Part 14

Now, the place where the navy of Solomon and Hiram, coming down the Red Sea, would naturally have landed, was the mouth of the Indus. There _gold_ and _precious stones_ from the north would have been brought down the Indus; and _sandalwood_, _peacocks_, and _apes_ would have been brought from Central and Southern India. In this very locality Ptolemy (vii. 1) gives us the name of _Abiria_, above _Pattalene_. In the same locality Hindu geographers place the people called _Abhîra_ or _Âbhîra_; and in the same neighborhood MacMurdo, in his account of the province of Cutch, still knows a race of _Ahirs_,(192) the descendants, in all probability, of the people who sold to Hiram and Solomon their gold and precious stones, their apes, peacocks, and sandalwood.(193)

If, then, in the Veda the people who spoke Sanskrit were still settled in the north of India, whereas at the time of Solomon their language had extended to Cutch and even the Malabar coast, this will show that at all events Sanskrit is not of yesterday, and that it is as old, at least, as the book of Job, in which the gold of Ophir is mentioned.(194)

Most closely allied to Sanskrit, more particularly to the Sanskrit of the Veda, is the ancient language of the Zend-avesta,(195) the so-called _Zend_, or sacred language of the Zoroastrians or Fire-worshippers. It was, in fact, chiefly through the Sanskrit, and with the help of comparative philology, that the ancient dialect of the Parsis or Fire-worshippers was deciphered. The MSS. had been preserved by the Parsi priests at Bombay, where a colony of fire-worshippers had fled in the tenth century,(196) and where it has risen since to considerable wealth and influence. Other settlements of Guebres are to be found in Yezd and parts of Kerman. A Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron, was the first to translate the Zend-avesta, but his translation was not from the original, but from a modern Persian translation. The first European who attempted to read the original words of Zoroaster was Rask, the Dane; and after his premature death, Burnouf, in France, achieved one of the greatest triumphs in modern scholarship by deciphering the language of the Zend-avesta, and establishing its close relationship with Sanskrit. The same doubts which were expressed about the age and the genuineness of the Veda, were repeated with regard to the Zend-avesta, by men of high authority as oriental scholars, by Sir W. Jones himself, and even by the late Professor Wilson. But Burnouf’s arguments, based at first on grammatical evidence only, were irresistible, and have of late been most signally confirmed by the discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. That there was a Zoroaster, an ancient sage, was known long before Burnouf. Plato speaks of a teacher of Zoroaster’s Magic (Μαγεία), and calls Zoroaster the son of _Oromazes_.(197)

This name of Oromazes is important; for Oromazes is clearly meant for _Ormuzd_, the god of the Zoroastrians. The name of this god, as read in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, is _Auramazdâ_, which comes very near to Plato’s Oromazes.(198) Thus Darius says, in one passage: “Through the grace of Auramazda I am king; Auramazda gave me the kingdom.” But what is the meaning of _Auramazda_? We receive a hint from one passage in the Achæmenian inscriptions, where Auramazda is divided into two words, both being declined. The genitive of Auramazda occurs there as _Aurahya mazdâha_. But even this is unintelligible, and is, in fact, nothing but a phonetic corruption of the name of the supreme Deity as it occurs on every page of the Zend-avesta, namely, _Ahurô mazdâo_ (nom.). Here, too, both words are declined; and instead of _Ahurô mazdâo_, we also find _Mazdâo ahurô_.(199) Well, this _Ahurô mazdâo_ is represented in the Zend-avesta as the creator and ruler of the world; as good, holy, and true; and as doing battle against all that is evil, dark, and false. “The wicked perish through the wisdom and holiness of the living wise Spirit.” In the oldest hymns, the power of darkness, which is opposed to _Ahurô mazdâo_ has not yet received its proper name, which is _Angrô mainyus_, the later _Ahriman_; but it is spoken of as a power, as _Drukhs_ or deceit; and the principal doctrine which Zoroaster came to preach was that we must choose between these two powers, that we must be good, and not bad. These are his words:—

“In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity. These are the Good and the Base in thought, word, and deed. Choose one of these two spirits; Be good, not base!”(200)

Or again:—

“Ahuramazda is holy, true, to be honored through veracity, through holy deeds.” “You cannot serve both.”

Now, if we wanted to prove that Anglo-Saxon was a real language, and more ancient than English, a mere comparison of a few words such as _lord_ and _hlafford_, _gospel_ and _godspel_ would be sufficient. _Hlafford_ has a meaning; _lord_ has none; therefore we may safely say that without such a compound as _hlafford_, the word _lord_ could never have arisen. The same, if we compare the language of the Zend-avesta with that of the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius. _Auramazdâ_ is clearly a corruption of _Ahurô mazdâo_, and if the language of the Mountain-records of Behistun is genuine, then, _à fortiori_, is the language of the Zend-avesta genuine, as deciphered by Burnouf, long before he had deciphered the language of Cyrus and Darius. But what is the meaning of _Ahurô mazdâo_? Here Zend does not give us an answer; but we must look to Sanskrit, as the more primitive language, just as we looked from French to Italian, in order to discover the original form and meaning of _feu_. According to the rules which govern the changes of words, common to Zend and Sanskrit, _Ahurô mazdâo_ corresponds to the Sanskrit _Asuro medhas_; and this would mean the “Wise Spirit,” neither more nor less.

We have editions, translations, and commentaries of the Zend-avesta by Burnouf, Brockhaus, Spiegel, and Westergaard. Yet there still remains much to be done. Dr. Haug, now settled at Poona, has lately taken up the work which Burnouf left unfinished. He has pointed out that the text of the Zend-avesta, as we have it, comprises fragments of very different antiquity, and that the most ancient only, the so-called Gâthâs, can be ascribed to Zarathustra. “This portion,” he writes in a lecture just received from India, “compared with the whole bulk of the Zend fragments is very small; but by the difference of dialect it is easily recognized. The most important pieces written in this peculiar dialect are called Gâthâs or songs, arranged in five small collections; they have different metres, which mostly agree with those of the Veda; their language is very near to the Vedic dialect.” It is to be regretted that in the same lecture, which holds out the promise of so much that will be extremely valuable, Dr. Haug should have lent his authority to the opinion that Zoroaster or Zarathustra is mentioned in the Rig-Veda as Jaradashṭi. The meaning of jaradashti in the Rig-Veda may be seen in the Sanskrit Dictionary of the Russian Academy, and no Sanskrit scholar would seriously think of translating the word by Zoroaster.

At what time Zoroaster lived, is a more difficult question which we cannot discuss at present.(201) It must suffice if we have proved that he lived, and that his language, the Zend, is a real language, and anterior in time to the language of the cuneiform inscriptions.

We trace the subsequent history of the Persian language from Zend to the inscriptions of the Achæmenian dynasty; from thence to what is called _Pehlevi_ or _Huzvaresh_ (better Huzûresh), the language of the Sassanian dynasty (226-651), as it is found in the dialect of the translations of the Zend-avesta, and in the official language of the Sassanian coins and inscriptions. This is considerably mixed with Semitic elements, probably imported from Syria. In a still later form, freed also from the Semitic elements which abound in Pehlevi, the language of Persia appears again as _Parsi_, which differs but little from the language of _Firdusi_, the great epic poet of Persia, the author of the Shahnámeh, about 1000 A. D. The later history of Persian consists entirely in the gradual increase of Arabic words, which have crept into the language since the conquest of Persia and the conversion of the Persians to the religion of Mohammed.

The other languages which evince by their grammar and vocabulary a general relationship with Sanskrit and Persian, but which have received too distinct and national a character to be classed as mere dialects, are the languages _of Afghanistan_ or the _Pushtú_, the language of _Bokhára_, the language of the _Kurds_, the _Ossetian_ language in the Caucasus, and the _Armenian_. Much might be said on every one of these tongues and their claims to be classed as independent members of the Aryan family; but our time is limited, nor has any one of them acquired, as yet, that importance which belongs to the vernaculars of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and to other branches of Aryan speech which have been analyzed critically, and may be studied historically in the successive periods of their literary existence. There is, however, one more language which we have omitted to mention, and which belongs equally to Asia and Europe, the language of the _Gipsies_. This language, though most degraded in its grammar, and with a dictionary stolen from all the countries through which the Zingaris passed, is clearly an exile from Hindústán.

You see, from the diagram before you,(202) that it is possible to divide the whole Aryan family into two divisions: the _Southern_, including the Indic and Iranic classes, and the _Northern_ or _North-western_, comprising all the rest. Sanskrit and Zend share certain words and grammatical forms in common which do not exist in any of the other Aryan languages; and there can be no doubt that the ancestors of the poets of the Veda and of the worshippers of _Ahurô mazdâo_ lived together for some time after they had left the original home of the whole Aryan race. For let us see this clearly: the genealogical classification of languages, as drawn in this diagram, has an historical meaning. As sure as the six Romance dialects point to an original home of Italian shepherds on the seven hills at Rome, the Aryan languages together point to an earlier period of language, when the first ancestors of the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and the Germans were living together within the same enclosures, nay under the same roof. There was a time when out of many possible names for _father_, _mother_, _daughter_, _son_, _dog_ and _cow_, _heaven_ and _earth_, those which we find in all the Aryan languages were framed, and obtained a mastery _in the struggle for life_ which is carried on among synonymous words as much as among plants and animals. Look at the comparative table of the auxiliary verb AS, to be, in the different Aryan languages. The selection of the root AS out of many roots, equally applicable to the idea of being, and the joining of this root with one set of personal terminations, all originally personal pronouns, were individual acts, or if you like, historical events. They took place once, at a certain date and in a certain place; and as we find the same forms preserved by all the members of the Aryan family, it follows that before the ancestors of the Indians and Persians started for the south, and the leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic colonies marched towards the shores of Europe, there was a small clan of Aryans, settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, speaking a language, not yet Sanskrit or Greek or German, but containing the dialectical germs of all; a clan that had advanced to a state of agricultural civilization; that had recognized the bonds of blood, and sanctioned the bonds of marriage; and that invoked the Giver of Light and Life in heaven by the same name which you may still hear in the temples of Benares, in the basilicas of Rome, and in our own churches and cathedrals.

After this clan broke up, the ancestors of the Indians and Zoroastrians must have remained together for some time in their migrations or new settlements; and I believe that it was the reform of Zoroaster which produced at last the split between the worshippers of the Vedic gods and the worshippers of Ormuzd. Whether, besides this division into a southern and northern branch, it is possible by the same test (the community of

## particular words and forms), to discover the successive periods when the

Germans separated from the Slaves, the Celts from the Italians, or the Italians from the Greeks, seems more than doubtful. The attempts made by different scholars have led to different and by no means satisfactory results;(203) and it seems best, for the present, to trace each of the northern classes back to its own dialect, and to account for the more special coincidences between such languages as, for instance, the Slavonic and Teutonic, by admitting that the ancestors of these races preserved from the beginning certain dialectical peculiarities which existed before, as well as after, the separation of the Aryan family.

LECTURE VI. COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR.

The genealogical classification of the Aryan languages was founded, as we saw, on a close comparison of the grammatical characteristics of each; and it is the object of such works as Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar” to show that the grammatical articulation of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, was produced once and for all; and that the apparent differences in the terminations of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, must be explained by laws of phonetic decay, peculiar to each dialect, which modified the original common Aryan type, and changed it into so many national languages. It might seem, therefore, as if the object of comparative grammar was attained as soon as the exact genealogical relationship of languages had been settled; and those who only look to the higher problems of the science of language have not hesitated to declare that “there is no painsworthy difficulty nor dispute about declension, number, case, and gender of nouns.” But although it is certainly true that comparative grammar is only a means, and that it has well nigh taught us all that it has to teach,—at least in the Aryan family of speech,—it is to be hoped that, in the science of language, it will always retain that prominent place which it has obtained through the labors of Bopp, Grimm, Pott, Benfey, Curtius, Kuhn, and others. Besides, comparative grammar has more to do than simply to compare. It would be easy enough to place side by side the paradigms of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and the other Aryan dialects, and to mark both their coincidences and their differences. But after we have done this, and after we have explained the phonetic laws which cause the primitive Aryan type to assume that national variety which we admire in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, new problems arise of a more interesting nature. We know that grammatical terminations, as they are now called, were originally independent words, and had their own purpose and meaning. Is it possible, after comparative grammar has established the original forms of the Aryan terminations, to trace them back to independent words, and to discover their original purpose and meaning? You will remember that this was the point from which we started. We wanted to know why the termination _d_ in _I loved_ should change a present into a past act. We saw that before answering this question we had to discover the most original form of this termination by tracing it from English to Gothic, and afterwards, if necessary, from Gothic to Sanskrit. We now return to our original question, namely, What is language that a mere formal change, such as that of _I love_ into _I loved_, should produce so very material a difference?

Let us clearly see what we mean if we make a distinction between the radical and formal elements of a language; and by formal elements I mean not only the terminations of declension and conjugation, but all derivative elements; all, in fact, that is not radical. Our view on the origin of language must chiefly depend on the view which we take of these formal, as opposed to the radical, elements of speech. Those who consider that language is a conventional production, base their arguments principally on these formal elements. The inflections of words, they maintain, are the best proof that language was made by mutual agreement. They look upon them as mere letters or syllables without any meaning by themselves; and if they were asked why the mere addition of a _d_ changes _I love_ into _I loved_, or why the addition of the syllable _rai_ gave to _j’aime_, I love, the power of a future, _j’aimerai_, they would answer, that it was so because, at a very early time in the history of the world, certain persons, or families, or clans, agreed that it should be so.

This view was opposed by another which represents language as an organic and almost a living being, and explains its formal elements as produced by a principle of growth inherent in its very nature. “Languages,”(204) it is maintained, “are formed by a process, not of crystalline accretion, but of germinal development. Every essential part of language existed as completely (although only implicitly) in the primitive germ, as the petals of a flower exist in the bud before the mingled influences of the sun and the air caused it to unfold.” This view was first propounded by Frederick Schlegel,(205) and it is still held by many with whom poetical phraseology takes the place of sound and severe reasoning.

The science of language adopts neither of these views. As to imagining a congress for settling the proper exponents of such relations as nominative, genitive, singular, plural, active, and passive, it stands to reason that if such abstruse problems could have been discussed in a language void of inflections, there was no inducement for agreeing on a more perfect means of communication. And as to imagining language, that is to say nouns and verbs, endowed with an inward principle of growth, all we can say is, that such a conception is really inconceivable. Language may be conceived as a production, but it cannot be conceived as a substance that could itself produce. But the science of language has nothing to do with mere theories, whether conceivable or not. It collects facts, and its only object is to account for these facts, as far as possible. Instead of looking on inflections in general either as conventional signs or natural excrescences, it takes each termination by itself, establishes its most primitive form by means of comparison, and then treats that primitive syllable as it would treat any other part of language,—namely, as something which was originally intended to convey a meaning. Whether we are still able to discover the original intention of every part of language is quite a different question, and it should be admitted at once that many grammatical forms, after they have been restored to their most primitive type, are still without an explanation. But with every year new discoveries are made by means of careful inductive reasoning. We become more familiar every day with the secret ways of language, and there is no reason to doubt that in the end grammatical analysis will be as successful as chemical analysis. Grammar, though sometimes very bewildering to us in its later stages, is originally a much less formidable undertaking than is commonly supposed. What is grammar after all but declension and conjugation? Originally declension could not have been anything but the composition of a noun with some other word expressive of number and case. How the number was expressed, we saw in a former lecture; and the same process led to the formation of cases.

Thus the locative is formed in various ways in Chinese:(206) one is by adding such words as _ćung_, the middle, or _néi_, inside. Thus, _kûŏ-ćung_, in the empire; _i sûí ćung_, within a year. The instrumental is formed by the preposition _ẏ_, which preposition is an old root, meaning _to use_. Thus _ẏ ting_, with a stick, where in Latin we should use the ablative, in Greek the dative. Now, however complicated the declensions, regular and irregular, may be in Greek and Latin, we may be certain that originally they were formed by this simple method of composition.