Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE

LECTURE XII.

PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION.

Languages not Aryan and not Semitic.

HE two families of language which we have hitherto examined, the Aryan and Semitic, are the most important to the student of religion. Not only are the principal Sacred Books of the East, with the exception of those of China, composed in Sanskrit, Pâli, Prakrit, Zend, Pehlevi, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, but the religious and mythological phraseology of the leading nations of Europe-Greeks, Romans, Germans, Slaves and Celts-are all embodied in Aryan and Semitic speech. It was necessary therefore to give a fuller account of these two families, so as to avoid the necessity of explaining again and again the linguistic evidence on which so much in the study of the great religions of the world depends.

With regard to the remaining families of speech, however, it will be sufficient if I place before you a short outline only. Though outside the pale of the Aryan and Semitic languages the progress of Comparative Philology has been very slow, still we know in many cases which languages in Asia, Africa, Polynesia and America are related and which are not, and to know this is of course of the greatest help in the study of religion. When we meet with the same religious ideas or religious customs in distant parts of the world, the question whether they are the result of

our universal human nature or whether they have been transferred from one race to another, depends chiefly on the question whether there is a more or less distant relationship between the languages. If we know that the languages spoken on the East-coast of Africa from several degrees north of the equator to nearly the Cape belong to one and the same strongly marked family, that of the so-called Bântu languages, coincidences between the religious and mythological ideas of the races speaking these languages admit of an historical interpretation, and need not be accepted as the simple result of our common human faculties. If it could be proved that the Hottentots, the southern neighbours of these Bântu races, were really, as maintained by Lepsius and others, emigrants from Egypt, this again would throw a new light on certain coincidences in their customs and those of the ancient Egyptians.

The Hurons of the Anderdon reserve, visited by Mr. Horatio Hale in 1872 and 1874, tell the story of the earth being sustained by a tortoise, yet no one would think that they borrowed it from India. They likewise know of two supernatural beings who were to prepare the world to be the abode of man. The one was good, the other bad. The bad brother created monstrous creatures, the good brother innocent and useful animals, and though he could not destroy the evil animals altogether, he reduced them in size, so that man would be able to master them. Whatever beneficent work the good brother accomplished was counteracted by the bad brother. At last the two brothers fought, the evil spirit was overcome by

1 Horatio Hale in Journal of American Folklore, vol. i, p. 180.

the good, but retired to the West where, as he declared, all men would go after death. All this might be taken from the Avesta; yet though the two brothers are actually styled by the Hurons the Good Mind' and the Bad Mind' (in Zend, Vanheus Mainyus, Anrô Mainyus), no one would suppose that the Hurons borrowed from Zoroaster or Zoroaster from the Hurons.

It is essential also that students of religion and mythology should possess a general knowledge of the grammatical character of the languages, for it has been clearly shown that such peculiarities as, for instance, the distinction of masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, have been productive of a whole class of legends which are absent when the idea of gender has not been realised in language. My own conviction has always been that a truly scientific study of religion and mythology is impossible unless we know the language which forms the soil from which religion and mythology spring. All attempts therefore to study the religions, particularly of uncivilised tribes, whose dialects are but little known and whose linguistic affinities with other tribes are not yet clearly established, must be looked upon for the present as provisional only. These studies, though full of promise, are at the same time full of danger also.

Morphological Classification of Languages.

It may be well to keep in mind that languages may be and have been classified, not only genealogically,

1 Professor Tiele, one of the highest authorities on Comparative Theology, agrees with me as to the intimate relationship between language, religion, and nationality. But he very wisely puts in a reservation, namely that, the farther history advances, the more does religion become independent of both language and nationality.'

but morphologically also, and that a morphological similarity between certain languages, though it does in no way prove their common descent, indicates a common bent in the thoughts of those who speak them. I have already mentioned the grammatical distinction of gender as an important element in the formation of mythology and religion. Other elements of the same kind are the manner in which certain languages keep the radical portion of every word from phonetic corruption, while others allow it to become absorbed and almost lost. Words which display their radical elements retain a certain perspicuity, and are less liable therefore to mythological misunderstandings. Thus the Semitic languages in which the triliteral skeleton is generally clearly discernible in every word have produced less of poetical mythology than the Aryan languages. The power of forming abstract nouns, of employing compound words, of using impersonal verbs, has often to be appealed to in the interpretation of mythological and religious modes of expression.

I saw a curious instance of the almost unconscious influence which peculiarities of language may exercise on the expression of religious dogma in the case of a Mohawk who came to Oxford to study medicine, and who gave me lessons in his native language. In that language it is impossible to say the father, or the son; we must always say my, thy, or his father or son. Thus we cannot say 'I believe in God, the father,' but we must say, 'I believe in God, our father.' Again, instead of saying 'I believe in God, the son,' we have to say, 'I believe in God, his son.' But when we come to say 'I believe in God, the Holy

[ocr errors]

Ghost,' we cannot, as in English, leave the question of the procession of the Spirit from the father, or from the father and the son, an open one. We must say, either his Holy Ghost,' or 'their Holy Ghost.' That is to say, language would force a Mohawk to declare himself for the single or double procession, a question which most of us may leave to be settled by theologians by profession.

Genealogical as different from Morphological Classification.

The Aryan and Semitic languages are held together, as we saw, by the closest ties of a real genealogical relationship. They both presuppose the existence of a finished system of grammar, previous to the first divergence of their dialects. Their history is from the very beginning a history of decay rather than of growth, and hence the unmistakeable family-likeness which pervades every one even of their latest descendants. The languages of the Sepoy and that of the English soldier are, in one sense, one and the same language. They are both built up of materials which were definitely shaped before the Teutonic and Indic branches separated. No new root has been added to either since their first separation; and the grammatical forms which are of more modern growth in English or Hindustani are, if closely examined, new combinations only of elements which existed from the beginning in all the Aryan dialects. In the termination of the English he is, and in the inaudible termination of the French il est, we recognise the result of an act performed before the first separation of the Aryan family, the combination of the predicative root AS with the demonstrative element ta, or ti; an act per

« PreviousContinue »