The language of Lusatia is spoken, probably, by no more than 150,000 people, known in Germany by the name of Wends.

We have examined all the languages of our first or Aryan family, which are spoken in Europe, with one exception, the Albanian. This language is clearly a member of the same family; and as it is sufficiently distinct from Greek or any other recognized language, it has been traced back to one of the neighboring races of the Greeks, the Illyrians, and is supposed to be the only surviving representative of the various so-called barbarous tongues which surrounded and interpenetrated the dialects of Greece.

We now pass on from Europe to Asia; and here we begin at once, on the extreme south, with the languages of India. As I sketched the history of Sanskrit in one of my former Lectures, it must suffice, at present, to mark the different periods of that language, beginning, about 1500 b. c., with the dialect of the Vedas, which is followed by the modern Sanskrit; the popular dialects of the third century b. c.; the Prakrit dialects of the plays; and the spoken dialects, such as Hindí, Hindústání, Mahrattí, Bengalí. There are many points of great interest to the student of language, in the long history of the speech of India; and it has been truly said that Sanskrit is to the science of [pg 202] language what mathematics are to astronomy. In an introductory course of lectures, however, like the present, it would be out of place to enter on a minute analysis of the grammatical organism of this language of languages.

There is one point only on which I may be allowed to say a few words. I have frequently been asked, “But how can you prove that Sanskrit literature is so old as it is supposed to be? How can you fix any Indian dates before the time of Alexander's conquest? What dependence can be placed on Sanskrit manuscripts which may have been forged or interpolated?” It is easier to ask such questions than to answer them, at least to answer them briefly and intelligibly. But, perhaps, the following argument will serve as a partial answer, and show that Sanskrit was the spoken language of India at least some centuries before the time of Solomon. In the hymns of the Veda, which are the oldest literary compositions in Sanskrit, the geographical horizon of the poets is, for the greater part, limited to the north-west of India. There are very few passages in which any allusions to the sea or the sea-coast occur, whereas the snowy mountains, and the rivers of the Penjáb, and the scenery of the Upper Ganges valley are familiar objects to the ancient bards. There is no doubt, in fact, that the people who spoke Sanskrit came into India from the north, and gradually extended their sway to the south and east. Now, at the time of Solomon, it can be proved that Sanskrit was spoken at least as far south as the mouth of the Indus.

You remember the fleet of Tharshish187 which Solomon had at sea, together with the navy of Hiram, and [pg 203] which came once in three years, bringing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. The same navy, which was stationed on the shore of the Red Sea, is said to have fetched gold from Ophir,188 and to have brought, likewise, great plenty of algum189 trees and precious stones from Ophir.

Well, a great deal has been written to find out where this Ophir was; but there can be no doubt that it was in India. The names for apes, peacocks, ivory and algum-trees are foreign words in Hebrew, as much as gutta-percha or tobacco are in English. Now, if we wished to know from what part of the world gutta-percha was first imported into England, we might safely conclude that it came from that country where the name, gutta-percha, formed part of the spoken language.190 If, therefore, we can find a language in which the names for peacock, apes, ivory, and algum-tree, which are foreign in Hebrew, are indigenous, we may be certain that the country in which that language was spoken must have been the Ophir of the Bible. That language is no other but Sanskrit.

Apes are called, in Hebrew, koph, a word without an etymology in the Semitic languages, but nearly identical in sound with the Sanskrit name of ape, kapi.

Ivory is called either karnoth-shen, horns of tooth; or shen habbim. This habbim is again without a derivation in Hebrew, but it is most likely a corruption of the Sanskrit name for elephant, ibha, preceded by the Semitic article.191

[pg 204]

Peacocks are called in Hebrew tukhi-im, and this finds its explanation in the name still used for peacock on the coast of Malabar, togëi, which in turn has been derived from the Sanskrit śikhin, meaning furnished with a crest.

All these articles, ivory, gold, apes, peacocks, are indigenous in India, though of course they might have been found in other countries likewise. Not so the algum-tree, at least if interpreters are right in taking algum or almug for sandalwood. Sandalwood is found indigenous on the coast of Malabar only; and one of its numerous names there, and in Sanskrit, is valguka. This valgu(ka) is clearly the name which Jewish and Phœnician merchants corrupted into algum, and which in Hebrew was still further changed into almug.

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

[pg 205]

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

Most closely allied to Sanskrit, more particularly to the Sanskrit of the Veda, is the ancient language of the Zend-avesta,195 the so-called Zend, or sacred language of the Zoroastrians or Fire-worshippers. It was, in fact, chiefly through the Sanskrit, and with the help of comparative philology, that the ancient dialect of the Parsis or Fire-worshippers was deciphered. The MSS. had been preserved by the Parsi priests at Bombay, where a colony of fire-worshippers had fled in the tenth century,196 and where it has [pg 206] risen since to considerable wealth and influence. Other settlements of Guebres are to be found in Yezd and parts of Kerman. A Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron, was the first to translate the Zend-avesta, but his translation was not from the original, but from a modern Persian translation. The first European who attempted to read the original words of Zoroaster was Rask, the Dane; and after his premature death, Burnouf, in France, achieved one of the greatest triumphs in modern scholarship by deciphering the language of the Zend-avesta, and establishing its close relationship with Sanskrit. The same doubts which were expressed about the age and the genuineness of the Veda, were repeated with regard to the Zend-avesta, by men of high authority as oriental scholars, by Sir W. Jones himself, and even by the late Professor Wilson. But Burnouf's arguments, based at first on grammatical evidence only, were irresistible, and have of late been most signally confirmed by the discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. That there was a Zoroaster, an ancient sage, was known long before Burnouf. Plato speaks of a teacher of Zoroaster's Magic (Μαγεία), and calls Zoroaster the son of Oromazes.197

This name of Oromazes is important; for Oromazes [pg 207] is clearly meant for Ormuzd, the god of the Zoroastrians. The name of this god, as read in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, is Auramazdâ, which comes very near to Plato's Oromazes.198 Thus Darius says, in one passage: “Through the grace of Auramazda I am king; Auramazda gave me the kingdom.” But what is the meaning of Auramazda? We receive a hint from one passage in the Achæmenian inscriptions, where Auramazda is divided into two words, both being declined. The genitive of Auramazda occurs there as Aurahya mazdâha. But even this is unintelligible, and is, in fact, nothing but a phonetic corruption of the name of the supreme Deity as it occurs on every page of the Zend-avesta, namely, Ahurô mazdâo (nom.). Here, too, both words are declined; and instead of Ahurô mazdâo, we also find Mazdâo ahurô.199 Well, this Ahurô mazdâo is represented in the Zend-avesta as the creator and ruler of the world; as good, holy, and true; and as doing battle against all that is evil, dark, and false. “The wicked perish through the wisdom and holiness of the living wise Spirit.” In the oldest hymns, the power of darkness, which is opposed to Ahurô mazdâo has not yet received its proper name, which is Angrô mainyus, the later Ahriman; but it is spoken of as a power, as Drukhs or deceit; and the principal doctrine which Zoroaster came to preach was that we must choose between these two powers, that we must be good, and not bad. These are his words:—

“In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two [pg 208] spirits, each of a peculiar activity. These are the Good and the Base in thought, word, and deed. Choose one of these two spirits; Be good, not base!”200

Or again:—

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

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

We have editions, translations, and commentaries of [pg 209] the Zend-avesta by Burnouf, Brockhaus, Spiegel, and Westergaard. Yet there still remains much to be done. Dr. Haug, now settled at Poona, has lately taken up the work which Burnouf left unfinished. He has pointed out that the text of the Zend-avesta, as we have it, comprises fragments of very different antiquity, and that the most ancient only, the so-called Gâthâs, can be ascribed to Zarathustra. “This portion,” he writes in a lecture just received from India, “compared with the whole bulk of the Zend fragments is very small; but by the difference of dialect it is easily recognized. The most important pieces written in this peculiar dialect are called Gâthâs or songs, arranged in five small collections; they have different metres, which mostly agree with those of the Veda; their language is very near to the Vedic dialect.” It is to be regretted that in the same lecture, which holds out the promise of so much that will be extremely valuable, Dr. Haug should have lent his authority to the opinion that Zoroaster or Zarathustra is mentioned in the Rig-Veda as Jaradashṭi. The meaning of jaradashti in the Rig-Veda may be seen in the Sanskrit Dictionary of the Russian Academy, and no Sanskrit scholar would seriously think of translating the word by Zoroaster.

At what time Zoroaster lived, is a more difficult question which we cannot discuss at present.201 It must [pg 210] suffice if we have proved that he lived, and that his language, the Zend, is a real language, and anterior in time to the language of the cuneiform inscriptions.

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

The other languages which evince by their grammar and vocabulary a general relationship with Sanskrit and Persian, but which have received too distinct and national a character to be classed as mere dialects, are the languages of Afghanistan or the Pushtú, the language of Bokhára, the language of the Kurds, the Ossetian language in the Caucasus, and the Armenian. Much might be said on every one of these tongues and their claims to be classed as independent members of the [pg 211] Aryan family; but our time is limited, nor has any one of them acquired, as yet, that importance which belongs to the vernaculars of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and to other branches of Aryan speech which have been analyzed critically, and may be studied historically in the successive periods of their literary existence. There is, however, one more language which we have omitted to mention, and which belongs equally to Asia and Europe, the language of the Gipsies. This language, though most degraded in its grammar, and with a dictionary stolen from all the countries through which the Zingaris passed, is clearly an exile from Hindústán.

You see, from the diagram before you,202 that it is possible to divide the whole Aryan family into two divisions: the Southern, including the Indic and Iranic classes, and the Northern or North-western, comprising all the rest. Sanskrit and Zend share certain words and grammatical forms in common which do not exist in any of the other Aryan languages; and there can be no doubt that the ancestors of the poets of the Veda and of the worshippers of Ahurô mazdâo lived together for some time after they had left the original home of the whole Aryan race. For let us see this clearly: the genealogical classification of languages, as drawn in this diagram, has an historical meaning. As sure as the six Romance dialects point to an original home of Italian shepherds on the seven hills at Rome, the Aryan languages together point to an earlier period of language, when the first ancestors of the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and the Germans were living together within the same [pg 212] enclosures, nay under the same roof. There was a time when out of many possible names for father, mother, daughter, son, dog and cow, heaven and earth, those which we find in all the Aryan languages were framed, and obtained a mastery in the struggle for life which is carried on among synonymous words as much as among plants and animals. Look at the comparative table of the auxiliary verb AS, to be, in the different Aryan languages. The selection of the root AS out of many roots, equally applicable to the idea of being, and the joining of this root with one set of personal terminations, all originally personal pronouns, were individual acts, or if you like, historical events. They took place once, at a certain date and in a certain place; and as we find the same forms preserved by all the members of the Aryan family, it follows that before the ancestors of the Indians and Persians started for the south, and the leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic colonies marched towards the shores of Europe, there was a small clan of Aryans, settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, speaking a language, not yet Sanskrit or Greek or German, but containing the dialectical germs of all; a clan that had advanced to a state of agricultural civilization; that had recognized the bonds of blood, and sanctioned the bonds of marriage; and that invoked the Giver of Light and Life in heaven by the same name which you may still hear in the temples of Benares, in the basilicas of Rome, and in our own churches and cathedrals.

After this clan broke up, the ancestors of the Indians and Zoroastrians must have remained together for some time in their migrations or new settlements; and I believe that it was the reform of Zoroaster which produced [pg 213] at last the split between the worshippers of the Vedic gods and the worshippers of Ormuzd. Whether, besides this division into a southern and northern branch, it is possible by the same test (the community of particular words and forms), to discover the successive periods when the Germans separated from the Slaves, the Celts from the Italians, or the Italians from the Greeks, seems more than doubtful. The attempts made by different scholars have led to different and by no means satisfactory results;203 and it seems best, for the present, to trace each of the northern classes back to its own dialect, and to account for the more special coincidences between such languages as, for instance, the Slavonic and Teutonic, by admitting that the ancestors of these races preserved from the beginning certain dialectical peculiarities which existed before, as well as after, the separation of the Aryan family.