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ज (j, the voiced palatal)
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The chapters numbered VI–IX in the Contents are called VII–X in the body text; there is no Chapter VI. Tags in the form [A] or [text], referring to the “Notes” at the end of some chapters, were added by the transcriber.

CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.

VOL. IV.

CHIPS

FROM

A GERMAN WORKSHOP.

BY

F. MAX MÜLLER, M.A.,

FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE, ETC.

VOLUME IV.

ESSAYS CHIEFLY ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE

WITH INDEX TO VOLS III. AND IV.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
1881.

[Published by arrangement with the Author.]

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

To

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D.,
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER,
AS A TOKEN OF
GRATITUDE AND FRIENDSHIP
FROM
ONE WHO HAS FOR MANY YEARS ADMIRED
HIS LOYALTY TO TRUTH,
HIS SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE,
HIS CHIVALROUS COURAGE,
AND
HIS UNCHANGING DEVOTION TO HIS FRIENDS.

[ CONTENTS OF FOURTH VOLUME.]

[ I.]
INAUGURAL LECTURE,
ON THE VALUE OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY
AS A BRANCH OF ACADEMIC STUDY.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
THE 27TH OF OCTOBER, 1868.

The foundation of a professorial chair in the University of Oxford marks an important epoch in the history of every new science.[1] There are other universities far more ready to confer this academical recognition on new branches of scientific research, and it would be easy to mention several subjects, and no doubt important subjects, which have long had their accredited representatives in the universities of France and Germany, but which at Oxford have not yet received this well-merited recognition.

If we take into account the study of ancient languages only, we see that as soon as Champollion’s discoveries had given to the study of hieroglyphics and Egyptian antiquities a truly scientific character, the French government thought it its duty to found a chair for this promising branch of Oriental scholarship. Italy soon followed this generous example: nor was the Prussian government long behind hand in doing honor to the newborn science, as soon as in Professor Lepsius it had found a scholar worthy to occupy a chair of Egyptology at Berlin.

If France had possessed the brilliant genius to whom so much is due in the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions, I have little doubt that long ago a chair would have been founded at the Collège de France expressly for Sir Henry Rawlinson.

England possesses some of the best, if not the best, of Persian scholars (alas! he who was here in my mind, Lord Strangford, is no longer among us), yet there is no chair for Persian at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of the charms of its modern literature, and the vast importance of the ancient language of Persia and Bactria, the Zend, a language full of interest, not only to the comparative philologist, but also to the student of Comparative Theology.

There are few of the great universities of Europe without a chair for that language which, from the very beginning of history, as far as it is known to us, seems always to have been spoken by the largest number of human beings,—I mean Chinese. In Paris we find not one, but two chairs for Chinese, one for the ancient, another for the modern language of that wonderful empire; and if we consider the light which a study of that curious form of human speech is intended to throw on the nature and growth of language, if we measure the importance of its enormous literature by the materials which it supplies to the student of ancient religions, and likewise to the historian who wishes to observe the earliest rise of the principal sciences and arts in countries beyond the influence of Aryan and Semitic civilization,—if, lastly, we take into account the important evidence which the Chinese language, reflecting, like a never-fading photograph, the earliest workings of the human mind, is able to supply to the student of psychology, and to the careful analyzer of the elements and laws of thought, we should feel less inclined to ignore or ridicule the claims of such a language to a chair in our ancient university.[2]

I could go on and mention several other subjects, well worthy of the same distinction. If the study of Celtic languages and Celtic antiquities deserves to be encouraged anywhere, it is surely in England,—not, as has been suggested, in order to keep English literature from falling into the abyss of German platitudes, nor to put Aneurin and Taliesin in the place of Shakespeare and Burns, and to counteract by their “suavity and brilliancy” the Philistine tendencies of the Saxon and the Northman, but in order to supply sound materials and guiding principles to the critical student of the ancient history and the ancient language of Britain, to excite an interest in what still remains of Celtic antiquities, whether in manuscripts or in genuine stone monuments, and thus to preserve such national heir-looms from neglect or utter destruction. If we consider that Oxford possesses a Welsh college, and that England possesses the best of Celtic scholars, it is surely a pity that he should have to publish the results of his studies in the short intervals of official work at Calcutta, and not in the more congenial atmosphere of Rytichin.

For those who know the history of the ancient universities of England, it is not difficult to find out why they should have been less inclined than their continental sisters to make timely provision for the encouragement of these and other important branches of linguistic research. Oxford and Cambridge, as independent corporations, withdrawn alike from the support and from the control of the state, have always looked upon the instruction of the youth of England as their proper work; and nowhere has the tradition of classical learning been handed down more faithfully from one generation to another than in England; nowhere has its generous spirit more thoroughly pervaded the minds of statesmen, poet, artists, and moulded the character of that large and important class of independent and cultivated men, without which this country would cease to be what it has been for the last two centuries, a res publica, a commonwealth, in the best sense of the word. Oxford and Cambridge have supplied what England expected or demanded, and as English parents did not send their sons to learn Chinese or to study Cornish, there was naturally no supply where there was no demand. The professorial element in the university, the true representative of higher learning and independent research, withered away; the tutorial assumed the vastest proportions during this and the last centuries.

But looking back to the earlier history of the English universities, I believe it is a mistake to suppose that Oxford, one of the most celebrated universities during the Middle Ages and in the modern history of Europe, could ever have ignored the duty, so fully recognized by other European universities, of not only handing down intact, and laid up, as it were, in a napkin, the traditional stock of human knowledge, but of constantly adding to it, and increasing it fivefold and tenfold. Nay, unless I am much mistaken, there was really no university in which more ample provision had been made by founders and benefactors than at Oxford, for the support and encouragement of a class of students who should follow up new lines of study, devote their energies to work which, from its very nature, could not be lucrative or even self-supporting, and maintain the fame of English learning, English industry, and English genius in that great and time-honoured republic of learning which claims the allegiance of the whole of Europe, nay, of the whole civilized world. That work at Oxford and Cambridge was meant to be done by the Fellows of Colleges. In times, no doubt, when every kind of learning was in the hands of the clergy, these fellowships might seem to have been intended exclusively for the support of theological students. But when other studies, once mere germs and shoots on the tree of knowledge, separated from the old stem and assumed an independent growth, whether under the name of natural science, or history, or scholarship, or jurisprudence, a fair division ought to have been made at once of the funds which, in accordance with the letter, it may be, but certainly not with the spirit of the ancient statutes, have remained for so many years appropriated to the exclusive support of theological learning, if learning it could be called. Fortunately, that mistake has now been remedied, and the funds originally intended, without distinction, for the support of “true religion and useful learning,” are now again more equally apportioned among those who, in the age in which we live, have divided and subdivided the vast intellectual inheritance of the Middle Ages, in order to cultivate the more thoroughly every nook and every corner in the boundless field of human knowledge.

Something, however, remains still to be done in order to restore these fellowships more fully and more efficiently to their original purpose, and thus to secure to the university not only a staff of zealous teachers, which it certainly possesses, but likewise a class of independent workers, of men who, by original research, by critical editions of the classics, by an acquisition of a scholarlike knowledge of other languages besides Greek and Latin, by an honest devotion to one or the other among the numerous branches of physical science, by fearless researches into the ancient history of mankind, by a careful collection or revision of the materials for the history of politics, jurisprudence, medicine, literature, and arts, by a life-long occupation with the problems of philosophy, and last, not least, by a real study of theology, or the science of religion, should perform again those duties which in the stillness of the Middle Ages were performed by learned friars within the walls of our colleges. Those duties have remained in abeyance for several generations, and they must now be performed with increased vigor, in order to retain for Oxford that high position which it once held, not simply as a place of education, but as a seat of learning, amid the most celebrated universities of Europe.

“Noblesse oblige” is an old saying that is sometimes addressed to those who have inherited an illustrious name, and who are proud of their ancestors. But what are the ancestors of the oldest and proudest of families compared with the ancestors of this university! “Noblesse oblige” applies to Oxford at the present moment more than ever, when knowledge for its own sake, and a chivalrous devotion to studies which command no price in the fair of the world, and lead to no places of emolument in church or state, are looked down upon and ridiculed by almost everybody.

There is no career in England at the present moment for scholars and students. No father could honestly advise his son, whatever talent he might display, to devote himself exclusively to classical, historical, or physical studies. The few men who still keep up the fair name of England by independent research and new discoveries in the fields of political and natural history, do not always come from our universities; and unless they possess independent means, they cannot devote more than the leisure hours, left by their official duties in church or state, to the prosecution of their favorite studies. This ought not to be, nor need it be so. If only twenty men in Oxford and Cambridge had the will, everything is ready for a reform, that is, for a restoration of the ancient glory of Oxford. The funds which are now frittered away in so-called prize-fellowships, would enable the universities to-morrow to invite the best talent of England back to its legitimate home. And what should we lose if we had no longer that long retinue of non-resident fellows? It is true, no doubt, that a fellowship has been a help in the early career of many a poor and hard-working man, and how could it be otherwise? But in many cases I know that it has proved a drag rather than a spur for further efforts. Students at English universities belong, as a rule, to the wealthier classes, and England is the wealthiest country in Europe. Yet in no country in the world would a young man, after his education is finished, expect assistance from public sources. Other countries tax themselves to the utmost in order to enable the largest possible number of young men to enjoy the best possible education in schools and universities. But when that is done the community feels that it has fulfilled its duty, and it says to the young generation, Now swim or drown. A manly struggle against poverty, it may be even against actual hunger, will form a stronger and sounder metal than a lotus-eating club-life in London or Paris. Whatever fellowships were intended to be, they were never intended to be mere sinecures, as most of them are at present. It is a national blessing that the two ancient universities of England should have saved such large funds from the shipwreck that swallowed up the corporate funds of the continental universities. But, in order to secure their safety for the future, it is absolutely necessary that these funds should be utilized again for the advancement of learning. Why should not a fellowship be made into a career for life, beginning with little, but rising like the incomes of other professions? Why should the grotesque condition of celibacy be imposed on a fellowship, instead of the really salutary condition of—No work, no pay? Why should not some special literary or scientific work be assigned to each fellow, whether resident in Oxford or sent abroad on scientific missions? Why, instead of having fifty young men scattered about in England, should we not have ten of the best workers in every branch of human knowledge resident at Oxford, whether as teachers, or as guides, or as examples? The very presence of such men would have a stimulating and elevating effect: it would show to the young men higher objects of human ambition than the baton of a field-marshal, the mitre of a bishop, the ermine of a judge, or the money bags of a merchant; it would create for the future a supply of new workers as soon as there was for them, if not an avenue to wealth and power, at least a fair opening for hard work and proper pay. All this might be done to-morrow, without any injury to anybody, and with every chance of producing results of the greatest value to the universities, to the country, and to the world at large. Let the university continue to do the excellent work which it does at present as a teacher, but let it not forget the equally important duty of a university, that of a worker. Our century has inherited the intellectual wealth of former centuries, and with it the duty, not only to preserve it or to dole it out in schools and universities, but to increase it far beyond the limits which it has reached at present. Where there is no advance, there is retrogression: rest is impossible for the human mind.

Much of the work, therefore, which in other universities falls to the lot of the professors, ought, in Oxford, to be performed by a staff of student-fellows, whose labors should be properly organized as they are in the Institute of France or in the Academy of Berlin. With or without teaching, they could perform the work which no university can safely neglect, the work of constantly testing the soundness of our intellectual food, and of steadily expanding the realms of knowledge. We want pioneers, explorers, conquerors, and we could have them in abundance if we cared to have them. What other universities do by founding new chairs for new sciences, the colleges of Oxford could do to-morrow by applying the funds which are not required for teaching purposes, and which are now spent on sinecure fellowships, for making either temporary or permanent provision for the endowment of original research.

It is true that new chairs have, from time to time, been founded in Oxford also; but if we inquire into the circumstances under which provision was made for the teaching of new subjects, we shall find that it generally took place, not so much for the encouragement of any new branch of scientific research, however interesting to the philosopher and the historian, as in order to satisfy some practical wants that could no longer be ignored, whether in church or state, or in the university itself.

Confining ourselves to the chairs of languages, or, as they used to be called, “the readerships of tongues,” we find that as early as 1311, while the Crusades were still fresh in the memory of the people of Europe, an appeal was made by Pope Clement V. at the Council of Vienne, calling upon the principal universities in Christendom to appoint lecturers for the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic. It was considered at the time a great honor for Oxford to be mentioned by name, together with Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca, as one of the four great seats of learning in which the Pope and the Council of Vienne desired that provision should be made for the teaching of these languages. It is quite clear, however, from the wording of the resolution of the Council,[3] that the chief object in the foundation of these readerships was to supply men capable of defending the interests of the church, of taking an active part in the controversies with Jews and Mohammedans, who were then considered dangerous, and of propagating the faith among unbelievers.

Nor does it seem that this papal exhortation produced much effect, for we find that Henry VIII. in 1540 had to make new provision in order to secure efficient teachers of Hebrew and Greek in the University of Oxford. At that time these two languages, but more particularly Greek, had assumed not only a theological, but a political importance, and it was but natural that the king should do all in his power to foster and spread a knowledge of a language which had been one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the reformers. At Oxford itself this new chair was by no means popular: on the contrary those who studied Greek were for a long time looked upon with great suspicion and dislike.[4]

Henry VIII. did nothing for the support of Arabic; but a century later (1636) we find Archbishop Laud, whose attention had been attracted by Eastern questions, full of anxiety to resuscitate the study of Arabic at Oxford, partly by collecting Arabic MSS. in the East and depositing them in the Bodleian Library, partly by founding a new chair of Arabic, inaugurated by Pococke, and rendered illustrious by such names as Greaves, Thomas Hyde, John Wallis, and Thomas Hunt.

The foundation of a chair of Anglo-Saxon, too, was due, not so much to a patriotic interest excited by the ancient national literature of the Saxons, still less to the importance of that ancient language for philological studies, but it received its first impulse from the divines of the sixteenth century, who wished to strengthen the position of the English Church in its controversy with the Church of Rome. Under the auspices of Archbishop Parker, Anglo-Saxon MSS. were first collected, and the Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible, as well as Anglo-Saxon homilies, and treatises on theological and ecclesiastical subjects were studied by Fox, the martyrologist, and others,[5] to be quoted as witnesses to the purity and simplicity of the primitive church founded in this realm, free in its origin from the later faults and fancies of the Church of Rome. Without this practical object, Anglo-Saxon would hardly have excited so much interest in the sixteenth century, and Oxford would probably have remained much longer without its professorial chair of the ancient national language of England, which was founded by Rawlinson, but was not inaugurated before the end of the last century (1795).

Of the two remaining chairs of languages, of Sanskrit and of Latin, the former owes its origin, not to an admiration of the classical literature of India, nor to a recognition of the importance of Sanskrit for the purposes of Comparative Philology, but to an express desire on the part of its founder to provide efficient missionaries for India; while the creation of a chair of Latin, though long delayed, was at last rendered imperative by the urgent wants of the university.

Nor does the chair of Comparative Philology, just founded by the university, form altogether an exception to this general rule. It is curious to remark that while Comparative Philology has for more than half a century excited the deepest interest, not only among continental, but likewise among English scholars, and while chairs of this new science have been founded long ago in almost every university of France, Germany, and Italy, the foundation of a new chair of Comparative Philology at Oxford should coincide very closely with a decided change that has taken place in the treatment of that science, and which has given to its results a more practical importance for the study of Greek and Latin, such as could hardly be claimed for it during the first fifty years of its growth.

We may date the origin of Comparative Philology, as distinct from the Science of Language, from the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, in 1784. From that time dates the study of Sanskrit, and it was the study of Sanskrit which formed the foundation of Comparative Philology.

It is perfectly true that Sanskrit had been studied before by Italian, German, and French missionaries; it is likewise perfectly true that several of these missionaries were fully aware of the close relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. A man must be blind who, after looking at a Sanskrit grammar, does not see at once the striking coincidences between the declensions and conjugations of the classical language of India and those of Greece and Italy.[6]

Filippo Sassetti, who spent some time at Goa, between 1581 and 1588, had only acquired a very slight knowledge of Sanskrit before he wrote home to his friends “that it has many words in common with Italian, particularly in the numerals, in the names for God, serpent, and many others.” This was in the sixteenth century.

Some of the Jesuit missionaries, however, went far beyond this. A few among them had acquired a real and comprehensive knowledge of the ancient language and literature of India, and we see them anticipate in their letters several of the most brilliant discoveries of Sir W. Jones and Professor Bopp. The père Cœurdoux,[7] a French Jesuit, writes in 1767 from Pondichery to the French Academy, asking that learned society for a solution of the question, “How is it that Sanskrit has so many words in common with Greek and Latin?” He presents not only long lists of words, but he calls attention to the still more curious fact, that the grammatical forms in Sanskrit show the most startling similarity with Greek and Latin. After him almost everybody who had looked at Sanskrit, and who knew Greek and Latin, made the same remark and asked the same question.

But the fire only smouldered on; it would not burn up, it would not light, it would not warm. At last, owing to the exertions of the founders of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, the necessary materials for a real study of Sanskrit became accessible to the students of Europe. The voice of Frederick Schlegel roused the attention of the world at large to the startling problem that had been thrown into the arena of the intellectual chivalry of the world, and at last the glove was taken up, and men like Bopp, and Burnouf, and Pott, and Grimm, did not rest till some answer could be returned, and some account rendered of Sanskrit, that strange intruder, and great disturber of the peace of classical scholarship.

The work which then began, was incessant. It was not enough that some words in Greek and Latin should be traced in Sanskrit. A kind of silent conviction began to spread that there must be in Sanskrit a remedy for all evils; people could not rest till every word in Greek and Latin had, in some disguise or other, been discovered in Sanskrit. Nor were Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit enough to satisfy the thirst of the new discoverers. The Teutonic languages were soon annexed, the Celtic languages yielded to some gentle pressure, the Slavonic languages clamored for incorporation, the sacred idiom of ancient Persia, the Zend, demanded its place by the side of Sanskrit, the Armenian followed in its wake; and when even the Ossetic from the valleys of Mount Caucasus, and the Albanian from the ancient hills of Epirus, had proved their birthright, the whole family, the Aryan family of language, seemed complete, and an historical fact, the original unity of all these languages, was established on a basis which even the most skeptical could not touch or shake. Scholars rushed in as diggers rush into a new gold field, picking up whatever is within reach, and trying to carry off more than they could carry, so that they might be foremost in the race, and claim as their own all that they had been the first to look at or to touch. There was a rush, and now and then an ugly rush, and when the armfuls of nuggets that were thrown down before the world in articles, pamphlets, essays, and ponderous volumes, came to be more carefully examined, it was but natural that not everything that glittered should turn out to be gold. Even in the works of more critical scholars, such as Bopp, Burnouf, Pott, and Benfey, at least in those which were published in the first enthusiasm of discovery, many things may now be pointed out, which no assayer would venture to pass. It was the great merit of Bopp that he called the attention away from this tempting field to the more laborious work of grammatical analysis, though even in his Comparative Grammar, in that comprehensive survey of the grammatical outlines of the Aryan languages, the spirit of conquest and centralization still predominates. All languages are, if possible, to submit to the same laws; what is common to all of them is welcome, what is peculiar to each is treated as anomalous, or explained as the result of later corruption.

This period in the history of Comparative Philology has sometimes been characterized as syncretistic, and to a certain extent that name and the censure implied in it are justified. But to a very small extent only. It was in the nature of things that a comparative study of languages should at first be directed to what is common to all; nay, without having first become thoroughly acquainted with the general features of the whole family, it would have been impossible to discover and fully to appreciate what is peculiar to each of the members.

Nor was it long before a reaction set in. One scholar from the very first, and almost contemporaneously with Bopp’s first essays on Comparative Grammar, devoted himself to the study of one branch of languages only, availing himself, as far as he was able, of the new light which a knowledge of Sanskrit had thrown on the secret history of the whole Aryan family of speech, but concentrating his energies on the Teutonic; I mean, of course, Jacob Grimm, the author of the great historical grammar of the German language; a work which will live and last long after other works of that early period shall have been forgotten, or replaced, at least, by better books.

After a time Grimm’s example was followed by others. Zeuss, in his “Grammatica Celtica,” established the study of the Celtic languages on the broad foundations of Comparative Grammar. Miklosich and Schleicher achieved similar results by adopting the same method for the study of the Slavonic dialects. Curtius, by devoting himself to an elucidation of Greek, opened the eyes of classical scholars to the immense advantages of this new treatment of grammar and etymology; while Corssen, in his more recent works on Latin, has struck a mine which may well tempt the curiosity of every student of the ancient dialects of Italy. At the present moment the reaction is complete; and there is certainly some danger, lest what was called a syncretistic spirit should now be replaced by an isolating spirit in the science of language.

It cannot be denied, however, that this isolating, or rather discriminating, tendency has produced already the most valuable results, and I believe that it is chiefly due to the works of Curtius and Corssen, if Greek and Latin scholars have been roused at last from their apathy and been made aware of the absolute necessity of Comparative Philology, as a subject to be taught, not only in every university but in every school. I believe it is due to their works that a conviction has gradually been gaining ground among the best scholars at Oxford, also, that Comparative Philology could no longer be ignored as an important ingredient in the teaching of Greek and Latin; and while a comparative analysis of Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, High-German, Lithuanian, Slavonic, and Celtic, such as we find it in Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar,” would hardly be considered as a subject of practical utility, even in a school of philology, it was recognized at last that, not only for sound principles of etymology, not only for a rational treatment of Greek and Latin grammar, not only for a right understanding of classical mythology, but even for a critical restoration of the very texts of Homer and Plautus, a knowledge of Comparative Philology, as applied to Greek and Latin, had become indispensable.

My chief object, therefore, as Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, will be to treat the classical languages under that new aspect which they have assumed, as viewed by the microscope of Curtius and Corssen, rather than by the telescope of Bopp, Pott, and Benfey. I shall try not only to give results, but to explain what is far more important, the method by which these results were obtained, so far as this is possible without, for the present at least, presupposing among my hearers a knowledge of Sanskrit. Sanskrit certainly forms the only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, and it will always remain the only safe guide through all its intricacies. A comparative philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an astronomer without a knowledge of mathematics. He may admire, he may observe, he may discover, but he will never feel satisfied, he will never feel certain, he will never feel quite at home.

I hope, therefore, that, besides those who attend my public lectures, there will be at least a few to form a private class for the study of the elements of Sanskrit. Sanskrit, no doubt, is a very difficult language, and it requires the study of a whole life to master its enormous literature. Its grammar, too, has been elaborated with such incredible minuteness by native grammarians, that I am not surprised if many scholars who begin the study of Sanskrit turn back from it in dismay. But it is quite possible to learn the rules of Sanskrit declension and conjugation, and to gain an insight into the grammatical organization of that language, without burdening one’s memory with all the phonetic rules which generally form the first chapter of every Sanskrit grammar, or without devoting years of study to the unraveling of the intricacies of the greatest of Indian, if not of all grammarians,—Pâṇini. There are but few among our very best comparative philologists who are able to understand Pâṇini. Professor Benfey, whose powers of work are truly astounding, stands almost alone in his minute knowledge of that greatest of all grammarians. Neither Bopp, nor Pott, nor Curtius, nor Corssen, ever attempted to master Pâṇini’s wonderful system. But a study of Sanskrit, as taught by European grammarians, cannot be recommended too strongly to all students of language. A good sailor may, for a time, steer without a compass, but even he feels safer when he knows that he may consult it, if necessary; and whenever he comes near the rocks,—and there are many in the Aryan sea,—he will hardly escape shipwreck without this magnetic needle.[8,][A,][B]

It will be asked, no doubt, by Greek and Latin scholars who have never as yet devoted themselves seriously to a study of Comparative Philology, what is to be gained after all the trouble of learning Sanskrit, and after mastering the works of Bopp, and Benfey, and Curtius? Would a man be a better Greek and Latin scholar for knowing Sanskrit? Would he write better Latin and Greek verse? Would he be better able to read and compare Greek and Latin MSS., and to prepare a critical edition of classical authors? To all these questions I reply both No and Yes.

If there is one branch of classical philology where the advantages derived from Comparative Philology have been most readily admitted, it is etymology. More than fifty years ago, Otfried Müller told classical scholars that that province at least must be surrendered. And yet it is strange to see how long it takes before old erroneous derivations are exploded and finally expelled from our dictionaries; and how, in spite of all warnings, similarity of sound and similarity of meaning are still considered the chief criteria of Greek and Latin etymologies. I do not address this reproach to classical scholars only; it applies equally to many comparative philologists who, for the sake of some striking similarity of sound and meaning, will now and then break the phonetic laws which they themselves have helped to establish.

If we go back to earlier days, we find that Sanskrit scholars who had discovered that one of the names of the god of love in Bengali was Dipuc, i.e. the inflamer, derived from it by inversion the name of the god of love in Latin, Cupid. Sir William Jones identified Janus with the Sanskrit Gaṇeśa, i.e., lord of hosts,[9] and even later scholars allowed themselves to be tempted to see the Indian prototype of Ganymedes in the Kaṇva-medhâtithi or Kaṇva-mesha of the Veda.[10]

After the phonetic laws of each language had been more carefully elaborated, it was but too frequently forgotten that words have a history as well as a growth, and that the history of a word must be explored first, before an attempt is made to unravel its growth. Thus it was extremely tempting to derive paradise from the Sanskrit paradeśa. The compound para-deśa was supposed to mean the highest or a distant country, and all the rest seemed so evident as to require no further elucidation. Paradeśa, however, does not mean the highest or a distant country in Sanskrit, but is always used in the sense of a foreign country, an enemy’s country. Further, as early as the Song of Solomon (iv. 13), the word occurs in Hebrew as pardés, and how it could have got there straight from Sanskrit requires, at all events, some historical explanation. In Hebrew the word might have been borrowed from Persian, but the Sanskrit word paradeśa, if it existed at all in Persian, would have been paradaesa, the s being a guttural, not a dental sibilant. Such a compound, however, does not exist in Persian, and therefore the Sanskrit word paradeśa could not have reached Hebrew viâ Persia.

It is true, nevertheless, that the ancient Hebrew word pardés is borrowed from Persian, viz.: from the Zend pairidaêza, which means circumvallatio, a piece of ground inclosed by high walls, afterwards a park, a garden.[11] The root in Sanskrit is DIH or DHIH (for Sanskrit h is Zend z), and means originally to knead, to squeeze together, to shape. From it we have the Sanskrit dehî, a wall, while in Greek the same root, according to the strictest phonetic rules, yielded τοῖχος, wall. In Latin our root is regularly changed into fig, and gives us figulus, a potter, figura, form or shape, and fingere. In Gothic it could only appear as deig-an, to knead, to form anything out of soft substances; hence daig-s, the English dough, German Deich.

But the Greek παράδεισος did not come from Hebrew, because here again there is no historical bridge between the two languages. In Greek we trace the word to Xenophon, who brought it back from his repeated journeys in Persia, and who uses it in the sense of pleasure-ground, or deer park.[12]

Lastly, we find the same word used in the LXX., as the name given to the garden of Eden, the word having been borrowed either a third time from Persia, or taken from the Greek, and indirectly from the works of Xenophon.

This is the real history of the word. It is an Aryan word, but it does not exist in Sanskrit. It was first formed in Zend, transferred from thence as a foreign word into Hebrew and again into Greek. Its modern Persian form is firdaus.

All this is matter of history rather than philology. Yet we read in one of the best classical dictionaries: “The root of παράδεισος appears to be Semitic, Arab. firdaus, Hebr. pardês: borrowed, also, in Sanskrit paradêśa.”[13] Nearly every word is wrong.

From the same root DIH springs the Sanskrit word deha, body; body, like figure, being conceived as that which is formed or shaped. Bopp identified this deha with Gothic leik, body, particularly dead body, the modern German Leiche and Leichnam, the English lich in lich-gate. In this case the master of Comparative Philology disregarded the phonetic laws which he had himself helped to establish. The transition of d into l is no doubt common enough as between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, but it has never been established as yet on good evidence as taking place between Sanskrit and Gothic. Besides, the Sanskrit h ought in Gothic to appear as g, as we have it in deig-s, dough, and not by a tenuis.

Another Sanskrit word for body is kalevara, and this proved again a stumbling-block to Bopp, who compares it with the Latin cadaver. Here one might plead that l and d are frequently interchanged in Sanskrit and Latin words, but, as far as our evidence goes at present, we have no doubt many cases where an original Sanskrit d is represented in Latin by l, but no really trustworthy instance in which an original Sanskrit l appears in Latin as d. Besides, the Sanskrit diphthong e cannot, as a rule, in Latin be represented by long â.

If such things could happen to Bopp, we must not be too severe on similar breaches of the peace committed by classical scholars. What classical scholars seem to find most difficult to learn is that there are various degrees of certainty in etymologies even in those proposed by our best comparative scholars, and that not everything that is mentioned by Bopp, or Pott, or Benfey as possible, as plausible, as probable, and even as more than probable, ought, therefore, to be set down, for instance, in a grammar or dictionary, as simply a matter of fact. With certain qualifications, an etymology may have a scientific value; without those qualifications, it may become not only unscientific but mischievous. Again, nothing seems a more difficult lesson for an etymologist to learn than to say, I do not know. Yet to my mind, nothing shows, for instance, the truly scholarlike mind of Professor Curtius better than the very fact for which he has been so often blamed, viz.: his passing over in silence the words about which he has nothing certain to say.

Let us take an instance. If we open our best Greek dictionaries, we find that the Greek αὐγή, light, splendor, is compared with the German word for eye, Auge. No doubt every letter in the two words is the same, and the meaning of the Greek word could easily be supposed to have been specialized or localized in German. Sophocles (“Aj.” 70) speaks of ὀμμάτων αὐγαί, the lights of the eyes, and Euripides (“Andr.” 1180) uses αὐγαί by itself for eyes, like the Latin lumina. The verb αὐγαζω, too, is used in Greek in the sense of seeing or viewing. Why, then, it was asked, should αὐγή not be referred to the same source as the German Auge, and why should not both be traced back to the same root that yielded the Latin oc-ulus? As long as we trust to our ears, or to what is complacently called common sense, it would seem mere fastidiousness to reject so evident an etymology. But as soon as we know the real chemistry of vowels and consonants, we shrink instinctly from such combinations. If a German word has the same sound as a Greek word, the two words cannot be the same, unless we ignore that independent process of phonetic growth which made Greek Greek, and German German. Whenever we find in Greek a media, a g, we expect in Gothic the corresponding tenuis. Thus the root gan, which we have in Greek γιγνώσκω, is in Gothic kann. The Greek γόνυ, Lat. genu, is in Gothic kniu. If, therefore, αὐγή existed in Gothic it would be auko, and not augo. Secondly, the diphthong au in augo would be different from the Greek diphthong. Grimm supposed that the Gothic augo came from the same etymon which yields the Latin oc-ulus, the Sanskrit ak-sh-i, eye, the Greek ὄσσε for ὄκι-ε, and likewise the Greek stem ὀπ in ὄπ-ωπ-α, ὄμμα, and ὀφ-θ-αλμός. It is true that the short radical vowel a in Sanskrit, o in Greek, u in Latin, sinks down to u in Gothic, and it is equally true, as Grimm has shown, that, according to a phonetic law peculiar to Gothic, u before h and r is changed to aú. Grimm, therefore, takes the Gothic aúgô for *aúhô, and this for *uhô, which, as he shows, would be a proper representative in Gothic of the Sanskrit ak-an, or aksh-an.

But here Grimm seems wrong. If the au of augô were this peculiar Gothic aú, which represents an original short a, changed to u, and then raised to a diphthong by the insertion of a short a, then that diphthong would be restricted to Gothic; and the other Teutonic dialects would have their own representatives for an original short a. But in Anglo-Saxon we find eáge, in Old High German augâ, both pointing to a labial diphthong, i.e. to a radical u raised to au.[14]

Professor Ebel,[15] in order to avoid this difficulty, proposed a different explanation. He supposed that the k of the root ak was softened to kv, and that augô represents an original agvâ or ahvâ, the v of hvâ being inserted before the h and changed to u. As an analogous case he quoted the Sanskrit enclitic particle ca, Latin que, Gothic *hva, which *hva appears always under the form of uh. Leo Meyer takes the same view, and quotes, as an analogon, haubida as possibly identical with caput, originally *kapvat.

These cases, however, are not quite analogous. The enclitic particle ca, in Gothic *hva, had to lose its final vowel. It thus became unpronounceable, and the short vowel u was added simply to facilitate its pronunciation.[16] There was no such difficulty in pronouncing *ah or *uh in Gothic, still less the derivative form *ahvô, if such a form had ever existed.

Another explanation was therefore attempted by the late Dr. Lottner.[17] He supposed that the root ak existed also with a nasal as ank, and that ankô could be changed to aukô, and aukô to augô. In reply to this we must remark that in the Teutonic dialects the root ak never appears as ank, and that the transition of an into au, though possible under certain conditions, is not a phonetic process of frequent occurrence.

Besides, in all these derivations there is a difficulty, though not a serious one, viz.: that an original tenuis, the k, is supposed irregularly to have been changed into g, instead of what it ought to be, an h. Although this is not altogether anomalous,[18] yet it has to be taken into account. Professor Curtius, therefore, though he admits a possible connection between Gothic augô and the root ak, speaks cautiously on the subject. On page 99 he refers to augô as more distantly connected with that root, and on p. 457 he simply refers to the attempts of Ebel, Grassmann, and Lottner to explain the diphthong au, without himself expressing any decided opinion. Nor does he commit himself to any opinion as to the origin of αὐγή, though, of course, he never thinks of connecting the two words, Gothic augô and Greek αὐγή, as coming from the same root.

The etymology of the Greek αὐγή, in the sense of light or splendor, is not known unless we connect it with the Sanskrit ojas, which, however, means vigor rather than splendor. The etymology of oculus, on the contrary, is clear; it comes from a root ak, to be sharp, to point, to fix, and it is closely connected with the Sanskrit word for eye, akshi, and with the Greek ὄσσε. The etymology of the German word Auge is, as yet, unknown. All we may safely assert is, that, in spite of the most favorable appearances, it cannot, for the present, be traced back to the same source as either the Greek αὐγή or the Latin oculus.

If we simply transliterated the Gothic augô into Sanskrit, we should expect some word like ohan, nom. ohâ. The question is, may we take the liberty, which many of the most eminent comparative philologists allow themselves, of deriving Gothic, Greek, and Latin words from roots which occur in Sanskrit, only, but which have left no trace of their former presence in any other language? If so, then there would be little difficulty in finding an etymology for the Gothic augô. There is in Sanskrit a root ûh, which means to watch, to spy, to look. It occurs frequently in the Veda, and from it we have likewise a substantive, oha-s, look or appearance. If, in Sanskrit itself this root had yielded a name for eye, such as ohan, the instrument of looking, I should not hesitate for a moment to identify this Sanskrit word ohan with the Gothic augô. No objection could be raised on phonetic grounds. Phonetically the two words would be one and the same. But as in Sanskrit such a derivation has not been found, and as in Gothic the root ûh never occurs, such an etymology would not be satisfactory. The number of words of unknown origin is very considerable as yet in Sanskrit, in Greek, in Latin, and in every one of the Aryan languages; and it is far better to acknowledge this fact, than to sanction the smallest violation of any of those phonetic laws, which some have called the straight jacket, but which are in reality, the leading strings of all true etymology.

If we now turn to grammar, properly so called, and ask what Comparative Philology has done for it, we must distinguish between two kinds of grammatical knowledge. Grammar may be looked upon as a mere art, and, as taught at present in most schools, it is nothing but an art. We learn to play on a foreign language as we learn to play on a musical instrument, and we may arrive at the highest perfection in performing on any instrument, without having a notion of thorough bass or the laws of harmony. For practical purposes this purely empirical knowledge is all that is required. But though it would be a mistake to attempt in our elementary schools to replace an empirical by a scientific knowledge of grammar, that empirical knowledge of grammar ought in time to be raised to a real, rational, and satisfying knowledge, a knowledge not only of facts, but of reasons; a knowledge that teaches us not only what grammar is, but how it came to be what it is. To know grammar is very well, but to speak all one’s life of gerunds and supines and infinitives, without having an idea what these formations really are, is a kind of knowledge not quite worthy of a scholar.

We laugh at people who still believe in ghosts and witches, but a belief in infinitives and supines is not only tolerated, but inculcated in our best schools and universities. Now, what do we really mean if we speak of an infinitive? It is a time-honored name, no doubt, handed down to us from the Middle Ages; it has its distant roots in Rome, Alexandria, and Athens;—but has it any real kernel? Has it any more body or substance than such names as Satyrs and Lamias?

Let us look at the history of the name before we look at the mischief which it, like many other names, has caused by making people believe that whenever there is a name there must be something behind it. The name was invented by Greek philosophers who, in their first attempts at classifying and giving names to the various forms of language, did not know whether to class such forms as γράφειν, γράψειν, γράψαι, γεγραφέναι, γράφεσθαι, γράψεσθαι, γέγραφθαι, γράψασθαι, γραφθῆναι, γραφθήσεσθαι, as nouns or as verbs. They had established for their own satisfaction the broad distinction between nouns (ὀνόματα) and verbs (ῥήματα); they had assigned to each a definition, but, after having done so, they found that forms like γράφειν would not fit their definition either of noun or verb.[19] What could they do? Some (the Stoics) represented the forms in ειν, etc., as a subdivision of the verb, and introduced for them the name ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον or γενικώτατον. Others recognized them as a separate part of speech, raising their number from eight to nine or ten. Others, again, classed them under the adverb (ἐπιῤῥημα), as one of the eight recognized parts of speech. The Stoics, taking their stand on Aristotle’s definition of ῥῆμα, could not but regard the infinitive as ῥῆμα, because it implied time, past, present, or future, which was with them recognized as the specific characteristic of the verb (Zeitwort). But they went further, and called forms such as γράφειν, etc., ῥῆμα, in the highest or most general sense, distinguishing other verbal forms, such as γράφει, etc., by the names of κατηγόρημα or σύμβαμα. Afterwards, in the progress of grammatical science, the definition of ῥῆμα became more explicit and complete. It was pointed out that a verb, besides its predicative meaning (ἔμφασις), is able to[20] express several additional meanings (παρακολουθήματα or παρεμφάσεις), viz.: not only time, as already pointed out by Aristotle, but also person and number. The two latter meanings, however, being absent in γράφειν, this was now called ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον (without by-meanings), or γενικώτατον, and, for practical purposes, this ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον soon became the prototype of conjugation.

So far there was only confusion, arising from a want of precision in classifying the different forms of the verb. But when the Greek terminology was transplanted to Rome, real mischief began. Instead of ῥῆμα γενικώτατον, we now find the erroneous, or, at all events, inaccurate, translation, modus infinitus, and infinitivus by itself. What was originally meant as an adjective belonging to ῥῆμα, became a substantive, the infinitive, and though the question arose again and again what this infinitive really was, whether a noun, or a verb, or an adverb; whether a mood or not a mood; the real existence of such a thing as an infinitive could no longer be doubted. One can hardly trust one’s eyes in reading the extraordinary discussions on the nature of the infinitive in grammatical works of successive centuries up to the nineteenth. Suffice it to say that Gottfried Hermann, the great reformer of classical grammars, treated the infinitive again as an adverb, and, therefore, as a part of speech belonging to the particles. We ourselves were brought up to believe in infinitives; and to doubt the existence of this grammatical entity would have been considered in our younger days a most dangerous heresy.

And yet, how much confused thought, and how much controversy might have been avoided, if this grammatical term of infinitive had never been invented.[21,][C] The fact is that what we call infinitives are nothing more or less than cases of verbal nouns, and not till they are treated as what they are shall we ever gain an insight into the nature and the historical development of these grammatical monsters.

Take the old Homeric infinitive in μεναι, and you find its explanation in the Sanskrit termination mane, i.e. manai, the native of the suffix man (not, as others suppose, the locative of a suffix mana), by which a large number of nouns are formed in Sanskrit. From gnâ, to know, we have (g)nâman, Latin (g)nomén, that by which a thing is known, its name; from gan, to be born, gán-man, birth. In Greek this suffix man is chiefly used for forming masculine nouns, such as γνώ-μων, γνώ-μονος, literally a knower; τλή-μων, a sufferer; or as μην in ποι-μήν, a shepherd, literally a feeder. In Latin, on the contrary, men occurs frequently at the end of abstract nouns in the neuter gender, such as teg-men, the covering, or tegu-men or tegi-men; solamen, consolation; voca-men, an appellation; certa-men, a contest; and many more, particularly in ancient Latin; while in classical Latin the fuller suffix mentum predominates. If then we read in Homer, κύνας ἔτευξε δῶμα φυλασσέμεναι, we may call φυλασσέμεναι an infinitive, if we like, and translate “he made dogs to protect the house;” but the form which we have before us, is simply a dative of an old abstract noun in μεν, and the original meaning was “for the protection of the house,” or “for protecting the house;” as if we said in Latin, tutamini domum.

The infinitives in μεν may be corruptions of those in μεναι, unless we take μεν as an archaic accusative, which, though without analogy in Greek, would correspond to Latin accusatives like tegmen, and express the general object of certain acts or movements. In Sanskrit, at least in the Veda, infinitives in mane occur, such as dấ-mane, to give, Greek δό-μεναι; vid-máne, to know, Greek ϝίδ-μεναι.[22]

The question next arises, if this is a satisfactory explanation of the infinitives in μεναι, how are we to explain the infinitives in εναι? We find in Homer, not only ἴμεναι, to go, but also ἰέναι; not only ἔμμεναι, to be, but also εἶναι, i.e., ἔσ-εναι. Bopp simply says that the m is lost, but he brings no evidence that in Greek an m can thus be lost without any provocation. The real explanation, here, as elsewhere, is supplied by the Beieinander (the collateral growth), not by the Nacheinander (the successive growth) of language. Besides the suffix man, the Aryan languages possessed two other suffixes, van and an, which were added to verbal bases just like man. By the side of dâman, the act of giving, we find in the Veda dâ-van, the act of giving, and a dative dâ-váne, with the accent on the suffix, meaning for the giving, i.e. to give. Now in Greek this v would necessarily disappear, though its former presence might be indicated by the digamma æolicum. Thus, instead of Sanskrit dâváne, we should have in Greek δοϝέναι, δοέναι, and contracted δοῦναι, the regular form of the infinitive of the aorist, a form in which the diphthong ου would remain inexplicable, except for the former presence of the lost syllable ϝε. In the same manner εἶναι stands for ἐσ-ϝέναι, ἐσ-έναι, ἐέναι, εἶναι. Hence ἰέναι, stands for ἰϝέναι, and even the accent remains on the suffix van, just as it did in Sanskrit.

As the infinitives in μεναι were traced back to the suffix man, and those in ϝεναι to a suffix van, the regular infinitives in εναι after consonants, and ναι after vowels, must be referred to the suffix an, dat. ane. Here, too, we find analogous forms in the Veda. From dhûrv, to hurt, we have dhû́rv-aṇe, for the purpose of hurting, in order to hurt; in Rv. IX. 61, 30, we find vibhv-áne, Rv. VI. 61, 13, in order to conquer, and by the same suffix the Greeks formed their infinitives of the perfect, λελοιπ-έναι, and the infinitives of the verbs in μι, τιθέ-ναι, διδο-ναι, ἱστα-ναι, etc.

In order to explain, after these antecedents, the origin of the infinitive in ειν, as τύπτειν, we must admit either the shortening of ναι to νι, which is difficult; or the existence of a locative in ι by the side of a dative in αι. That the locative can take the place of the dative we see clearly in the Sanskrit forms of the aorist, parsháṇi, to cross, nesháṇi, to lead, which, as far as their form, not their origin, is concerned, would well match Greek forms like λύσειν in the future. In either case, τύπτε-νι in Greek would have become τύπτειν, just as τύπτε-σι became τύπτεις. In the Doric dialect this throwing back of the final ι is omitted in the second person singular, where the Dorians may say ἀμέλγες for ἀμέλγεις; and in the same Doric dialect the infinitive, too, occurs in εν instead of ειν; e.g., ἀείδεν instead of ἀείδειν. (Buttman, “Greek Gr.,” § 103, 10, 11.)

In this manner the growth of grammatical forms can be made as clear as the sequence of any historical events in the history of the world, nay, I should say far clearer, far more intelligible; and I should think that even the first learning of these grammatical forms might be somewhat seasoned and rendered more really instructive by allowing the pupil, from time to time, a glimpse into the past history of the Greek and Latin languages. In English what we call the infinitive is clearly a dative; to speak shows by its very preposition what it was intended for. How easy, then, to explain to a beginner that if he translates, “able to speak,” by ἱκανὸς εἰπεῖν, the Greek infinitive is really the same as the English, and that εἰπεῖν stands for εἴπενι and this for εἴπεναι, which, to a certain extent, answers the same purpose as the Greek ἔπει, the dative of ἔπος, and therefore originally ἔπεσι.

And remark, these very datives and locatives of nouns formed by the suffix ος in Greek, as in Sanskrit, es in Latin, though they yield no infinitives in Greek, yield the most common form of the infinitive in Latin, and may be traced also in Sanskrit. As from genus we form a dative generi, and a locative genere, which stands for genese, so from gigno an abstract noun would be formed, gignus, and from it a dative, gigneri, and a locative, gignere. I do not say that the intermediate form gignus existed in the spoken Latin, I only maintain that such a form would be analogous to gen-us, op-us, fœd-us, and that in Sanskrit the process is exactly the same. We form in Sanskrit a substantive càkshas, sight, càkshus, eye; and we find the dative of càkshas, i.e. càkshase, used as what we should call an infinitive, in order to see. But we also find another so-called infinitive, jîvàse, in order to live, although there is no noun, jîvas, life; we find áyase, to go, although there is no noun áyas, going. This Sanskrit áyase explains the Latin i-re, as *i-vane explained the Greek ἰέναι. The intention of the old framers of language is throughout the same. They differ only in the means which they use, one might almost say, at random; and the differences between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin are often due to the simple fact that out of many possible forms that might be used and had been used before the Aryan languages became traditional, settled, and national, one family or clan or nation fancied one, another another. While this one became fixed and classical, all others became useless, remained perhaps here and there in proverbial sayings or in sacred songs, but were given up at last completely, as strange, obsolete, and unintelligible.

And even then, after a grammatical form has become obsolete and unintelligible, it by no means loses its power of further development. Though the Greeks did not themselves, we still imagine that we feel the infinitive as the case of an abstract noun in many constructions. Thus χαλεπὸν εὑρεῖν, difficult to find, was originally, difficult in the finding, or difficult for the act of finding; δεινὸς λέγειν, meant literally, powerful in speaking; ἄρχομαι λέγειν, I begin to speak, i.e., I direct myself to the act of speaking; κέλεαί με μυθήσασθαι, you bid me to speak, i.e., you order me towards the act of speaking; φοβοῦμαι διελέγχειν σε, I am afraid of refuting you, i.e., I fear in the act, or, I shrink when brought towards the act, of refuting you; σὸν ἔργον λέγειν, your business is in or towards speaking, you have to speak; πᾶσιν ἁδεῖν χαλεπόν, there is something difficult in pleasing everybody, or, in our endeavor after pleasing everybody. In all these cases the so-called infinitive can, with an effort, still be felt as a noun in an oblique case. But in course of time expressions such as χαλεπὸν ἁδεῖν, it is difficult to please, ἀγαθὸν λέγειν, it is good to speak, left in the mind of the speaker the impression that ἁδεῖν and λέγειν were subjects in the nominative, the pleasing is difficult, the speaking is good; and by adding the article, these oblique cases of verbal nouns actually became nominatives, τὸ ἁδειν, the act of pleasing, τὸ λέγειν, the act of speaking, capable of being used in every case, e.g., ἐπιθυμια τοῦ πίειν, desiderium bibendi. This regeneration, this process of creating new words out of decaying and decayed materials may seem at first sight incredible, yet it is as certain as the change with which we began our discussion of the infinitive. I mean the change of the conception of a ῥῆμα γενικώτατον, a verbum generalissimum, into a generalissimus or infinitivus. Nor is the process without analogy in modern languages. The French l’avenir, the future (Zukunft), is hardly the Latin advenire. That would mean the arriving, the coming, but not what is to come. I believe l’avenir was (quod est) ad venire, what is to come, contracted to l’avenir. In Low-German to come assumes even the character of an adjective, and we can speak not only of a year to come, but of a to-come year, de tokum Jahr.[23]

This process of grammatical vivisection may be painful in the eyes of classical scholars, yet even they must see how great a difference there is in the quality of knowledge imparted by our Greek and Latin grammars, and by comparative grammar. I do not deny that at first children must learn Greek and Latin mechanically, but it is not right that they should remain satisfied with mere paradigms and technical terms, without knowing the real nature and origin of so-called infinitives, gerunds, and supines. Every child will learn the construction of the accusative with the infinitive, but I well remember my utter amazement when I first was taught to say Miror te ad me nihil scribere, “I am surprised that you write nothing to me.” How easy would it have been to explain that scribere was originally a locative of a verbal noun, and that there was nothing strange or irrational in saying, “I wonder at thee in the act of not writing to me.” This first step once taken, everything else followed by slow degrees, but even in phrases like Spero te mihi ignoscere, we can still see the first steps which led from “I hope or I desire thee, toward the act of forgiving me,” to “I trust thee to forgive me.” It is the object of the comparative philologist to gather up the scattered fragments, to arrange them and fit them, and thus to show that language is something rational, human, intelligible, the very embodiment of the mind of man in its growth from the lowest to the highest stage, and with capabilities for further growth far beyond what we can at present conceive or imagine.

As to writing Greek and Latin verse, I do not maintain that a knowledge of Comparative Philology will help us much. It is simply an art that must be acquired by practice, if in these our busy days it is still worth acquiring. A good memory will no doubt enable us to say at a moment’s notice whether certain syllables are long or short. But is it not far more interesting to know why certain vowels are long and others short, than to be able to string longs and shorts together in imitation of Greek and Latin hexameters? Now in many cases the reason why certain vowels are long or short, can be supplied by Comparative Philology alone. We may learn from Latin grammar that the i in fîdus, trusty, and in fîdo, I trust, is long, and that it is short in fides, trust, and perfidus, faithless; but as all these words are derived from the same root, why should some have a long, others a short vowel? A comparison of Sanskrit at once supplies an answer. Certain derivatives, not only in Latin but in Sanskrit and Greek too, require what is called Guṇa of the radical vowel. In fîdus and fîdo, the i is really a diphthong, and represents a more ancient ei or oi, the former appearing in Greek πείθω, the latter in Latin foedus, a truce.

We learn from our Greek grammars that the second syllable in δείκνῡμι is long, but in the plural, δείκνῠμεν, it is short. This cannot be by accident, and we may observe the same change in δάμνημι and δάμναμεν, and similar words. Nothing, however, but a study of Sanskrit would have enabled us to discover the reason of this change, which is really the accent in its most primitive working, such as we can watch it in the Vedic Sanskrit, where it produces exactly the same change, only with far greater regularity and perspicuity.

Why, again, do we say in Greek, οἶδα, I know, but ἴσ-μεν, we know? Why τέτληκα, but τέτλαμεν? Why μέμονα, but μέμαμεν? There is no recollection in the minds of the Greeks of the motive power that was once at work, and left its traces in these grammatical convulsions; but in Sanskrit we still see, as it were, a lower stratum of grammatical growth, and we can there watch the regular working of laws which required these changes, and which have left their impress not only on Greek, but on Sanskrit, and even on German. The same necessity which made Homer say οἶδα and ἴδμεν, and the Vedic poet véda and vidmás, still holds good, and makes us say in German, Ich weiss, I know, but wir wissen, we know.

All this becomes clear and intelligible by the light of Comparative Grammar; anomalies vanish, exceptions prove the rule, and we perceive more plainly every day how in language, as elsewhere, the conflict between the freedom claimed by each individual and the resistance offered by the community at large, establishes in the end a reign of law most wonderful, yet perfectly rational and intelligible.

These are but a few small specimens to show you what Comparative Philology can do for Greek and Latin; and how it has given a new life to the study of languages by discovering, so to say, and laying bare, the traces of that old life, that prehistoric growth, which made language what we find it in the oldest literary monuments, and which still supplies the vigor of the language of our own time. A knowledge of the mere facts of language is interesting enough; nay, if you ask yourself what grammars really are—those very Greek and Latin grammars which we hated so much in our schoolboy days—you will find that they are store-houses, richer than the richest museums of plants or minerals, more carefully classified and labeled than the productions of any of the great kingdoms of nature. Every form of declension and conjugation, every genitive and every so-called infinitive and gerund, is the result of a long succession of efforts, and of intelligent efforts. There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar. No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical in language is but, as it were, a petrification of thought, of deep, curious, poetical, philosophical thought, will ever rest again till he has descended as far as he can descend into the ancient shafts of human speech, exploring level after level, and testing every successive foundation which supports the surface of each spoken language.

One of the great charms of this new science is that there is still so much to explore, so much to sift, so much to arrange. I shall not, therefore, be satisfied with merely lecturing on Comparative Philology, but I hope I shall be able to form a small philological society of more advanced students, who will come and work with me, and bring the results of their special studies as materials for the advancement of our science. If there are scholars here who have devoted their attention to the study of Homer, Comparative Philology will place in their hands a light with which to explore the dark crypt on which the temple of the Homeric language was erected. If there are scholars who know their Plautus or Lucretius, Comparative Philology will give them a key to grammatical forms in ancient Latin, which, even if supported by an Ambrosian palimpsest, might still seem hazardous and problematical. As there is no field and no garden that has not its geological antecedents, there is no language and no dialect which does not receive light from a study of Comparative Philology, and reflect light in return on more general problems. As in geology again, so in Comparative Philology, no progress is possible without a division of labor, and without the most general coöperation. The most experienced geologist may learn something from a miner or from a ploughboy; the most experienced comparative philologist may learn something from a schoolboy or from a child.

I have thus explained to you what, if you will but assist me, I should like to do as the first occupant of this new chair of Comparative Philology. In my public lectures I must be satisfied with teaching. In my private lectures, I hope I shall not only teach, but also learn, and receive back as much as I have to give.

NOTES.

[NOTE A.][text]
On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem tad.

One or two instances may here suffice to show how compassless even the best comparative philologists find themselves if, without a knowledge of Sanskrit, they venture into the deep waters of grammatical research. What can be clearer at first sight than that the demonstrative pronoun that has the same base in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German? Bopp places together (§ 349) the following forms of the neuter:—

and he draws from them the following conclusions:—

In the Sanskrit ta-t we have the same pronominal element repeated twice, and this repeated pronominal element became afterwards the general sign of the neuter after other pronominal stems, such as ya-t, ka-t.

Such a conclusion seems extremely probable, particularly when we compare the masculine form sa-s, the old nom. sing., instead of the ordinary sa. But the first question that has to be answered is, whether this is phonetically possible, and how.

If tat in Sanskrit is ta + ta, then we expect in Gothic tha + tha, instead of which we find tha + ta. We expect in Latin istut, not istud, illut, not illud, it, not id, for Latin represents final t in Sanskrit by t, not by d. The old Latin ablative in d is not a case in point, as we shall see afterwards.

Both Gothic tha-ta, therefore, and Latin istud, postulate a Sanskrit tad, while Zend and Greek at all events do not conflict with an original final media. Everything therefore depends on what was the original form in Sanskrit; and here no Sanskrit scholar would hesitate for one moment between tat and tad. Whatever the origin of tat may have been, it is quite certain that Sanskrit knows only of tad, never of tat. There are various ways of testing the original surd or sonant nature of final consonants in Sanskrit. One of the safest seems to me to see how those consonants behave before taddhita or secondary suffixes, which require no change in the final consonant of the base. Thus before the suffix îya (called cha by Pâṇini) the final consonant is never changed, yet we find tad-îya, like mad-îya, tvad-îya, asmad-îya, yushmad-îya, etc. Again, before the possessive suffix vat final consonants of nominal bases suffer no change. This is distinctly stated by Pâṇini, I. 4, 19. Hence we have vidyut-vân, from vidyut, lightning, from the root dyut; we have udaśvit-vân, from uda-śvi-t. In both cases the original final tenuis remains unchanged. Hence, if we find tad-vân, kad-vân, our test shows us again that the final consonant in tad and kad is a media, and that the d of these words is not a modification of t.

Taking our stand therefore on the undoubted facts of Sanskrit grammar, we cannot recognize t as the termination of the neuter of pronominal stems, but only d;[24] nor can we accept Bopp’s explanation of tad as a compound of ta + t, unless the transition of an original t into a Sanskrit and Latin d can be established by sufficient evidence. Even then that transition would have to be referred to a time before Sanskrit and Gothic became distinct languages, for the Gothic tha-ta is the counterpart of the Sanskrit tad, and not of tat.

Bopp endeavors to defend the transition of an original t into Latin d by the termination of the old ablatives, such as gnaivod, etc. But here again it is certain that the original termination was d, and not t. It is so in Latin, it may be so in Zend, where, as Justi points out, the d of the ablative is probably a media.[25] In Sanskrit it is certainly a media in such forms as mad, tvad, asmad, which Bopp considers as old ablatives, and which in madîya, etc., show the original media. In other cases it is impossible in Sanskrit to test the nature of the final dental in the ablative, because d is always determined by its position in a sentence. But under no circumstances could we appeal to Latin gnaivod in order to prove a transition of an original t into d; while on the contrary all the evidence at present is in favor of a media, as the final letter both of the ablative and of the neuter bases of pronouns, such as tad and yad.

These may seem minutiæ, but the whole of Comparative Grammar is made up of minutiæ, which, nevertheless, if carefully joined together and cemented, lead to conclusions of unexpected magnitude.

[NOTE B.][text]
Did Feminine Bases in â take s in the Nominative Singular?

I add one other instance to show how a more accurate knowledge of Sanskrit would have guarded comparative philologists against rash conclusions. With regard to the nominative singular of feminine bases ending in derivative â, the question arose, whether words like bona in Latin, ἀγαθά in Greek, sivâ in Sanskrit, had originally an s as the sign of the nom. sing., which was afterwards lost, or whether they never took that termination. Bopp (§ 136), Schleicher (§ 246), and others seem to believe in the loss of the s, chiefly, it would seem, because the s is added to feminine bases ending in î and û. Benfey[26] takes the opposite view, viz. that feminines in â never took the s of the nom. sing. But he adds one exception, the Vedic gnâ-s. This remark has caused much mischief. Without verifying Benfey’s statements, Schleicher (l.c.) quotes the same exception, though cautiously referring to the Sanskrit dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth as his authority. Later writers, for instance Merguet,[27] leave out all restrictions, simply appealing to this Vedic form gnâ-s in support of the theory that feminine bases in â too took originally s as sign of the nom. sing. and afterwards dropped it. Even so careful a scholar as Büchler[28] speaks of the s as lost.

There is, first of all, no reason whatever why the s should have been added[29]; secondly, there is none why it should have been lost. But, whatever opinion we may hold in this respect, the appeal to the Vedic gnâ-s cannot certainly be sustained, and the word should at all events be obelized till there is better evidence for it than we possess at present.[30]

The passage which is always quoted from the Rv. IV. 9, 4, as showing gnâ-s to be a nom. sing. in s, is extremely difficult, and as it stands at present, most likely corrupt:—

Utá gnấḥ agníḥ adhvaré utó gṛhá-patiḥ dáme, utá brahmấ ní sídati.

This could only be translated:—

“Agni sits down at the sacrifice as a woman, as lord in the house, and as priest.”

This, however, is impossible, for Agni, the god of fire, is never represented in the Veda as a woman. If we took gnâḥ as a genitive, we might translate, “Agni sits down in the sacrifice of the lady of the house,” but this again would be utterly incongruous in Vedic poetry.

I believe the verse is corrupt, and I should propose to read:—

Utá agnấv agníḥ adhvaré.

“Agni sits down at the sacrifice in the fire, as lord in the house, and as a priest.”

The ideas that Agni, the god of fire, sits down in the fire, or that Agni is lighted by Agni, or that Agni is both the sacrificial fire and the priest, are familiar to every reader of the Veda. Thus we read, I. 12, 6, agnínâ agníḥ sám idhyate, “Agni is lighted by Agni;” X. 88, 1, we find Agni invoked as ấ-hutam agnáu, etc.

But whether this emendation be right or wrong, it must be quite clear how unsafe it would be to support the theory that feminine bases in â ended originally in s by this solitary passage from the Veda.

[NOTE C.][text]
Grammatical Forms in Sanskrit corresponding to so-called Infinitives in Greek and Latin.

There is no trace of such a term as infinitive in Sanskrit, and yet exactly the same forms, or, at all events, forms strictly analogous to those which we call infinitives in Greek and Latin, exist in Sanskrit. Here, however, they are treated in the simplest way.

Sanskrit grammarians when giving the rules according to which nouns and adjectives are derived from verbal roots by means of primary suffixes (Kṛt), mention among the rest the suffixes tum (Pâṇ., III. 3, 10), se, ase, adhyai, tavai, tave, shyai, e, am, tos, as (IV. 4, 9–17), defining their meaning in general by that of tum (III. 3, 10). This tum is said to express immediate futurity in a verb, if governed by another word conveying an intention. An example will make this clearer. In order to say he goes to cook, where “he goes” expresses an intention, and “to cook” is the object of that intention which is to follow immediately, we place the suffix tum at the end of the verb pak, to cook, and say in Sanskrit, vrajati pak-tum. We might also say pâcako vrajati, he goes as one who means to cook, or vrajati pâkâya, he goes to the act of cooking, placing the abstract noun in the dative; and all these constructions are mentioned together by Sanskrit grammarians. The same takes place after verbs which express a wish (III. 3, 158); e.g., icchati paktum, he wishes to cook, and after such words as kâla, time, samaya, opportunity, velâ, right moment (III. 3, 167); e.g., kâlaḥ paktum, it is time to cook, etc. Other verbs which govern forms in tum are (III. 4, 65) śak, to be able; dhṛsh, to dare; jñâ, to know; glai, to be weary; ghaṭ, to endeavor; ârabh, to begin; labh, to get; prakram, to begin; utsah, to endure; arh, to deserve; and words like asti, there is; e.g., asti bhoktum, it is (possible) to eat; not, it is (necessary) to eat. The forms in tum are also enjoined (III. 4, 66) after words like alam, expressing fitness, e.g., paryâpto bhoktum, alam bhoktum, kuśalo bhoktum, fit or able to eat.

Here we have everything that is given by Sanskrit grammarians in place of what we should call the Chapter on the Infinitive in Greek and Latin. The only thing that has to be added is the provision, understood in Pâṇini’s grammar, that such suffixes as tum, etc., are indeclinable.

And why are they indeclinable? For the simple reason that they are themselves case terminations. Whether Pâṇini was aware of this, we cannot tell with certainty. From some of his remarks it would seem to be so. When treating of the cases, Pâṇini (I. 4, 32) explains what we should call the dative by Sampradâna. Sampradâna means giving (δοτική), but Pâṇini uses it here as a technical term, and assigns to it the definite meaning of “he whom one looks to by any act” (not only the act of giving, as the commentators imply). It is therefore what we should call “the remote object.” Ex. Brâhmaṇâya dhanam dadâti, he gives wealth to the Brâhman. This is afterwards extended by several rules explaining that the Sampradâna comes in after verbs expressive of pleasure caused to somebody (I. 4, 33); after ślâgh, to applaud, hnu, to dissemble, to conceal, sthâ,[31] to reveal, śap, to curse (I. 4, 34); after dhâray, to owe (I. 4, 35); spṛh, to long for (I. 4, 36); after verbs expressive of anger, ill-will, envy, detraction (I. 4, 37); after râdh and îksh, if they mean to consider concerning a person (I. 4, 39); after pratiśru and âśru, in the sense of according (I. 4, 40); anugṛ and pratigṛ, in the sense of acting in accordance with (I. 4, 41); after parikrî, to buy, to hire (I. 4, 44). Other cases of Sampradâna are mentioned after such words as namaḥ, salutation to, svasti, hail, svâhâ, salutation to the gods, svadhâ, salutation to the manes, alam, sufficient for, vashaṭ, offered to, a sacrificial invocation, etc. (II. 3, 16); and in such expressions as na tvam triṇâya manye, I do not value thee a straw (II. 3, 17); grâmâya gacchati, he goes to the village (II. 2, 12): where, however, the accusative, too, is equally admissible. Some other cases of Sampradâna are mentioned in the Vârttikas; e.g., I. 4, 44, muktaye harim bhajati, for the sake of liberation he worships Hari; vâtâya kapilâ vidyut, a dark red lightning indicates wind. Very interesting, too, is the construction with the prohibitive mâ; e.g. mâ câpalâya, lit. not for unsteadiness, i.e., do not act unsteadily.[32]

In all these cases we easily recognize the identity of Sampradâna with the dative in Greek and Latin. If therefore we see that Pâṇini in some of his rules states that Sampradâna takes the place of tum, the so called infinitive, we can hardly doubt that he had perceived the similarity in the functions of what we call dative and infinitive. Thus he says that instead of phalâny âhartum yâti, he goes to take the fruits, we may use the dative and say phalebhyo yâti, he goes for the fruits; instead of yashṭum yâti, he goes to sacrifice, yâgâya yâti, he goes to the act of sacrificing (II. 3, 14–15).

But whether Pâṇini recognized this fact or not, certain it is that we have only to look at the forms which in the Veda take the place of tum, in order to convince ourselves that most of them are datives of verbal nouns. As far as Sanskrit grammar is concerned, we may safely cancel the name of infinitive altogether, and speak instead boldly of datives and other cases of verbal nouns. Whether these verbal nouns admit of the dative case only, and whether some of those datival terminations have become obsolete, are questions which do not concern the grammarian, and nothing would be more unphilosophical than to make such points the specific characteristic of a new grammatical category, the infinitive. The very idea that every noun must possess a complete set of cases, is contrary to all the lessons of the history of language; and though the fact that some of these forms belong to an antiquated phase of language has undoubtedly contributed towards their being used more readily for certain syntactical purposes, the fact remains that in their origin and their original intention they were datives and nothing else. Neither could the fact that these datives of verbal nouns may govern the same case which is governed by the verb, be used as a specific mark, because it is well known that, in Sanskrit more particularly, many nouns retain the power of governing the accusative. We shall now examine some of these so-called infinitives in Sanskrit.

Datives in e.

The simplest dative is that in e, after verbal bases ending in consonants or â, e.g., dṛśé, for the sake of seeing, to see; vid-é, to know, paribhveê,[33] to overcome; śraddhé kám, to believe.

Datives in ai.

After some verbs ending in â, the dative is irregularly (Grammar, §§ 239, 240) formed in ai; Rv. VII. 19, 7, parâdái, to surrender. III. 60, 4, pratimái, to compare, and the important form vayodhái, of which more by and by.

Accusatives in am. Genitives and Ablatives in as. Locatives in i.

By the side of these datives we have analogous accusatives in am, genitives and ablatives in as, locatives in i.

Accusative: I. 73, 10, śakéma yámam, May we be able to get. I. 94, 3, śakéma tvâ samídhan, May we be able to light thee. This may be the Oscan and Umbrian infinitive in um, om (u, o), if we take yama as a base in a, and m as the sign of the accusative. In Sanskrit it is impossible to determine this question, for that bases in a also are used for similar purposes is clearly seen in datives like dábhâya; e.g., Rv. V. 44, 2, ná dábhâya, not to conquer; VIII. 96, 1, nṛ́bhyâḥ tárâya síndhavaḥ su-pârấḥ, the rivers easy to cross for men. Whether the Vedic imperatives in âya (śâyac) admit of a similar explanation is doubtful on account of the accent.

Genitive: vilikhaḥ, in îśvaro vilikhaḥ, cognizant of drawing; and possibly X. 108, 2, atiskádaḥ bhiyásâ, from fear of crossing.

Ablative: Rv. VIII. 1, 12, purâ âtṛ́daḥ, before striking.

Locative: Rv. V. 52, 12, dṛśí tvishé, to shine in glancing(?)

Datives in s-e.

The same termination of the dative is added to verbal bases which have taken the increment of the aorist, the s. Thus from ji, to conquer, we have ji-sh, and je-sh, and from both datival forms with infinitival function. I. 111, 4, té naḥ hinvantu sâtáye dhiyé jishé, May they bring us to wealth, wisdom, victory!

I. 100, 11, apấm tokásya tánayasya jeshé, May Indra help us for getting water, children, and descendants. Cf. VI. 44, 18.

Or, after bases ending in consonants, upaprakshé; V. 47, 6, upa-prakshé vṛ́shaṇaḥ - - - vadhvấḥ yanti áccha, the men go towards their wives to embrace.

These forms correspond to Greek infinitives like λῦσαι and τύψαι, possibly to Latin infinitives like ferre, for fer-se, velle for vel-se, and voluis-se; for se, following immediately on a consonant, can never represent the Sanskrit ase. With regard to infinitives like fac-se, dic-se, I do not venture to decide whether they are primitive forms, or contracted, though fac-se could hardly be called a contraction of fecisse. The 2d pers. sing. of the imperative of the 1st aorist middle, λῦσαι, is identical with the infinitive in form, and the transition of meaning from the infinitive to the imperative is well known in Greek and other languages. (Παῖδα δ’ ἐμοὶ λῦσαί τε φίλην τά τ’ ἄποινα δέχεσθαι, Deliver up my dear child and accept the ransom). Several of these aoristic forms are sometimes very perplexing in Sanskrit. If we find, for instance, stushé, we cannot always tell whether it is the infinitive (λῦσαι); or the 1st pers. sing. of the aor. Âtmanep. in the subjunctive (for stushai), Let me praise (λύσωμαι); or lastly, the 2d pers. sing. Âtmanep. in the indicative (λύῃ). If stushe has no accent, we know, of course, that it cannot be the infinitive, as in X. 93, 9; but when it has the accent on the last, it may, in certain constructions, be either infinitive, or 1st pers. sing. aor. Âtm. subj. Here we want far more careful grammatical studies on the language of the Veda, before we can venture to translate with certainty. In places, for instance, where as in I. 122, 7 we have a nominative with stushé, it is clear that it must be taken as an infinitive, stushé sâ vâm - - - râtíḥ, your gift, Varuṇa and Mitra, is to be praised; but in other places, such as VIII. 5, 4, the choice is difficult. In VIII. 65, 5, índra griṇîshé u stushé, I should propose to translate, Indra, thou longest for praising, thou desirest to be praised, cf. VIII. 71, 15; while in II. 20, 4, tám u stushe índram tám gṛṇîshe, I translate, Let me praise Indra, let me laud him, admitting here, the irregular retention of Vikaraṇa in the aorist, which can be defended by analogous forms such as gṛ́-ṇî-sh-áṇi, stṛ́-ṇî-sh-áṇi, of which more hereafter. However, all these translations, as every real scholar knows, are, and can be tentative only. Nothing but a complete Vedic grammar, such as we may soon expect from Professor Benfey, will give us safe ground to stand on.

Datives in âyai.

Feminine bases in â form their dative in âyai, and thus we find carâyai used in the Veda, VII. 77, 1, as what we should call an infinitive, in the sense of to go. No other cases of carâ have as yet been met with. A similar form is jârâyai, to praise, I. 38, 13.

Datives in aye.

We have next to consider bases in i, forming their dative in áye. Here, whenever we are acquainted with the word in other cases, we naturally take aye as a simple dative of a noun. Thus in I. 31, 8, we should translate sanáye dhánânâm, for the acquisition of treasures, because we are accustomed to other cases, such as I. 100, 13, sanáyas, acquisitions, V. 27, 3, saním, wealth. But if we find, V. 80, 5, dṛśáye naḥ asthât, she stood to be seen by us, lit., for our seeing, then we prefer, though wrongly, to look upon such datives as infinitives, simply because we have not met with other cases of dṛśi-s.

Datives in taye.

What applies to datives of nouns in i, applies with still greater force to datives of nouns in ti. There is no reason why in IX. 96, 4 we should call áhataye, to be without hurt, an infinitive, simply because no other case of áhati-s occurs in the Rig-Veda; while ájîtaye, not to fail, in the same line, is called a dative of ájîti-s, because it occurs again in the accusative ájîti-m.

Datives in tyai.

In ityái, to go, I. 113, 6; 124, 1, we have a dative of iti-s, the act of going, of which the instrumental ityâ occurs likewise, I. 167, 5. This tyâ, shortened to tya, became afterwards the regular termination of the gerund of compound verbs in tya (Grammar § 446), while ya (§ 445) points to an original ya or yai.

Datives in as-e.

Next follow datives from bases in as, partly with accent on the first syllable, like neuter nouns in as, partly with the accent on as; partly with Guṇa, partly without. With regard to them it becomes still clearer how impossible it would be to distinguish between datives of abstract nouns, and other grammatical forms, to be called infinitives. Thus Rv. I. 7, 3 we read dîrghâya cákshase, Indra made the sun rise for long glancing, i.e., that it might glance far and wide. It is quite true that no other cases of cákshas, seeing, occur, on which ground modern grammarians would probably class it as an infinitive; but the qualifying dative dîrghâya, clearly shows that the poet felt cákshase as the dative of a noun, and did not trouble himself, whether that noun was defective in other cases or not.

These datives of verbal nouns in as, correspond exactly to Latin infinitives in ĕre, like vivere (jîváse), and explain likewise infinitives in âre, êre, and îre, forms which cannot be separated. It has been thought that the nearest approach to an infinitive is to be found in such forms as jîváse, bhiyáse, to fear (V. 29, 4), because in such cases the ordinary nominal form would be bháyas-e. There is, however, the instrumental bhiyása, X. 108, 2.

Datives in mane.

Next follow datives from nouns in man, van, and an. The suffix man is very common in Sanskrit, for forming verbal nouns, such as kar-man, doing, deed, from kar. Van is almost restricted to forming nomina agentis, such as druh-van, hating; but we find also substantives like pat-van, still used in the sense of flying. An also is generally used like van, but we can see traces of its employment to form nomina actionis in Greek ἀγών, Lat. turbo, etc.

Datives of nouns in man, used with infinitival functions, are very common in the Veda; e.g. I. 164, 6, pṛccâmi vidmane, I ask to know; VIII. 93, 8, dâmane kṛtáḥ, made to give. We find also the instrumental case vidmánâ, e.g., VI. 14, 5, vidmánâ urushyáti, he protects by his knowledge. These correspond to Homeric infinitives, like ἴδμεναι, δόμεναι, etc., old datives and not locatives, as Schleicher and Curtius supposed; while forms like δόμεν are to be explained either as abbreviated, or as obsolete accusatives.

Datives in vane.

Of datives in váne I only know dāvâne, a most valuable grammatical relic, by which Professor Benfey was enabled to explain the Greek δοῦναι, i.e., δοϝέναι.[34]

Datives in ane.

Of datives in áne I pointed out (l.c.) dhûrv-ane and vibhv-áne, VI. 61, 13, taking the latter as synonymous with vibhvế, and translating, Sarasvatî, the great, made to conquer, like a chariot. Professor Roth, s.v. vibhván, takes the dative for an instrumental, and translates “made by an artificer.” It is, however, not the chariot that is spoken of, but Sarasvatî, and of her it could hardly be said that she was made either by or for an artificer.

Locatives in sani.

As we saw before that aoristic bases in s take the datival e, so that we had prák-sh-e by the side of pṛ́c-e, we shall have to consider here aoristic bases in s, taking the suffix an, not however with the termination of the dative, but with that of the locative i. Thus we read X. 126, 3, náyishṭhâḥ u naḥ nesháṇi párshishṭhâḥ u naḥ parsháṇi áti dvíshaḥ, they who are the best leaders to lead us, the best helpers to help us to overcome our enemies, lit. in leading us, in helping us. In VIII. 12, 19, gṛṇîsháni, i.e. gṛ-ṇî-sháṇ-i stands parallel with turv-án-e, thus showing how both cases can answer nearly the same purpose. If these forms existed in Greek, they would, after consonantal bases, be identical with the infinitives of the future.

Cases of Verbal Nouns in tu.

We next come to a large number of datives, ablatives, or genitives, and accusatives of verbal nouns in tu. This tu occurs in Sanskrit in abstract nouns such as gâtú, going, way, etc., in Latin in adven-tus, etc. As these forms have been often treated, and as some of them occur frequently in later Sanskrit also, it will suffice to give one example of each:—

Dative in tave: gántave, to go, I. 46, 7.

Old form in ai: gántavái, X. 95, 14.

Genitive in toḥ: dâtoḥ, governed by îśe, VII. 4, 6.

Ablative in toḥ: gántoḥ, I. 89, 9.

Accusative in tum: gántum. This is the supine in tum in Latin.

Cases of Verbal Nouns in tva.

Next follow cases of verbal nouns in tvá, the accent being on the suffix.

Datives in tvấya: hatvấya, X. 84, 2.

Instrumental in tvấ: hatvấ, I. 100, 18.

Older form in tvî́: hatvî́, II. 17, 6; gatvî́, IV. 41, 5.

Datives in dhai and dhyai.

I have left to the end datives in dhai and dhyai, which properly belong to the datives in ai, treated before, but differ from them as being datives of compound nouns. As from máyaḥ, delight, we have mayaskará, delight-making, mayobhú, delight-causing, and constructions like máyo dádhe, so from váyas, life, vigor, we have váyaskṛ́t, life-giving, and constructions like váyo dhât. From dhâ we can frame two substantival frame, dhâ and dhi-s, e.g. puro-dhâ, and puro-dhis, like vi-dhi-s. As an ordinary substantive, purodhâ takes the feminine termination â, and is declined like śivâ. But if the verbal base remains at the end of a compound without the feminine suffix, a compound like vayodhâ would form its dative vayodhe (Grammar, § 239); and as in analogous cases we found old datives in ai, instead of e, e.g. parâdai, nothing can be said against vayodhai, as a Vedic dative of vayodhâ. The dative of purodhi would be purodhaye, but here again, as, besides forms like dṛśaye, we met with datives, such as ityai, rohishyai, there is no difficulty in admitting an analogous dative of purodhi, viz., purodhyai.

The old dative dhai has been preserved to us in one form only, which for that reason is all the more valuable and important, offering the key to the mysterious Greek infinitives in θαι, I mean vayodhái, which occurs twice in the Rig-Veda, X. 55, 1, and X. 67, 11. The importance of this relic would have been perceived long ago, if there had not been some uncertainty as to whether such a form really existed in the Veda. By some accident or other, Professor Aufrecht had printed in both passages vayodhaiḥ, instead of vayodhai. But for this, no one, I believe, would have doubted that in this form vayodhai we have not only the most valuable prototype of the Greek infinitives in (σ)θαι, but at the same time their full explanation. Vayodhai stands for vayas-dhai, in which composition the first part vayas is a neuter base in as, the second a dative of the auxiliary verb dhâ, used as a substantive. If, therefore, we find corresponding to vayodhai a Greek infinitive βέεσθαι, we must divide it into βέεσ-θαι, as we divide ψεύδεσθαι into ψεύδεσ-θαι, and translate it literally by “to do lying.”

It has been common to identify Greek infinitives in σθαι with corresponding Sanskrit forms ending in dhyai. No doubt these forms in dhyai are much more frequent than forms in dhai, but as we can only take them as old datives of substantives in dhi, it would be difficult to identify the two. The Sanskrit dhy appears, no doubt, in Greek, as σσ, dh being represented by the surd θ, and then assibilated by y; but we could hardly attempt to explain σθ = θy, because σδ = ζ = δy. Therefore, unless we are prepared to see with Bopp in the σ before θ, in this and similar forms, a remnant of the reflexive pronoun, nothing remains but to accept the explanation offered by the Vedic vayodhai, and to separate ψεύδεσθαι into ψεύδεσ-θαι lying to do. That this grammatical compound, if once found successful, should have been repeated in other tenses, giving us not only γράφεσ-θαι, but γράψεσ-θαι, γράψασ-θαι, and even γραφθήσεσ-θαι, is no more than what we may see again and again in the grammatical development of ancient and modern languages. Some scholars have objected on the same ground to Bopp’s explanation of ama-mini, as the nom. plur. of a participle, because they think it impossible to look upon amemini, amabâmini, amaremini, amabimini as participial formations. But if a mould is once made in language, it is used again and again, and little account is taken of its original intention. If we object to γράψεσ-θαι, why not to κελευ-σέ-μεναι or τεθνά-μεναι or μιχθή-μεναι? In Sanskrit, too, we should hesitate to form a compound of a modified verbal base, such as pṛṇa, with dhi, doing; yet as the Sanskrit ear was accustomed to yajadhyai from yaja, gamadhyai from gama, it did not protest against pṛṇadhyai, vâvṛdhadhyai, etc.

Historical Importance of these Grammatical Forms.

And while these ancient grammatical forms which supply the foundation of what in Greek, Latin, and other languages we are accustomed to call infinitives are of the highest interest to the grammarian and the logician, their importance is hardly less in the eyes of the historian. Every honest student of antiquity, whether his special field be India, Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, knows how often he is filled with fear and trembling when he meets with thoughts and expressions which, as he is apt to say, cannot be ancient. I have frequently confessed to that feeling with regard to some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and I well remember the time when I felt inclined to throw up the whole work as modern and unworthy of the time and labor bestowed upon it. At that time I was always comforted by these so-called infinitives and other relics of ancient language. They could not have been fabricated in India. They are unknown in ordinary Sanskrit, they are unintelligible as far as their origin is concerned in Greek and Latin, and yet in the Vedic language we find these forms, not only identical with Greek and Latin forms, but furnishing the key to their formation in Greece and Italy. The Vedic vayas-dhái compared with Greek βεεσ-θαι, the Vedic stushe compared with λυσαι are to my mind evidence in support of the antiquity and genuineness of the Veda that cannot be shaken by any arguments.

The Infinitive in English.

I add a few words on the infinitive in English, though it has been well treated by Dr. March in his “Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language,” by Dr. Morris, and others. We find in Anglo-Saxon two forms, one generally called the infinitive, nim-an, to take, the other the gerund, to nim-anne, to take. Dr. March explains the first as identical with Greek νέμ-ειν and νέμ-εν-αι, i.e., as an oblique case, probably the dative, of a verbal noun in an. He himself quotes only the dative of nominal bases in a, e.g. namanâya, because he was probably unacquainted with the nearer forms in an-e supplied by the Veda. This infinitive exists in Gothic as nim-an, in Old Saxon as nim-an, in Old Norse as nem-a, in Old High German as nem-an. The so-called gerund, to nimanne, is rightly traced back by Dr. March to Old Saxon nim-annia, but he can hardly be right in identifying these old datival forms with the Sanskrit base nam-anîya. In the Second Period of English (1100–1250)[35] the termination of the infinitive became en, and frequently dropped the final n, as smelle = smellen; while the termination of the gerund at the same time became enne, (ende), ene, en, or e, so that outwardly the two forms appear to be identical, as early as the 12th century.[36] Still later, towards the end of the 14th century, the terminations were entirely lost, though Spenser and Shakespeare have occasionally to killen, passen, delven, when they wished to impart an archaic character to their language. In modern English the infinitive with to is used as a verbal substantive. When we say, “I wish you to do this,” “you are able to do this,” we can still perceive the datival function of the infinitive. Likewise in such phrases, “it is time,” “it is proper,” “it is wrong to do that,” to do may still be felt as an oblique case. But we have only to invert these sentences, and say, “to do this is wrong,” and we have a new substantive in the nom. sing., just as in the Greek τὸ λέγειν. Expressions like for to do, show that the simple to was not always felt to be sufficiently expressive to convey the meaning of an original dative.

Works on the Infinitive.

The infinitive has formed the subject of many learned treatises. I divide them into two classes, those which appeared before and after Wilhelm’s excellent essay, written in Latin, “De Infinitivi Vi et Natura,” 1868; and in a new and improved edition, “De Infinitivo Linguarum Sanscritæ, Bactricæ, Persicæ, Græcæ, Oscæ, Umbricæ, Latinæ, Goticæ, forma et usu,” Isenaci, 1873. In this essay the evidence supplied by the Veda was for the first time fully collected, and the whole question of the nature of the infinitive placed in its true historical light. Before Wilhelm the more important works were Hofer’s book, “Vom Infinitiv, besonders im Sanskrit,” Berlin, 1840; Bopp’s paragraphs in his “Comparative Grammar;” Humboldt’s paper, in Schlegel’s “Indische Bibliothek” (II. 74), 1824; and his posthumous paper in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift” (II. 245), 1853; some dissertations by L. Meyer, Merguet, and Golenski. Benfey’s “Sanskrit Grammar” (1852), too, ought to be mentioned, as having laid the first solid foundations for this and all other branches of grammatical research, as far as Sanskrit is concerned. After Wilhelm the same subject has been treated with great independence by Ludwig, “Der Infinitif im Veda,” 1871, and again “Agglutination oder Adaptation,” 1873; and also by Jolly, “Geschichte des Infinitivs,” 1873.

I had myself discussed some questions connected with the nature of the infinitive in my “Lectures on the Science of Language,” vol. ii. p. 15 seq., and I had pointed out in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift,” XV. 215 (1866) the great importance of the Vedic vayodhai for unraveling the formation of Greek infinitives in σ-θαι.

The Infinitive in Bengali.

At a still earlier time, in 1847, in my “Essay on Bengali,” I said: “As the infinitives of the Indo-Germanic languages must be regarded as the absolute cases of a verbal noun, it is probable that in Bengali the infinitive in ite was also originally a locative, which expressed not only local situation, but also movement towards some object, as an end, whether real or imaginary. Thus the Bengali infinitive corresponds exactly with the English, where the relation of case is expressed by the preposition to. Ex. tâhâke mârite âmi âsiyâchi, means, I came to the state of beating him, or, I came to beat him; âmâke mârite deo, give me (permission), let me (go) to the action of beating, i.e., allow me to beat. Now as the form of the participle is the same as that of the infinitive, it may be doubted if there is really a distinction between these two forms as to their origin. For instance, the phrase âpan putrake mârite âmi tâhâka dekhilâm, can be translated, I saw him beating his own son; but it can be explained also as, what they nonsensically call in Latin grammar accusativus cum infinitivo, that is to say, the infinitive can be taken for a locative of the verbal noun, and the whole phrase be translated, I saw him in the action of beating his own son, (vidi patrem cædere ipsius filium). As in every Bengali phrase the participle in ite can be understood in this manner, I think it admissible to ascribe this origin to it, and instead of taking it for a nominative of a verbal adjective, to consider it as a locative of a verbal noun.”

The Infinitive in the Dravidian Languages.

I also tried to show that the infinitive in the Dravidian languages is a verbal noun with or without a case suffix. This view has been confirmed by Dr. Caldwell, but, in deference to him, I gladly withdraw the explanation which I proposed in reference to the infinitive in Tamil. I quote from Dr. Caldwell’s “Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,” 2d ed. p. 423: “Professor Max Müller, noticing that the majority of Tamil infinitives terminate in ka, supposed this ka to be identical in origin with kô, the dative-accusative case-sign of the Hindi, and concluded that the Dravidian infinitive was the accusative of a verbal noun. It is true that the Sanskrit infinitive and Latin supine in tum is correctly regarded as an accusative, and that our English infinitive to do, is the dative of a verbal noun; it is also true that the Dravidian infinitive is a verbal noun in origin, and never altogether loses that character; nevertheless, the supposition that the final ka of most Tamil infinitives is in any manner connected with ku, the sign of the Dravidian dative, or of kô, the Hindi dative-accusative, is inadmissible. A comparison of various classes of verbs and of the various dialects shows that the kâ in question proceeds from a totally different source.”

On Labialized and Unlabialized Gutturals.

As in my article on Vayodhai, published in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift,” 1866, p. 215, I had entered a caveat against identifying Greek β with Sanskrit ज, I take this opportunity of frankly withdrawing it. Phonetically, no doubt, these two letters represent totally distinct powers, and to say that Sanskrit ज ever became Greek β is as irrational to-day as it was ten years ago. But historically I was entirely wrong, as will be seen from the last edition of Curtius’ “Grundzüge.” The guttural sonant check was palatalized in the Southeastern Branch, and there became j and z, while in the Northwestern Branch the same g was frequently labialized and became gv, v, and b. Hence, where we have ज in Sanskrit, we may and do find β in Greek.

But after withdrawing my former caveat, I make bold to propose another, namely, that the original palatal sonant flatus, which in Sanskrit is graphically represented by j, can never be represented in Greek by β. Whether j in Sanskrit represents an original palatal sonant check or an original palatal sonant flatus can generally be determined by a reference to Zend, which represents the former by j, the latter by z. We may therefore formulate this phonetic law:—

“When Sanskrit j is represented by Zend z, it cannot be represented by Greek β.”

In this manner it is possible, I believe, to utilize Ascoli’s and Fick’s brilliant discovery as to a twofold, or even threefold, distinction of the Aryan k, as applied to the Aryan g. They have proved that all Aryan languages show traces of an original distinction between a guttural surd check, k, frequently palatalized in the Southeastern Branch (Sk. c, Zend c) and liable to labialization, in Latin, Greek, Cymric, and Gothic; and another k, never liable to labialization, but changed into a flatus, palatal or otherwise, in Sanskrit, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic. They showed, in fact,—

In the same manner we ought in future to distinguish between a guttural sonant check, g, frequently palatalized in the Southeastern Branch (Sk. j, Zend j), and liable to labialization, like k; and another g, never liable to labialization, but changed into a flatus, palatal or otherwise, in Zend, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic. As we never have π = श we never have β = ज, if ज in Zend is z.

The evidence will be found under Sk. jan, jabh, jar (to decay, and to praise), jush, jñâ, jñu, jâmâtar; aj, bhrâj, marj, yaj, raj(atam).

Gothic quinô, Gadh. ben, Bœot. βάνα depend on Zend jeni; Gadh. baith-is on Zend jaf-ra. It is wrong to connect σβεσ with jas, on account of Zend zas, and gyâ-ni with βία, on account of Zend zyâ-ni.

Footnotes to Chapter I:
The Value of Comparative Philology

[1.] The following statute was approved by the University of Oxford in 1868 (Statuta Universitatis Oxoniensis, iv., i., 37. §§ 1–3):—

“1. Professor philologiæ comparativæ a Vice-Cancellario, et professoribus linguarum Hebraicæ, Sanskriticæ, Græcæ, Latinæ, et Anglo-Saxonicæ eligatur. In æqualitate suffragantium rem decidat Vice-Cancellarius.

“Proviso tamen ut si vir cl. M. Müller, M.A., hodie linguarum modernarum Europæ professor Taylorianus, eam professionem intra mensem post hoc statutum sancitum resignaverit, seque professoris philologiæ comparativæ munus suscipere paratum esse scripto Vice-Cancellarium certiorem fecerit, is primus admittatur professor.

“2. Professor quotannis per sex menses in Universitate incolat et commoretur inter decimum diem Octobris et primum diem Julii sequentis.

“3. Professor duas lectionum series in duobus discretis terminis legat, terminis Paschatis et S. Trinitatis pro uno reputatis; scilicet per sex septimanas in utroque termino, et bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana: atque insuper per sex septimanas unius alicujus termini bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana per unius horæ spatium vacet instruendis auditoribus in iis quæ melius sine solennitate tradi possunt. Unam porro ad minimum lectionem quotannis publice habeat ab academicis quibuscunque sine mercede audiendam. De die hora et loco quibus hæc lectio solennis habenda sit academiam modo consueto certiorem faciat.”

[2.] An offer to found a professorship of Chinese, to be held by an Englishman whom even Stanislas Julien recognized as the best Chinese scholar of the day, has lately been received very coldly by the Hebdomadal Council of the University.

[3.] Liber Sextus Decretalium (Lugduni, 1572), p. 1027: “Ut igitur peritia linguarum hujusmodi possit habiliter per instructionem efficaciam obtinere, hoc sacro approbante concilio scholas in subscriptarum linguarum generibus ubicunque Romanam curiam residere contigerit, necnon in Parisiensi, et Oxoniensi, Bononiensi, et Salmantino studiis providimus erigendas; statuentes ut in quolibet locorum ipsorum teneantur viri catholici, sufficienter habentes Hebraicæ, Arabicæ, et Chaldææ linguarum notitiam.”

[4.] Greaves, Oratio Oxonii habita, 1637, p. 19: “Paucos ultra centum annos numeramus ex quo Græcæ primum literæ oras hasce appulerunt, antea ignotæ prorsus, nonnullis exosæ etiam et invisæ, indoctissimis scilicet fraterculis, quibus religio erat graece scire, et levissimus Atticæ eruditionis gustus hæresin sapiebat.”

[5.] See Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. i. p. 110.

[6.] M. M.’s Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. i. p. 171.

[7.] Ibid., p. 176.

[8.] See Notes [A] and [B], pp. 43, 45.

[9.] See M. M., Science of Religion, 1873, p. 293.

[10.] See Weber, Indische Studien, vol. i. p. 38.

[11.] See Haug, in Ewald’s Biblische Jahrbücher, vol. vi. p. 162.

[12.] Anab., i. 2, 7: Ἐνταῦθα Κύρῳ Βασίλεια ἦν καὶ παράδεισος μέγας, ἀγρίων θηρίων πλήρης, ἅ ἐκεῖνος ἐθήρευεν ἀπὸ ἵππου, ὁπότε γυμνάσαι βούλοιτο ἑαυτόν τε καὶ τοὺς ἵππους. Διὰ μέσου δὲ τοῦ παραδείσου ῥεῖ ὁ Μαίανδρος ποταμός κ.τ.λ. Hell., iv. 1, 15: Ἐν περιειργμένοις παραδείσοις κ.τ.λ.

[13.] See Indian Antiquary, 1874, p. 332.

[14.] Grassmann, Kuhn’s Zeitschrift, vol. ix. p. 23.

[15.] Ebel, Kuhn’s Zeitschrift, vol. viii. p. 242.

[16.] Schleicher, Compendium, § 112.

[17.] Lottner, Kuhn’s Zeitschrift, vol. ix. p. 319.

[18.] Leo Meyer, Die Gothische Sprache, § 31.

[19.] Choeroboscus, B. A., p. 1274, 29: Τὰ ἀπαρέμφατα ἀμφιβάλλεται εἰ ἄρα εἰσὶ ῥήματα ἢ οὐχί. Schoemann, Rede-theile, p. 49.

[20.] Apollonius, De Constr., i. c. 8, p. 32: Δυνάμει αὐτὸ τὸ ῥῆμα οὔτε πρόσωπα ἐπιδέχεται οὔτε ἀριθμούς, ἀλλὰ ἐγγενόμενον ἐν προσώποις τότε καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα διέστειλεν . . . . καὶ ψυχικὴν διάθεσιν. Schoemann, l.c. p. 19.

[21.] Note [C], p. 47.

[22.] Benfey, Orient und Occident, vol. i. p. 606; vol. ii. pp. 97, 132.

[23.] Chips, vol. iii. p. 134.

[24.] Dr. Kielhorn in his grammar gives correctly tad as base, tat as nom. and acc. sing., because in the latter case phonetic rules either require or allow the change of d into t. Boehtlingk, Roth, and Benfey also give the right forms. Curtius, like Bopp, gives yat, Schleicher tat, which he supposes to have been changed at an early time into tad (§ 203).

[25.] Weich ist es (ṭ oder ḍ) wohl im abl. sing., gafnâṭ (gafnâdha). Justi, Handbuch der Zendsprache, p. 362.

[26.] Orient und Occident, vol. i. p. 298.

[27.] Entwickelung der Lateinischen Formenlehre, 1870, p. 20.

[28.] Grundriss der Lateinischen Declination, 1866, p. 9.

[29.] See Benfey, l.c. p. 298.

[30.] In the dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth we read s.v. gnâ, “scarce in the singular; nom. sing. seems to be gnâs, according to the passage Rv. IV. 9, 4, and Naigh. I. 11, in one text, while the other text gives the form gnâ.” Against this, it should be remarked, that it would make no difference whether the MSS. of the Naighaṇṭuka give gnâ or gnâs. Gnâ would be the nom. sing., gnâs would be the form in which the word occurs most frequently in the Veda. It is easy to see that the collector of the Naighaṇṭuka allowed himself to quote words according to either principle.

Devarâja, in his commentary on gnâ, explains it: “Gamer dhâtor dhâpṛ́vasya­jyatibhyo naḥ (U. S. III. 6) iti bahulakân napratyayo bhavati ṭilopaś ca; ṭap. Gatyarthâ buddhyarthâḥ jânanti karmeti gnâḥ. Yadvâ gacchati yajñeshu; abhí yajñám gṛṇîhi no gnâvaḥ (patnîvaḥ) Rv. I. 15, 3. Chandâṃsi vai gnâ iti brâhmaṇam iti Mâdhavaḥ. Asmấ îd u gnấś cid (Rv. I. 61, 8) ity api; gâyatryâdyâ devapatnya iti sa eva. Tasmâc chandasâm gâyatryâdînâm vâgrûpatvâd gnâvyapadeśaḥ.”

In his remarks on Nigh. III. 29, it is quite clear that Devarâja takes gnâḥ as a nom. plur., not as a nom. sing. He says: Menâ gnâ iti stríṇâm; ubhâv api śabdau vyâkhyâtau vânnâmasu. Mânayanti hi tâḥ patiśvaśuramátulâdayaḥ, pûjyâ bhûshayitavyâś ceti smaraṇât. Gacchanty enâḥ patayo patyârthinaḥ. The passage quoted in the Nirukta III. 29, gnâs tvâkṛntann apaso ’tanvata vayitryo ’vayan, is taken from the Tâṇḍyabrâhmaṇa I. 8, 9. “O dress! the women cut thee out, the workers stretched thee out, the weavers wove thee.”

Thus every support which the Nighaṇṭu or the Nirukta was supposed to give to the form gnâḥ as a nom. sing. vanishes. And if it is said s.v. gnâspati, that in this compound gnâḥ might be taken as a nom. sing., and that the Pada-text separates gnâḥ-patiḥ, it has been overlooked that the separation in Rv. II. 38, 10, is a mere misprint. See Prâtiśâkhya, 738. The compound gnâspatiḥ has been correctly explained as standing for gnâyâspatiḥ, and the same old genitive is also found in jâspatiḥ and jâspatyam. See also Vâjasan. Prâtiśâkhya, IV. 39. It is important to observe that the metre requires us to pronounce gnâspati either as gnăāspătĭḥ or as gănāspătĭḥ.

There is, as far as I know, no passage where gnâḥ in the Veda can be taken as a nom. sing., and it should be observed that gnâḥ as nom. plur. is almost always disyllabic in the Rig-veda, excepting the tenth Maṇḍala; that the acc. sing. (V. 43, 6) is, however, disyllabic, but the acc. plur. monosyllabic (I. 22, 10). In V. 43, 13, we must either read gn̆āḥ or ōshădhī̆ḥ.

The beginning of V.43.13c is also given as “ghnā vasāna oṣadhīr”. Printed text (breve over n, combined breve and macron over i) may be intended to read “gnăâḥ” or “gănâḥ” and “oṣadhĭîḥ”.

[31.] Sthâ, svâbhiprâyabodhanânukûlasthiti, to reveal by gestures, a meaning not found in our dictionaries. Wilson renders it wrongly by to stay with, which would govern the instrumental. Śap, cursing, means to use curses in order to convey some meaning or intention to another person.

[32.] Wilson’s Sanskrit Grammar, p. 390.

[33.] In verbs compounded with prepositions the accent is on the penultimate: e.g., samídhe, atikráme, etc.

[34.] See M. M.’s Translation of the Rig-Veda, I. p. 34.

[35.] Morris, Historic Outlines of English Accidence, p. 52.

[36.] Morris, l.c. p. 177.

[ II.]
REDE LECTURE,
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE HOUSE BEFORE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,
ON FRIDAY, MAY 29, 1868.[1]

[Part I.]
ON THE STRATIFICATION OF LANGUAGE.

There are few sensations more pleasant than that of wondering. We have all experienced it in childhood, in youth, and in our manhood, and we may hope that even in our old age this affection of the mind will not entirely pass away. If we analyze this feeling of wonder carefully, we shall find that it consists of two elements. What we mean by wondering is not only that we are startled or stunned,—that I should call the merely passive element of wonder. When we say “I wonder,” we confess that we are taken aback, but there is a secret satisfaction mixed up with our feeling of surprise, a kind of hope, nay, almost of certainty, that sooner or later the wonder will cease, that our senses or our mind will recover, will grapple with these novel impressions or experiences, grasp them, it may be, throw them, and finally triumph over them. In fact we wonder at the riddles of nature, whether animate or inanimate, with a firm conviction that there is a solution to them all, even though we ourselves may not be able to find it.

Wonder, no doubt, arises from ignorance, but from a peculiar kind of ignorance; from what might be called a fertile ignorance: an ignorance which, if we look back at the history of most of our sciences, will be found to have been the mother of all human knowledge. For thousands of years men have looked at the earth with its stratifications, in some places so clearly mapped out; for thousands of years they must have seen in their quarries and mines, as well as we ourselves, the imbedded petrifications of organic creatures: yet they looked and passed on without thinking more about it—they did not wonder. Not even an Aristotle had eyes to see; and the conception of a science of the earth, of Geology, was reserved for the eighteenth century.

Still more extraordinary is the listlessness with which during all the centuries that have elapsed since the first names were given to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field, men have passed by what was much nearer to them than even the gravel on which they trod, namely, the words of their own language. Here, too, the clearly marked lines of different strata seemed almost to challenge attention, and the pulses of former life were still throbbing in the petrified forms imbedded in grammars and dictionaries. Yet not even a Plato had eyes to see, or ears to hear, and the conception of a science of language, of Glottology, was reserved for the nineteenth century.

I am far from saying that Plato and Aristotle knew nothing of the nature, the origin, and the purpose of language, or that we have nothing to learn from their works. They, and their successors, and their predecessors too, beginning with Herakleitos and Demokritos, were startled and almost fascinated by the mysteries of human speech as much as by the mysteries of human thought; and what we call grammar and the laws of language, nay, all the technical terms which are still current in our schools, such as noun and verb, case and number, infinitive and participle, all this was first discovered and named by the philosophers and grammarians of Greece, to whom, in spite of all our new discoveries, I believe we are still beholden, whether consciously or unconsciously, for more than half of our intellectual life.

But the interest which those ancient Greek philosophers took in language was purely philosophical. It was the form, far more than the matter of speech which seemed to them a subject worthy of philosophical speculation. The idea that there was, even in their days, an immense mass of accumulated speech to be sifted, to be analyzed, and to be accounted for somehow, before any theories on the nature of language could be safely started, hardly ever entered their minds; or when it did, as we see here and there in Plato’s “Kratylos,” it soon vanished, without leaving any permanent impression. Each people and each generation has its own problems to solve. The problem that occupied Plato in his “Kratylos” was, if I understand him rightly, the possibility of a perfect language, a correct, true, or ideal language, a language founded on his own philosophy, his own system of types or ideas. He was too wise a man to attempt, like Bishop Wilkins, the actual construction of a philosophical language. But, like Leibniz, he just lets us see that a perfect language is conceivable, and that the chief reason of the imperfections of real language must be found in the fact that its original framers were ignorant of the true nature of things, ignorant of dialectic philosophy, and therefore incapable of naming rightly what they had failed to apprehend correctly. Plato’s view of actual language, as far as it can be made out from the critical and negative rather than didactic and positive dialogue of “Kratylos,” seems to have been very much the same as his view of actual government. Both fall short of the ideal, and both are to be tolerated only in so far as they participate in the perfections of an ideal state and an ideal language.[2] Plato’s “Kratylos” is full of suggestive wisdom. It is one of those books which, as we read them again from time to time, seem every time like new books: so little do we perceive at first all that is pre-supposed in them,—the accumulated mould of thought, if I may say so, in which alone a philosophy like that of Plato could strike its roots and draw its support.

But while Plato shows a deeper insight into the mysteries of language than almost any philosopher that has come after him, he has no eyes for that marvelous harvest of words garnered up in our dictionaries, and in the dictionaries of all the races of the earth. With him language is almost synonymous with Greek, and though in one passage of the “Kratylos” he suggests that certain Greek words might have been borrowed from the Barbarians, and, more particularly from the Phrygians, yet that remark, as coming from Plato, seems to be purely ironical, and though it contains, as we know, a germ of truth that has proved most fruitful in our modern science of language, it struck no roots in the minds of Greek philosophers. How much our new science of language differs from the linguistic studies of the Greeks; how entirely the interest which Plato took in language is now supplanted by new interests, is strikingly brought home to us when we see how the Société de Linguistique, lately founded at Paris, and including the names of the most distinguished scholars of France, declares in one of its first statutes that “it will receive no communication concerning the origin of language or the formation of a universal language,” the very subjects which, in the time of Herakleitos and Plato, rendered linguistic studies worthy of the consideration of a philosopher.

It may be that the world was too young in the days of Plato, and that the means of communication were wanting to enable the ancient philosopher to see very far beyond the narrow horizon of Greece. With us it is different. The world has grown older, and has left to us in the annals of its various literatures the monuments of growing and decaying speech. The world has grown larger, and we have before us, not only the relics of ancient civilization in Asia, Africa, and America, but living languages in such number and variety that we draw back almost aghast at the mere list of their names. The world has grown wiser too, and where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, a natural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realizing the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition,—difficulties, not of man’s own making, but, as I firmly believe, prepared for him, and not without a purpose, as toils and tasks, by a higher Power and by the highest Wisdom.

Let us look then abroad and behold the materials which the student of language has now to face. Beginning with the language of the Western Isles, we have at the present day, at least 100,000 words, arranged as on the shelves of a Museum, in the pages of Johnson and Webster. But these 100,000 words represent only the best grains that have remained in the sieve, while clouds of chaff have been winnowed off, and while many a valuable grain too has been lost by mere carelessness. If we counted the wealth of English dialects, and if we added the treasures of the ancient language from Alfred to Wycliffe, we should easily double the herbarium of the linguistic flora of England. And what are these Western Isles as compared to Europe; and what is Europe, a mere promontory, as compared to the vast continent of Asia; and what again is Asia, as compared to the whole inhabitable world? But there is no corner of that world that is not full of language: the very desert and the isles of the sea teem with dialects, and the more we recede from the centres of civilization, the larger the number of independent languages, springing up in every valley, and overshadowing the smallest island.

Ἴδαν ἐς πολύδενδρον ἀνὴρ ὑλατόμος ἐνθὼν

Παπταίνει, παρέοντος ἄδην, πόθεν ἄρξεται ἔργω.[3]

We are bewildered by the variety of plants, of birds, and fishes, and insects, scattered with lavish prodigality over land and sea;—but what is the living wealth of that Fauna as compared to the winged words which fill the air with unceasing music! What are the scanty relics of fossil plants and animals, compared to the storehouse of what we call the dead languages! How then can we explain it that for centuries and centuries, while collecting beasts, and birds, and fishes, and insects, while studying their forms, from the largest down to the smallest and almost invisible creatures, man has passed by this forest of speech, without seeing the forest, as we say in German, for the very number of its trees (Man sah den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht), without once asking how this vast currency could have been coined, what inexhaustible mines could have supplied the metal, what cunning hands could have devised the image and superscription,—without once wondering at the countless treasure inherited by him from the fathers of the human race?

Let us now turn our attention in a different direction. After it had been discovered that there was this great mass of material to be collected, to be classified, to be explained, what has the Science of Language, as yet, really accomplished? It has achieved much, considering that real work only began about fifty years ago; it has achieved little, if we look at what still remains to be done.

The first discovery was that languages admit of classification. Now this was a very great discovery, and it at once changed and raised the whole character of linguistic studies. Languages might have been, for all we know, the result of individual fancy or poetry; words might have been created here and there at random, or been fixed by a convention, more or less arbitrary. In that case a scientific classification would have been as impossible as it is if applied to the changing fashions of the day. Nothing can be classified, nothing can be scientifically ruled and ordered, except what has grown up in natural order and according to rational rule.

Out of the great mass of speech that is now accessible to the student of language, a number of so-called families have been separated, such as the Aryan, the Semitic, the Ural-Altaic, the Indo-Chinese, the Dravidian, the Malayo-Polynesian, the Kafir or Bâ-ntu in Africa, and the Polysynthetic dialects of America. The only classes, however, which have been carefully examined, and which alone have hitherto supplied the materials for what we might call the Philosophy of Language, are the Aryan and the Semitic, the former comprising the languages of India, Persia, Armenia, Greece and Italy, and of the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races; the latter consisting of the languages of the Babylonians, the Syrians, the Jews, the Ethiopians, the Arabs.

These two classes include, no doubt, the most important languages of the world, if we measure the importance of languages by the amount of influence exercised on the political and literary history of the world by those who speak them. But considered by themselves, and placed in their proper place in the vast realm of human speech, they describe but a very small segment of the entire circle. The completeness of the evidence which they place before us in the long series of their literary treasures, points them out in an eminent degree as the most useful subjects on which to study the anatomy of speech, and nearly all the discoveries that have been made as to the laws of language, the process of composition, derivation, and inflexion, have been gained by Aryan and Semitic scholars.

Far be it from me, therefore, to underrate the value of Aryan and Semitic scholarship for a successful prosecution of the Science of Language. But while doing full justice to the method adopted by Semitic and Aryan scholars in the discovery of the laws that regulate the growth and decay of language, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that our field of observation has been thus far extremely limited, and that we should act in defiance of the simplest rules of sound induction, were we to generalize on such scanty evidence. Let us but clearly see what place these two so-called families, the Aryan and Semitic, occupy in the great kingdom of speech. They are in reality but two centres, two small settlements of speech, and all we know of them is their period of decay, not their period of growth, their descending, not their ascending career, their Being, as we say in German, not their Becoming (Ihr Gewordensein, nicht ihr Werden). Even in the earliest literary documents both the Aryan and Semitic speech appear before us as fixed and petrified. They had left forever that stage during which language grows and expands, before it is arrested in its exuberant fertility by means of religious or political concentration, by means of oral tradition, or finally by means of a written literature. In the natural history of speech, writing, or, what in early times takes the place of writing, oral tradition, is something merely accidental. It represents a foreign influence which, in natural history, can only be compared to the influence exercised by domestication on plants and animals. Language would be language still, nay, would be more truly language, if the idea of a literature, whether oral or written, had never entered men’s minds; and however important the effects produced by this artificial domestication of language may be, it is clear that our ideas of what language is in a natural state, and therefore what Sanskrit and Hebrew, too, must have been before they were tamed and fixed by literary cultivation, ought not to be formed from an exclusive study of Aryan and Semitic speech. I maintain that all that we call Aryan and Semitic speech, wonderful as its literary representatives may be, consists of neither more or less than so many varieties which all owe their origin to only two historical concentrations of wild unbounded speech; nay, however perfect, however powerful, however glorious in the history of the world,—in the eyes of the student of language, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, are what a student of natural history would not hesitate to call “monstra,” unnatural, exceptional formations which can never disclose to us the real character of language left to itself to follow out its own laws without let or hindrance.

For that purpose a study of Chinese and the Turanian dialects, a study even of the jargons of the savages of Africa, Polynesia, and Melanesia is far more instructive than the most minute analysis of Sanskrit and Hebrew. The impression which a study of Greek and Latin and Sanskrit leaves on our minds is, that language is a work of art, most complicated, most wonderful, most perfect. We have given so many names to its outward features, its genders and cases, its tenses and moods, its participles, gerunds, and supines, that at last we are frightened at our own devices. Who can read through all the so-called irregular verbs, or look at the thousands and thousands of words in a Greek Dictionary without feeling that he moves about in a perfect labyrinth? How then, we ask, was this labyrinth erected? How did all this come to be? We ourselves, speaking the language which we speak, move about, as it were, in the innermost chambers, in the darkest recesses of that primeval palace, but we cannot tell by what steps and through what passages we arrived there, and we look in vain for the thread of Ariadne which in leading us out of the enchanted castle of our language, would disclose to us the way by which we ourselves, or our fathers and forefathers before us, entered into it.

The question how language came to be what it is has been asked again and again. Even a school-boy, if he possesses but a grain of the gift of wondering must ask himself why mensa means one table, and mensæ many tables; why I love should be amo, I am loved amor, I shall love amabo, I have loved amavi, I should have loved amavissem. Until very lately two answers only could have been given to such questions. Both sound to us almost absurd, yet in their time they were supported by the highest authorities. Either, it was said, language, and particularly the grammatical framework of language was made by convention, by agreeing to call one table mensa, and many tables mensæ; or, and this was Schlegel’s view, language was declared to possess an organic life, and its terminations, prefixes, and suffixes were supposed to have sprouted forth from the radicals and stems and branches of language, like so many buds and flowers. To us it seems almost incredible that such theories should have been seriously maintained, and maintained by men of learning and genius. But what better answer could they have given? What better answer has been given even now? We have learnt something, chiefly from a study of the modern dialects, which often repeat the processes of ancient speech, and thus betray the secrets of the family. We have learnt that in some of the dialects of modern Sanskrit, in Bengali for instance,[4] the plural is formed, as it is in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, Burmese, and Siamese, also in the Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian dialects, by adding a word expressive of plurality, and then appending again the terminations of the singular. We have learnt from French how a future, je parlerai, can be formed by an auxiliary verb: “I to speak have” coming to mean, I shall speak. We have learnt from our own language, whether English or German, that suffixes, such as head in godhead, ship in ladyship, dom in kingdom were originally substantives, having the meaning of quality, shape, and state. But I doubt whether even thus we should have arrived at a thorough understanding of the real antecedents of language, unless, what happened in the study of the stratification of the earth, had happened in the study of language. If the formation of the crust of the earth had been throughout regular and uniform, and if none of the lower strata had been tilted up, so that even those who run might read, no shaft from the surface could have been sunk deep enough to bring the geologist from the tertiary strata down to the Silurian rocks. The same in language. Unless some languages had been arrested in their growth during their earlier stages, and had remained on the surface in this primitive state exposed only to the decomposing influence of atmospheric action, and to the ill-treatment of literary cultivation, I doubt whether any scholar would have had the courage to say that at one time Sanskrit was like unto Chinese, and Hebrew no better than Malay. In the successive strata of language thus exposed to our view, we have in fact, as in Geology, the very thread of Ariadne, which, if we will but trust to it, will lead us out of the dark labyrinth of language in which we live, by the same road by which we and those who came before us, first entered into it. The more we retrace our steps, the more we advance from stratum to stratum, from story to story, the more shall we feel almost dazzled by the daylight that breaks in upon us; the more shall we be struck, no longer by the intricacy of Greek or Sanskrit grammar, but by the marvelous simplicity of the original warp of human speech, as preserved, for instance, in Chinese; by the child-like contrivances, that are at the bottom of Paulo-post Futures and Conditional Moods.

Let no one be frightened at the idea of studying a Chinese grammar. Those who can take an interest in the secret springs of the mind, in the elements of pure reason, in the laws of thought, will find a Chinese grammar most instructive, most fascinating. It is the faithful photograph of man in his leading-strings, trying the muscles of his mind, groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful grasps that he repeats them again and again. It is child’s play, if you like, but it displays, like all child’s play, that wisdom and strength which are perfect in the mouth of babes and sucklings. Every shade of thought that finds expression in the highly finished and nicely balanced system of Greek tenses, moods, and particles can be expressed, and has been expressed, in that infant language by words that have neither prefix nor suffix, no terminations to indicate number, case, tense, mood, or person. Every word in Chinese is monosyllabic, and the same word, without any change of form, may be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, or a particle. Thus ta, according to its position in a sentence, may mean great, greatness, to grow, very much, very.[5]

And here a very important observation has been made by Chinese grammarians, an observation which, after a very slight modification and expansion, contains indeed the secret of the whole growth of language from Chinese to English. If a word in Chinese is used with the bonâ fide signification of a noun or a verb, it is called a full word (shi-tsé); if it is used as a particle or with a merely determinative or formal character, it is called an empty word (hiu-tsé[6]). There is as yet no outward difference between full and empty words in Chinese, and this renders it all the more creditable to the grammarians of China that they should have perceived the inward distinction, even in the absence of any outward signs.

Let us learn then from Chinese grammarians this great lesson, that words may become empty, and without restricting the meaning of empty words as they do, let us use that term in the most general sense, as expressive of the fact that words may lose something of their full original meaning.

Let us add to this another observation, which the Chinese could not well have made, but which we shall see confirmed again and again in the history of language, viz.: that empty words, or, as we may also call them, dead words, are most exposed to phonetic decay.

It is clear then that, with these two preliminary observations, we can imagine three conditions of language:—

1. There may be languages in which all words, both empty and full, retain their independent form. Even words which are used when we should use mere suffixes or terminations, retain their outward integrity in Chinese. Thus, in Chinese, jin means man, tu means crowd, jin-tu, man-crowd. In this compound both jin and tu continue to be felt as independent words, more so than in our own compound man-kind; but nevertheless tu has become empty, it only serves to determine the preceding word jin, man, and tells us the quantity or number in which jin shall be taken. The compound answers in intention to our plural, but in form it is wide apart from men, the plural of man.

2. Empty words may lose their independence, may suffer phonetic decay, and dwindle down to mere suffixes and terminations. Thus in Burmese the plural is formed by to, in Finnish, Mordvinian, and Ostiakian by t. As soon as to ceases to be used as an independent word in the sense of number, it becomes an empty, or if you like, an obsolete word, that has no meaning except as the exponent of plurality; nay, at last, it may dwindle down to a mere letter, which is then called by grammarians the termination of the plural. In this second stage phonetic decay may well-nigh destroy the whole body of an empty word, but—and this is important—no full words, no radicals are as yet attacked by that disintegrating process.

3. Phonetic decay may advance, and does advance still further. Full words also may lose their independence, and be attacked by the same disease that had destroyed the original features of suffixes and prefixes. In this state it is frequently impossible to distinguish any longer between the radical and formative elements of words.

If we wished to represent these three stages of language algebraically, we might represent the first by RR, using R as the symbol of a root which has suffered no phonetic decay; the second, by R + ρ or ρ + R, or ρ + R + ρ representing by ρ an empty word that has suffered phonetic change; the third, by rρ, or ρr, or ρrρ, when both full and empty words have been changed, and have become welded together into one indistinguishable mass through the intense heat of thought, and by the constant hammering of the tongue.

Those who are acquainted with the works of Humboldt will easily recognize, in these three stages or strata, a classification of language first suggested by that eminent philosopher. According to him languages can be classified as isolating, agglutinative,[7] and inflectional, and his definition of these three classes agrees in the main with the description just given of the three strata or stages of language.

But what is curious is that this threefold classification, and the consequences to which it leads, should not at once have been fully reasoned out, nay, that a system most palpably erroneous should have been founded upon it. We find it repeated again and again in most works on Comparative Philology, that Chinese belongs to the isolating class, the Turanian languages to the combinatory, the Aryan and Semitic to the inflectional; nay, Professor Pott[8] and his school seem convinced that no evolution can ever take place from isolating to combinatory and from combinatory to inflectional speech. We should thus be forced to believe that by some inexplicable grammatical instinct, or by some kind of inherent necessity, languages were from the beginning created as isolating or combinatory, or inflectional, and must remain so to the end.

It is strange that those scholars who hold that no transition is possible from one form of language to another, should not have seen that there is really no language that can be strictly called either isolating, or combinatory, or inflectional, and that the transition from one stage to another is in fact constantly taking place under our very noses. Even Chinese is not free from combinatory forms, and the more highly developed among the combinatory languages show the clearest traces of incipient inflection. The difficulty is not to show the transition of one stratum of speech into another, but rather to draw a sharp line between the different strata. The same difficulty was felt in Geology, and led Sir Charles Lyell to invent such pliant names as Eocene, Meiocene, and Pleiocene, names which indicate a mere dawn, a minority, or a majority of new formations, but do not draw a fast and hard line, cutting off one stratum from the other. Natural growth, and even merely mechanical accumulation and accretion, here as elsewhere, are so minute and almost imperceptible that they defy all strict scientific terminology, and force upon us the lesson that we must be satisfied with an approximate accuracy. For practical purposes Humboldt’s classification of languages may be quite sufficient, and we have no difficulty in classing any given language, according to the prevailing character of its formation, as either isolating, or combinatory, or inflectional. But when we analyze each language more carefully we find there is not one exclusively isolating, or exclusively combinatory, or exclusively inflectional. The power of composition, which is retained unimpaired through every stratum, can at any moment place an inflectional on a level with an isolating and a combinatory language. A compound such as the Sanskrit go-duh, cow-milking, differs little, if at all, from the Chinese nieou-jou, vaccæ lac, or in the patois of Canton, ngau ü, cow-milk, before it takes the terminations of the nominative, which is, of course, impossible in Chinese.

So again in English New-town, in Greek Nea-polis, would be simply combinatory compounds. Even Newton would still belong to the combinatory stratum; but Naples would have to be classed as belonging to the inflectional stage.

Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, and the Dravidian languages belong in the main to the combinatory stratum; but having received a considerable amount of literary cultivation, they all alike exhibit forms which in every sense of the word are inflectional. If in Finnish, for instance, we find käsi, in the singular, hand, and kädet, in the plural, hands, we see that phonetic corruption has clearly reached the very core of the noun, and given rise to a plural more decidedly inflectional than the Greek χεῖρ-ες, or the English hand-s. In Tamil, where the suffix of the plural is gaḷ, we have indeed a regular combinatory form in kei-gaḷ, hands; but if the same plural suffix gaḷ is added to kal, stone, the euphonic rules of Tamil require not only a change in the suffix, which becomes kaḷ, but likewise a modification in the body of the word, kal being changed to kar. We thus get the plural karkaḷ which in every sense of the word is an inflectional form. In this plural suffix gaḷ, Dr. Caldwell has recognized the Dravidian taḷa or daḷa, a host, a crowd; and though, as he admits himself in the second edition (p. 143), the evidence in support of this etymology may not be entirely satisfactory, the steps by which the learned author of the Grammar of the Dravidian languages has traced the plural termination lu in Telugu back to the same original suffix kaḷ admit of little doubt.

Evidence of a similar kind may easily be found in any grammar, whether of an isolating, combinatory, or inflectional language, wherever there is evidence as to the ascending or descending progress of any particular form of speech. Everywhere amalgamation points back to combination, and combination back to juxtaposition, everywhere isolating speech tends towards terminational forms, and terminational forms become inflectional.

I may best be able to explain the view commonly held with regard to the strata of language by a reference to the strata of the earth. Here, too, where different strata have been tilted up, it might seem at first sight as if they were arranged perpendicularly and side by side, none underlying the other, none presupposing the other. But as the geologist, on the strength of more general evidence, has to reverse this perpendicular position, and to re-arrange his strata in their natural order, and as they followed each other horizontally, the student of language too is irresistibly driven to the same conclusion. No language can by any possibility be inflectional without having passed through the combinatory and isolating stratum; no language can by any possibility be combinatory without clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum of isolation. Unless Sanskrit and Greek and Hebrew had passed through the combinatory stratum, nay, unless, at some time or other, they had been no better than Chinese, their present form would be as great a miracle as the existence of chalk (and the strata associated with it) without an underlying stratum of oolite (and the strata associated with it;) or a stratum of oolite unsupported by the trias or system of new red sandstone. Bunsen’s dictum, that “the question whether a language can begin with inflections, implies an absurdity,” may have seemed too strongly worded: but if he took inflections in the commonly received meaning, in the sense of something that may be added or removed from a base in order to define or to modify its meaning, then surely the simple argument ex nihilo nihil fit is sufficient to prove that the inflections must have been something by themselves, before they became inflections relatively to the base, and that the base too must have existed by itself, before it could be defined and modified by the addition of such inflections.

But we need not depend on purely logical arguments, when we have historical evidence to appeal to. As far as we know the history of language, we see it everywhere confined within those three great strata or zones which we have just described. There are inflectional changes, no doubt, which cannot as yet be explained, such as the m in the accusative singular of masculine, feminine, and in the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns; or the change of vowels between the Hebrew Piel and Pual, Hiphil and Hophal, where we might feel tempted to admit formative agencies different from juxtaposition and combination. But if we consider how in Sanskrit the Vedic instrumental plural, aśvebhis (Lat. equobus), becomes before our very eyes aśvais (Lat. equis), and how such changes as Bruder, brother, and Brüder, brethren, Ich weiss, I know, A.S. wât, and Wir wissen, we know, A.S. wit-on, have been explained as the results of purely mechanical, i.e., combinatory proceedings, we need not despair of further progress in the same direction. One thing is certain, that, wherever inflection has yielded to a rational analysis, it has invariably been recognized as the result of a previous combination, and wherever combination has been traced back to an earlier stage, that earlier stage has been simple juxtaposition. The primitive blocks of Chinese and the most perplexing agglomerates of Greek can be explained as the result of one continuous formative process, whatever the material elements may be on which it was exercised; nor is it possible even to imagine in the formation of language more than these three strata through which hitherto all human speech has passed.

All we can do is to subdivide each stratum, and thus, for instance, distinguish in the second stratum the suffixing (R + ρ) from the prefixing (ρ + R), and from the affixing (ρ + R + ρ) languages.