt, brought into India by Osiris, of which, undoubtedly, the Greek was a dialect, as I think I have proved."

Into these theories of Lord Monboddo's on Egypt and Osiris, we need not inquire at present. But it may be of interest to give one other extract, in order to show how well, apart from his men with, and his monkeys without, tails, Lord Monboddo could sift and handle the evidence that was placed before him:-

"To apply these observations to the similarities which Mr. Wilkins has discovered betwixt the Shanscrit and the Greek;-I will begin with these words, which must have been original words in all languages, as the things denoted by them must have been known in the first ages of civility, and have got names; so that it is impossible that one language could have borrowed them from another, unless it was a derivative or dialect of that language. Of this kind are the names of numbers, of the members of the human body, and of relations, such as that of father, mother, and brother.

And first, as to numbers, the use of which must have been coeval with civil society. The words in the Shanscrit for the numbers from one to ten are, _ek_, _dwee_, _tree_, _chatoor_, _panch_, _shat_, _sapt_, _aght_, _nava_, _das_, which certainly have an affinity to the Greek or Latin names for those numbers. Then they proceed towards twenty, saying ten and one, ten and two, and so forth, till they come to twenty; for their arithmetic is decimal as well as ours. Twenty they express by the word _veensatee_. Then they go on till they come to thirty, which they express by the word _treensat_, of which the word expressing three is part of the composition, as well as it is of the Greek and Latin names for those numbers. And in like manner they go on expressing forty, fifty, &c., by a like composition with the words expressing simple numerals, namely, four, five, &c., till they come to the number one hundred, which they express by _sat_, a word different from either the Greek or Latin name for that number. But, in this numeration, there is a very remarkable conformity betwixt the word in Shanscrit expressing twenty or twice ten, and the words in Greek and Latin expressing the same number; for in none of the three languages has the word any relation to the number two, which, by multiplying ten, makes twenty; such as the words expressing the numbers thirty, forty, &c., have to the words expressing three or four; for in Greek the word is _eikosi_, which expresses no relation to the number two; nor does the Latin _viginti_, but which appears to have more resemblance to the Shanscrit word _veensatee_. And thus it appears that in the anomalies of the two languages of Greek and Latin, there appears to be some conformity with the Shanscrit."

Lord Monboddo compares the Sanskrit _pada_ with the Greek _pous_, _podos_; the Sanskrit _nasa_ with the Latin _nasus_; the Sanskrit _deva_, G.o.d, with the Greek _Theos_ and Latin _deus_; the Sanskrit _ap_, water, with the Latin _aqua_; the Sanskrit _vidhava_ with the Latin _vidua_, widow.

Sanskrit words such as _gonia_, for angle, _kentra_, for centre, _hora_, for hour, he points out as clearly of Greek origin, and imported into Sanskrit. He then proceeds to show the grammatical coincidences between Sanskrit and the cla.s.sical languages. He dwells on compounds such as _tripada_, from _tri_, three, and _pada_, foot-a tripod; he remarks on the extraordinary fact that Sanskrit, like Greek, changes a positive into a negative adjective by the addition of the _a_ privative; and he then produces what he seems to consider as the most valuable present that Mr.

Wilkins could have given him, namely, the Sanskrit forms, _asmi_, I am; _asi_, thou art; _asti_, he is; _santi_, they are; forms clearly of the same origin as the corresponding forms, _esmi_, _eis_, _esti_, in Greek, and _sunt_ in Latin.

Another Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, was much less inclined to yield such ready submission. No doubt it must have required a considerable effort for a man brought up in the belief that Greek and Latin were either aboriginal languages, or modifications of Hebrew, to bring himself to acquiesce in the revolutionary doctrine that the cla.s.sical languages were intimately related to a jargon of mere savages; for such all the subjects of the Great Mogul were then supposed to be. However, if the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had been put together, after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch-forgers and liars the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition. I mention this fact, because it shows, better than anything else, how violent a shock was given by the discovery of Sanskrit to prejudices most deeply ingrained in the mind of every educated man. The most absurd arguments found favor for a time, if they could only furnish a loophole by which to escape from the unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The first who dared boldly to face both the facts and the conclusions of Sanskrit scholars.h.i.+p was the German poet, Frederick Schlegel. He had been in England during the peace of Amiens (1801-1802), and had learned a smattering of Sanskrit from Mr. Alexander Hamilton. After carrying on his studies for some time at Paris, he published, in 1808, his work, "On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians." This work became the foundation of the science of language.

Though published only two years after the first volume of Adelung's "Mithridates," it is separated from that work by the same distance which separates the Copernican from the Ptolemaean system. Schlegel was not a great scholar. Many of his statements have proved erroneous; and nothing would be easier than to dissect his essay and hold it up to ridicule. But Schlegel was a man of genius; and when a new science is to be created, the imagination of the poet is wanted, even more than the accuracy of the scholar. It surely required somewhat of poetic vision to embrace with _one_ glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and to rivet them together by the simple name of Indo-Germanic. This was Schlegel's work; and in the history of the intellect, it has truly been called "the discovery of a new world."

We shall see, in our next lecture, how Schlegel's idea was taken up in Germany, and how it led almost immediately to a genealogical cla.s.sification of the princ.i.p.al languages of mankind.

LECTURE V. GENEALOGICAL CLa.s.sIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.

We traced, in our last Lecture, the history of the various attempts at a cla.s.sification of languages to the year 1808, the year in which Frederick Schlegel published his little work on "The Language and Wisdom of the Indians." This work was like the wand of a magician. It pointed out the place where a mine should be opened; and it was not long before some of the most distinguished scholars of the day began to sink their shafts, and raise the ore. For a time, everybody who wished to learn Sanskrit had to come to England. Bopp, Schlegel, La.s.sen, Rosen, Burnouf, all spent some time in this country, copying ma.n.u.scripts at the East-India House, and receiving a.s.sistance from Wilkins, Colebrooke, Wilson, and other distinguished members of the old Indian Civil Service. The first minute and scholar-like comparison of the grammar of Sanskrit with that of Greek and Latin, Persian, and German, was made by Francis Bopp, in 1816.(164) Other essays of his followed; and in 1833 appeared the first volume of his "Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Slavonic, Gothic, and German." This work was not finished till nearly twenty years later, in 1852;(165) but it will form forever the safe and solid foundation of comparative philology. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the brother of Frederick Schlegel, used the influence which he had acquired as a German poet, to popularize the study of Sanskrit in Germany.

His "Indische Bibliothek" was published from 1819 to 1830, and though chiefly intended for Sanskrit literature, it likewise contained several articles on Comparative Philology. This new science soon found a still more powerful patron in William von Humboldt, the worthy brother of Alexander von Humboldt, and at that time one of the leading statesmen in Prussia. His essays, chiefly on the philosophy of language, attracted general attention during his lifetime; and he left a lasting monument of his studies in his great work on the Kawi language, which was published after his death, in 1836. Another scholar who must be reckoned among the founders of Comparative Philology is Professor Pott, whose "Etymological Researches" appeared first in 1833 and 1836.(166) More special in its purpose, but based on the same general principles, was Grimm's "Teutonic Grammar," a work which has truly been called colossal. Its publication occupied nearly twenty years, from 1819 to 1837. We ought, likewise, to mention here the name of an eminent Dane, Erasmus Rask, who devoted himself to the study of the northern languages of Europe. He started, in 1816, for Persia and India, and was the first to acquire a knowledge of Zend, the language of the Zend-Avesta; but he died before he had time to publish all the results of his learned researches. He had proved, however, that the sacred language of the Parsis was closely connected with the sacred language of the Brahmans, and that, like Sanskrit, it had preserved some of the earliest formations of Indo-European speech. These researches into the ancient Persian language were taken up again by one of the greatest scholars that France ever produced, by Eugene Burnouf. Though the works of Zoroaster had been translated before by Anquetil Duperron, his was only a translation of a modern Persian translation of the original. It was Burnouf who, by means of his knowledge of Sanskrit and Comparative Grammar, deciphered for the first time the very words of the founder of the ancient religion of light. He was, likewise, the first to apply the same key with real success to the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes; and his premature death will long be mourned, not only by those who, like myself, had the privilege of knowing him personally and attending his lectures, but by all who have the interest of oriental literature and of real oriental scholars.h.i.+p at heart.

I cannot give here a list of all the scholars who followed in the track of Bopp, Schlegel, Humboldt, Grimm, and Burnouf. How the science of language has flourished and abounded may best be seen in the library of any comparative philologist. There has been for the last ten years a special journal of Comparative Philology in Germany. The Philological Society in London publishes every year a valuable volume of its transactions; and in almost every continental university there is a professor of Sanskrit who lectures likewise on Comparative Grammar and the science of language.

But why, it may naturally be asked, why should the discovery of Sanskrit have wrought so complete a change in the cla.s.sificatory study of languages? If Sanskrit had been the primitive language of mankind, or at least the parent of Greek, Latin, and German, we might understand that it should have led to quite a new cla.s.sification of these tongues. But Sanskrit does not stand to Greek, Latin, the Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic languages in the relation of Latin to French, Italian, and Spanish. Sanskrit, as we saw before, could not be called their parent, but only their elder sister. It occupies with regard to the cla.s.sical languages a position a.n.a.logous to that which Provencal occupies with regard to the modern Romance dialects. This is perfectly true; but it was exactly this necessity of determining distinctly and accurately the mutual relation of Sanskrit and the other members of the same family of speech, which led to such important results, and particularly to the establishment of the laws of phonetic change as the only safe means for measuring the various degrees of relations.h.i.+p of cognate dialects, and thus restoring the genealogical tree of human speech. When Sanskrit had once a.s.sumed its right position, when people had once become familiarized with the idea that there must have existed a language more primitive than Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, and forming the common background of these three, as well as of the Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic branches of speech, all languages seemed to fall by themselves into their right position. The key of the puzzle was found, and all the rest was merely a work of patience. The same arguments by which Sanskrit and Greek had been proved to hold co-ordinate rank were perceived to apply with equal strength to Latin and Greek; and after Latin had once been shown to be more primitive on many points than Greek, it was easy to see that the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the Slavonic languages also, contained each a number of formations which it was impossible to derive from Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin. It was perceived that all had to be treated as co-ordinate members of one and the same cla.s.s.

The first great step in advance, therefore, which was made in the cla.s.sification of languages, chiefly through the discovery of Sanskrit, was this, that scholars were no longer satisfied with the idea of a general relations.h.i.+p, but began to inquire for the different degrees of relations.h.i.+p in which each member of a cla.s.s stood to another. Instead of mere _cla.s.ses_, we hear now for the first time of well regulated _families_ of language.

A second step in advance followed naturally from the first. Whereas, for establis.h.i.+ng in a general way the common origin of certain languages, a comparison of numerals, p.r.o.nouns, prepositions, adverbs, and the most essential nouns and verbs, had been sufficient, it was soon found that a more accurate standard was required for measuring the more minute degrees of relations.h.i.+p. Such a standard was supplied by Comparative Grammar; that is to say, by an intercomparison of the grammatical forms of languages supposed to be related to each other; such intercomparison being carried out according to certain laws which regulate the phonetic changes of letters.

A glance at the modern history of language will make this clearer. There could never be any doubt that the so-called Romance languages, Italian, Wallachian, Provencal, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, were closely related to each other. Everybody could see that they were all derived from Latin. But one of the most distinguished French scholars, Raynouard, who has done more for the history of the Romance languages and literature than any one else, maintained that Provencal only was the daughter of Latin; whereas French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese were the daughters of Provencal. He maintained that Latin pa.s.sed, from the seventh to the ninth century, through an intermediate stage, which he called Langue Romane, and which he endeavored to prove was the same as the Provencal of Southern France, the language of the Troubadours. According to him, it was only after Latin had pa.s.sed through this uniform metamorphosis, represented by the Langue Romane or Provencal, that it became broken up into the various Romance dialects of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. This theory, which was vigorously attacked by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, and afterwards minutely criticised by Sir Cornewall Lewis, can only be refuted by a comparison of the Provencal grammar with that of the other Romance dialects. And here, if you take the auxiliary verb _to be_, and compare its forms in Provencal and French, you will see at once that, on several points, French has preserved the original Latin forms in a more primitive state than Provencal, and that, therefore, it is impossible to cla.s.sify French as the daughter of Provencal, and as the granddaughter of Latin. We have in Provencal:-

_sem_, corresponding to the French _nous sommes_, _etz_, corresponding to the French _vous etes_, _son_, corresponding to the French _ils sont_,

and it would be a grammatical miracle if crippled forms, such as _sem_, _etz_, and _son_, had been changed back again into the more healthy, more primitive, more Latin, _sommes_, _etes_, _sont_; _sumus_, _estis_, _sunt_.

Let us apply the same test to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; and we shall see how their mutual genealogical position is equally determined by a comparison of their grammatical forms. It is as impossible to derive Latin from Greek, or Greek from Sanskrit, as it is to treat French as a modification of Provencal. Keeping to the auxiliary verb _to be_, we find that _I am_ is in

Sanskrit Greek Lithuanian _asmi_ _esmi_ _esmi_.

The root is _as_, the termination _mi_.

Now, the termination of the second person is _si_, which, together with _as_, or _es_, would make,