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thousand years' duration, but it was reserved for our Scotch philosopher to tell us what those ghost mon. archs did in the practical affairs of men. They invented the Sanskrit language!

These notices of two great scholars of the last century have a substantial value in relation to our subject. They should teach us the uselessness, the danger, of premature generalizations, when as yet we have but a partial view of the facts involved. Lord Monboddo died in 1799, and Dugald Stewart in 1828; yet in the brief space of time since elapsed, what an entire revolution, both in knowledge and opinion, has taken place in regard to things on which they pronounced with so much authority! And how often do we still see repetitions of the same haste in the conclusions which are drawn from imperfect data, especially as bearing on the divine origin and authority of the Bible!

The history of what may be called European Sanskrit philology dates from the foundation of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, in 1784. It was through the efforts of Sir William Jones, the missionary Carey, and other English scholars, as Foster, Wilkins, Colebrooke, etc., members of that society, that the language and literature of the Brahmans first became accessible to Europeans. In 1808 Frederick Schlegel published his little

work on "The Language and Wisdom of the Indians," which, says Professor Müller, "was like the wand of a magician." It pointed out the place where a new mine of knowledge should be opened, and it was not long before the most distinguished scholars of the day were sinking their shafts and raising the ore. The savants of the continent as Bopp, Schlegel, Lassen, Rosen, and Burnouf- resorted to England for the purpose of copying manuscripts at the East India House, and receiving assistance from Wilkins, Colebrooke, Wilson, and other distinguished members of the old Indian civil service. The first elaborate comparison of the Sanskrit with the Greek and Latin was by Francis Bopp, in an essay published in 1816. Other works of his soon followed, and in 1833 appeared the first volume of his "Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Sclavonic, Gothic, and German languages." This work was not completed till 1852, nearly twenty years later. Other scholars entered the same rich field, and gathered from it very important and valuable fruits.

But why, it may naturally be asked, should the discovery of the Sanskrit have wrought so great a change in the classificatory study of languages? The answer is, that it furnished a key to the puzzle which had previously existed in the problem of languages.

It showed that the Sanskrit was intimately related to the Greek, Latin, and most of the European languages, not as their parent, but as a sister in the same family. And as the modern Italian, French, Spanish, and other Romance languages are sisters, derived from the Latin as their parent, so the Sanskrit, with its affiliated tongues, must have had a common parent. When this was ascertained, "all languages," says Müller, "seemed to fall of themselves into their right position;" i. e., they all took their places as members of groups having natural relations to each other. The classification, however, is not complete, there being some languages, as, for instance, the Chinese, respecting which philologists differ in opinion as to the place they should occupy.

Languages are comprehended, as is well known, by philologists under three general families - the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Turanian. My limits do not permit, nor does my object require, more than a bare enumeration of the different branches of these several families, with a mention of the geographical limits to which they properly belong.

I. The ARYAN family, or, as it is frequently

*By some, Arian. Both forms are found in Müller's writings. The Sanskrit has Arya. It is the same as the Arioi of Herodotus and other Greek writers.

called, the INDO-EUROPEAN, the former "being the most ancient name by which the ancestors of this family distinguished themselves” (Müller), the latter indicating the geographical extent of the family in Asia and Europe. The former is the shortest, and contains a valuable historical reminiscence; the latter shows at a glance the localities where it is to be found. It is subdivided into two groups — the northern or European, and the southern or Asiatic.

At the head of the Asiatic group we, of course, place the Sanskrit with its dialects, the old Pali, and the Prakrit, ancient and modern, including the Bengali, the Hindi, the Punjaubi, and, according to some, the Urya, Marathi, and Guzerathi. Coming further west we find the languages of Afghanistan, Bokhara, Kurdistan, Media, Persia, Armenia, and some others, extending to the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The European group embraces the Greek, the Latin, the Sclavonic including the Lithuanian, the Germanic, and the Celtic, with the various dialects derived from them.

II. The SEMITIC family, so called because spoken mostly among the descendants of Shem. This has usually been subdivided into three branches -the Hebrew, the Aramaic, and the Arabic.

The Hebrew - now a dead language― was spoken in Palestine from or before the days of Moses to

the time of Nehemiah and the Maccabees, when it was replaced by the Chaldee or Aramaic. The language of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians belonged to this branch.

The Aramaic consists of the Syrian (ancient and modern) and the Chaldean, the geographical limits of which are Syria, Mesopotamia, and part of Babylonia. Here are classed the dialects of the Assyrian and Babylonian ruins, written in the cuneiform or arrow-shaped characters.

The Arabic had for its original seat the Arabian peninsula. Here it is still spoken by a compact mass of aboriginal inhabitants, and the ancient inscriptions there (Himyaritic) testify to its early presence. In its more modern form, it has spread over Egypt and the northern coast of Africa, and is largely spoken in Turkey and Persia indeed, wherever the Mohammedan religion has extended.

There is a fourth group of languages, which by many are assigned a place in the Semitic family, but by others are established as a distinct family by themselves, called The HAMITIC, from the Egyptian, its most important member, supposed to have been spoken by the descendants of Ham. This also is subdivided into three branches Egyptian which was an older form of the modern

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