or if they did, they would die away with each gen

eration.

The Aryan verb contains many forms in which the personal pronoun is no longer felt distinctly. And yet tradition, custom, and law preserve the life of these veterans, and make us feel unwilling to part with them. But in the ever-shifting state of a nomadic society no debased coin can be tolerated in language, no obscure legend accepted on trust. The metal must be pure, and the legend distinct; that the one may be weighed, and the other, if not deciphered, at least recognized as a well-known guarantee. Hence the small proportion of irregular forms in all agglutinative languages.1 A Turanian might tolerate the Sanskrit,

In these instances, with a few exceptions, root and affix are as distinguishable as, for instance, in Turkish:

But a conjugation like the Hindustání, which is a mod

ern Aryan dialect,

hun, hai, hai, hain, ho, hain,

would not be compatible with the genius of the Turanian languages, because it would not answer the requirements of a nomadic life. Turanian dialects

1 The Abbé Molina states that the language of Chili is entirely free from irregular forms. Du Ponceau, Mémoire, p. 90.

exhibit either no terminational distinctions at all, as in Mandshu, which is a Tungusic dialect; or a complete and intelligible system of affixes, as in the spoken dialect of Nyertchinsk, equally of Tungusic descent. But a state of conjugation in which, through phonetic corruption, the suffix of the first person singular and plural, and of the third person plural are the same, where there is no distinction between the second and third persons singular, and between the first and third persons plural, would necessarily lead, in a Turanian dialect, to the adoption of new and more expressive forms. New pronouns would have to be used to mark the persons, or some other expedient be resorted to for the same purpose.

And this will make it still more clear why the Turanian languages, or in fact all languages in this second or agglutinative stage, though protected against phonetic corruption more than the Aryan and Semitic languages, are so much exposed to the changes produced by dialectical regeneration. A Turanian retains, as it were, the consciousness of his language and grammar. The idea, for instance, which he connects with a plural is that of a noun followed by a syllable indicative of plurality; a passive with him is a verb followed by a syllable expressive of suffering, or eating, or going. Now these determinative ideas may be expressed in various ways, and though in one and the same clan, and during one period of time, a certain number of terminations would become stationary, and be assigned to the expression of certain grammatical categories, such as the plural, the passive, the genitive, different hordes, as they separated, would still feel 1 Letter on Turanian Languages, p. 206.

themselves at liberty to repeat the process of grammatical composition, and defy the comparative grammarian to prove the identity of the terminations, even in dialects so closely allied as Finnish and Hungarian, or Tamil and Telugu.

It must not be supposed, however, that Turanian or agglutinative languages are forever passing through this process of grammatical regeneration. Where nomadic tribes approach to a political organization, their language, though Turanian, may approach to the system of political or traditional languages, such as Sanskrit or Hebrew. This is indeed the case with the most advanced members of the Turanian family, the Hungarian, the Finnish, the Tamil, Telugu, &c. Many of their grammatical terminations have suffered by phonetic corruption, but they have not been replaced by new and more expressive words. The termination of the plural is lu in Telugu, and this is probably a mere corruption of gal., the termination of the plural in Tamil. The only characteristic Turanian feature which always remains is this: the root is never obscured. Besides this, the determining or modifying syllables are generally placed at the end, and the vowels do not become so absolutely fixed for each syllable as in Sanskrit or Hebrew. On the contrary, there is what is called the Law of Harmony, according to which the vowels of each word may be changed and modulated so as to harmonize with the key-note struck by its chief vowel. The vowels in Turkish, for instance, are divided into two classes, sharp and flat. If a verb contains a sharp vowel in its radical portion, the vowels of the terminations are all sharp, while the same terminations, if following a root with a

flat vowel, modulate their own vowels into the flat key. Thus we have sev-mek, to love, but bak-mak, to regard, mek or mak being the termination of the infinitive. Thus we say, ev-ler, the houses, but at-lar, the horses, ler or lar being the termination of the plural.

No Aryan or Semitic language has preserved a similar freedom in the harmonic arrangement of its vowels, while traces of it have been found among the most distant members of the Turanian family, as in Hungarian, Mongolian, Turkish, the Yakut, spoken in the north of Siberia, and in dialects spoken on the eastern frontiers of India.

For completeness' sake I add a short account of the Turanian family, chiefly taken from my Survey of Languages, published 1855:

Tungusic Class.

The Tungusic branch extends from China northward to Siberia and westward to 113°, where the river Tunguska partly marks its frontier. The Tungusic tribes in Siberia are under Russian sway. Other Tungusic tribes belong to the Chinese empire, and are known by the name of Mandshu, a name taken after they had conquered China in 1644, and founded the present imperial dynasty.

Mongolic Class.

The original seats of the people who speak Mongolic dialects lie near the Lake Baikal and in the eastern parts of Siberia, where we find them as early They were divided

as the ninth century after Christ. into three classes, the Mongols proper, the Buriäts, and the Ölöts or Kalmüks. Chingis-khán (1227) united

them into a nation and founded the Mongolian empire, which included, however, not only Mongolic, but Tungusic and Turkic, commonly called Tataric, tribes.

The name of Tatar soon became the terror of Asia and Europe, and it was applied promiscuously to all the nomadic warriors whom Asia then poured forth over Europe. Originally Tatar was a name of the Mongolic races, but through their political ascendency in Asia after Chingis-khán, it became usual to call all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name of Tatar. In linguistic works Tataric is now used in two several senses. Following the example of writers of the Middle Ages, Tataric, like Scythian in Greek, has been fixed upon as the general term comprising all languages spoken by the nomadic tribes of Asia. Hence it is used sometimes in the same sense in which we use Turanian. Secondly, Tataric has become the name of that class of Turanian languages of which the Turkish is the most prominent member. While the Mongolic class that which in fact has the greatest claims to the name of Tataricis never so called, it has become an almost universal custom to apply this name to the third or Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic division; and the races belonging to this branch have in many instances themselves adopted the name. These Turkish, or as they are more commonly called, Tataric races, were settled on the northern side of the Caspian Sea, and on the Black Sea, and were known as Komanes, Pechenegs, and Bulgars, when conquered by the Mongolic army of the son of Chingis-khán, who founded the Kapchakian empire, extending from the Dniestr to the Yemba and the Kirgisian steppes. Russia for two centuries was under the sway of these