“Speech is silvern, silence is golden,” is the well-known saying of a modern prophet, wearied with the idle utterances of a transition age, and forgetful that the prophet, or προφητής, is himself but the “spokesman” of another, and that the era which changed the Hebrew seer into the Nabi, or “proclaimer,” brought with it also the beginning of culture and civilization, and the consciousness of a high religious destiny. Far truer was the instinct of the old poet of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient monument of our Aryan literature, written, it may be, fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ, when he calls “the Word” one of the highest goddesses “which rushes onward like the wind, which bursts through heaven and earth, and, awe-inspiring to each one that it loves, makes him a Brahman, a poet, and a sage.” The haphazard etymology which saw in the μέροπες ἄνθρωποι of Homer “articulate-speaking men,” must indeed be given up, but we may still picture to ourselves the “winged words” which seemed inspired with the life and divinity of Hermês, or the sacred Muses from whom the Greek singer drew all his genius and power. Language is at once the bond and the creation of society, the symbol and token of the boundary between man and brute.

We must be careful to remember that language includes any kind of instrumentality whereby we communicate our thoughts and feelings to others, and therefore that the deaf-mute who can converse only with the fingers or the lips is as truly gifted with the power of speech as the man who can articulate his words. The latter has a more perfect instrument at his command, but that is all. Indeed, it is quite possible to conceive of a community in which all communications were carried on with the hands alone; to this day savage tribes make a large use of gestures, and we are told that the Grebos of Africa ordinarily indicate the persons and tenses of the verb by this means only. Wherever there is the power of making our thoughts intelligible to another, or even simply the possibility of this power, as in the case of the infant, there we have language, although for ordinary purposes the term may be restricted to spoken or articulate speech. It is in this sense that language will be understood in the following pages.

Now one of the earliest subjects of reflection was the language in which that reflection clothed itself. The power of words was clear even to the barbarian, and yet at the same time it was equally clear that he himself exercised a certain power over them. Wonder, it has been said, is the mother of science, and out of the wonder excited by the great mystery of language came speculations on its nature and its origin. What, it was asked, are those modulations of the voice, those emissions of the breath, which inform others of what is passing in our innermost souls, and without which the most rudimentary form of society would be impossible? Perhaps it was in Babylonia that the first attempt was made to answer the question. Here there was a great mixture of races and languages, and here it was accordingly that the scene of the confusion of tongues was laid. The Tower of Babel, the great temple of the Seven Lights of Borsippa, whose remains we may still see in the ruins of the Birs-i-Nimrúd, was, it was believed, the cause and origin of the diversity of human speech. Men endeavoured to make themselves equal to the gods, and to storm heaven like the giants of Greek mythology, but the winds frustrated their attempts, and heaven itself confounded their speech. Such was the native legend, fragments of which have been brought from the Assyrian library of Assur-bani-pal, or Sardanapalus, and which cannot fail to bring to our minds the familiar history of Genesis.

Now the same library that has given us these fragments has also given us the first beginnings of what we may call comparative philology. The science, the art, and the literature of Babylonia had been the work of an early people who spoke an agglutinative language, and from them it had all been borrowed and perhaps improved upon by the later Semitic settlers in the country. Their language, which for the want of a better name we will call Accadian, had ceased to be spoken before the seventeenth century B.C., but not before the civilization and culture it enshrined had been adopted by a new race, who had to study and learn the dead tongue in which they were preserved, as the scholars of the Middle Ages had to study and learn Latin. Hence came the need of dictionaries, grammars, and reading-books; and the clay tablets of Nineveh accordingly present us not only with interlinear and parallel Assyrian translations of Accadian texts, arranged upon the Hamiltonian method, but also with syllabaries and lexicons, with phrase-books and grammars of the two languages. It is the first attempt ever made to draw up a grammar, and the comparative form the attempt has assumed shows how impossible was even the suggestion of such a thing without the comparison of more than one form of speech. The vocabularies are compiled sometimes on a classificatory principle, sometimes on an alphabetic one, sometimes on the principle of grouping a number of derivations around their common root; and the latter principle enunciates at once the primary doctrine and object of comparative philology—the analysis of language into its simplest elements. With the discovery of roots we may date the possibility and the beginning of linguistic science.

Next in order of time to the grammarians of Babylonia and Assyria came the grammarians of India, whose labours again were called forth by the comparison of different forms of speech. The sacred language of the Veda had already become antiquated and obscure, while the rise and spread of Buddhism had raised more than one popular dialect to the rank of a literary language, and obliged the educated Hindu not only to study his own speech in its earlier and later forms, but to compare it with other more or less related idioms as well. Since Indian philology, however, is intimately connected with the history of the modern science of Language, it will be more convenient to consider it further on.

The problems of language were naturally among the first to present themselves to the activity of the Greek mind. Already the instinct of their wonderful speech, itself the fitting creation and reflex of the national character, had found in the word λόγος an expression of the close relationship that exists between reasoned thought and the words in which it clothes itself; and the question which Greek philosophy sought to answer was the nature of this relationship, and of the language wherein it is embodied. Do words exist, it was asked, by nature (φύσει) or by convention (θέσει); do the sounds which we utter exactly and necessarily represent things as they are in themselves, or are they merely the arbitrary marks and symbols conventionally assigned to the objects we observe and the conceptions we form? This was the question that the greatest of the Greek thinkers attempted to solve; and the controversy it called forth divided Greek philosophy into two camps, and lies at the bottom of all its contributions to linguistic science. It is true that the question was really a philosophic one, and that the advocates of free-will on the one side, and of necessity on the other, naturally saw in speech either the creation and plaything of the human will, or else a power over which man has as little control as over the forces of nature. Important as were the results of this controversy, not only to the philosophy of language, but yet more to the formation of grammar, it was impossible for a science of language to arise out of it: its results were logical rather than linguistic, for science requires the patient à posteriori method of induction, not the à priori method of immature philosophizing, however brilliantly handled. The Greeks had, indeed, grasped a truth which has too often been forgotten in modern times, the truth that language is but the outward embodiment and crystallization of thought; but they overlooked the fact that to discover its nature and its laws we must observe and classify its external phænomena, and not until we have ascertained by this means the conditions under which thought externalizes itself in language, can we get back to that thought itself.

Greek researches into language fall into three chief periods, the period of the præ-Sokratic philosophy, when language in general was the subject of inquiry, the period of the Sophists, when the categories of universal grammar were being distinguished and worked out, and the period of Alexandrine criticism, when the rules of Greek grammar in particular were elaborated. Herakleitus and Demokritus are the representatives of the first period: the one the advocate of the innate and necessary connection between words and the objects they denote, the other of the absolute power possessed by man to invent or change his speech. The dispute, however, was soon shifted from words as they are to words as they once were; since on the one hand it was manifest that the union assumed to exist between words and objects could no longer be pointed out in the majority of instances, and on the other hand that numerous words are merely the later corruptions of earlier forms, so that the invention of even a single word must be pushed back to an age far beyond the oldest experience. Hence grew up the so-called science of etymology, a science whose name, it must be confessed, fully justified one of its leading principles which resulted in the derivation of lucus a non lucendo, “because the sun does not shine therein.” Ἐτυμο-λογία was “the science of the truth,” the ascertainment of the true origin of words; but in Greek hands its truer designation would have been the “science of falsehood” and guess-work. Its follies have been enshrined in ponderous works like the “Etymologicum Magnum” or the “Onomastikon” of Pollux; and its curious illustrations of the absurdities into which a clever and active intellect will fall when deprived of the guidance of the scientific method of comparison, are scattered broadcast through the writings of Greek thinkers. Two of its rules, for instance, both founded on the assumption of the “natural” origin of words, lay down that the word undergoes the same modifications as the thing it denotes, and that objects may be named from their contraries (κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν); and hence it was easy to derive φιλητής, “a thief,” from ὑφέλεσθαι, “to steal,” by “depriving” the latter word of its first syllable, and to see in cœlum, “heaven,” cœlatum, “covered,” “because it is open,” or in fœdus, “covenant,” fœdus, “hateful,” “because there is nothing hateful in it.”[2] After this we need not smile at Plato’s derivation of θεοί, “gods,” from θέειν, “to run,” because the stars were first worshipped, or Aristotle’s assumption that objects are easy of digestion when they are “light” in weight. Dr. Jolly has pointed out that the fact that ἐτυμός is Ionic indicates the origin of the pseudo-science in the Ionic schools of philosophy; it is therefore a remarkable illustration of the “self-sufficient” nature of Greek thought and of Greek contempt for the “barbarian,” that the dialects of Asia Minor, though so closely akin to Greek, should have been utterly disregarded, and the investigations into language consequently left to the vagaries of the fancy without the light of comparison to guide them to the truth. Plato in the “Kratylus” is almost the only Greek who has noticed the resemblance of one of these “barbarous” dialects to his own, and he has only noticed it to draw a wrong conclusion from the fact. Many Greek words, he maintains, were borrowed from abroad; and by way of examples he quotes κύων (the Sanskrit śwan, the Latin canis, and our hound), ὑδώρ (the Sanskrit udam, the Latin unda, and our water), and πῦρ (the Latin pruna, the Umbrian pir, and our fire), as being identical with the names of the same objects in Phrygian. The very fact, however, that Plato has noticed this resemblance shows that the stimulating influence of contact with Persia was still felt, even in the domain of language, when the Greeks found themselves in the presence of an allied and similar civilization, with all its contrasts to their own, and when men like Themistokles found it politic to acquire a fluent knowledge of the Persian tongue. It was not until the Empire of Alexander had overthrown that of Cyrus and Darius and impressed upon the Greek a sovereign contempt for the Asiatic, and an equal belief in his own innate superiority, that any regard for the jargons of the “barbarians” became altogether out of the question. It was then that the masterpieces of early Greek literature came to be the sole objects of study and investigation, and philological research took the form of that one-sided, and therefore erroneous, exposition of the grammar of a single language, which has been the bane of classical philology down to our own time.

The linguistic labours of the age of the Sophists were occasioned by the needs of oratory. When rhetoric became a profitable and all-powerful pursuit, and the end of education was held to be the ability to hold one’s own, whether right or wrong, and confute one’s neighbour, words necessarily came to be regarded as more valuable than things, and the main care and attention of the sophist were bestowed upon the form of his sentences and the style of his argument. Just as language had been approached in the preceding period from a purely metaphysical point of view, and was to be approached in the succeeding period from a logical point of view, so now it was looked at from the side of rhetoric. It was not etymology, a knowledge of the “truth,” that was wanted, but a knowledge of the composition of sentences and of the way in which they could best be arranged for the purposes of persuasion. The first outlines of European grammar accordingly go back to this Sophistic age. We find Protagoras criticizing the opening verse of the Iliad, because μῆνις, “wrath,” is used as a feminine, contrary to the sense of the word, or distinguishing the three genders and busying himself with the discovery of the verbal moods, while the lectures of Prodikus were occupied with the analysis and definition of synonyms. Some idea may be formed of the grammatical zeal of the Sophists from the “Clouds” of Aristophanes,[3] where he ridicules the pedantry that would force the artificial rules of grammar upon the usage of living speech.

Plato and Aristotle, the products of the impulse given to thought by that greatest of the Sophists, Sokrates, form the connecting link between the Sophistic and the Alexandrine periods, and renew in the shape required by the progress of philosophy the old contest regarding the nature of language between the followers of Herakleitus and those of Demokritus. In philology as elsewhere, the idealism of Plato stands opposed to the practical realism of his pupil Aristotle. Plato paints language as it ought to be; Aristotle reasons upon it as it is. But in both cases it was not language in general, but the Greek language in particular, that was meant; and owing to this short-sightedness of view and disregard of the comparative method, the theories of each, however suggestive and stimulating, are yet devoid of scientific value and mainly interesting to the historian alone. The problem of Plato’s “Kratylus” is the natural fittingness of words, which finally resolves itself into the question how it happens that a word is understood by the bearer in the same sense as it is intended by the speaker. No answer is given to the question; but the dialogue gives occasion for a complete review of the linguistic opinions prevalent at the time, and the conclusion put into the mouth of Sokrates is that while in actual (Greek) speech no natural and innate connection can be traced between words and things, it were much to be wished that an ideal speech could be created in which this natural connection would exist. In this wish, as Dr. Jolly remarks, Plato shows himself the forerunner of Leibnitz and Bishop Wilkins, the one with his “Lingua characteristica universalis,” and the other with his “Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language.”

Aristotle, as might be expected, will have nothing to do with the theory of the natural origin of speech. He declares himself unequivocally on the side of its opponents, and lays down that language originates through the agreement and convention of men (συνθήκῃ). Words, he holds, have no meaning in themselves; this is put into them by those who utter them, and they then become so many symbols of the objects signified (ὅταν γίνεται σύμβολον). “For the sentence (λόγος), when heard, makes one’s meaning intelligible, not necessarily but accidentally, since it consists of words, and each word is a symbol.”[4] At the same time Aristotle makes no clear distinction between thought and language; concept and word are with him interchangeable terms; and his famous ten categories into which all objects can be classed are as much grammatical as logical, or perhaps more rightly a mixture of both. In his hands the rhetorical gives way to the logical treatment of language, and the sentence is analyzed in the interests of formal logic. As Kant and Hegel observed long ago, the logical system of Aristotle is purely empirical; it is based on the grammar of a single language, and is nothing but an analysis of the mode in which the framers of that language unconsciously thought. To understand and criticize it properly we must bear this fact in mind, and remember that the system cannot be corrected or replaced until comparative philology has taught us to distinguish between the universal and the particular in the grammar of Greek and Aryan. Whatever injury, however, logic may have suffered from having been thus built up upon the idiosyncrasies of the Greek Sentence, Greek grammar gained an equivalent advantage. Besides the ὄνομα or “noun,” and the ῥῆμα or “verb,” Aristotle now added to it the σύνδεσμος or “particle,” and introduced the term πτῶσις or “case,” to denote any kind of flection whatsoever. He also divided nouns into simple and compound, invented for the neuter another name (τὸ μεταξύ) than that given by Protagoras, and starting from the termination of the nominative singular endeavoured to ascertain the rules for denoting a difference of gender.

The work begun by Aristotle was continued by the Stoics, who perfected his grammatical system just as they had perfected his logical system. They separated the ἄρθρον or “article” from the particles, and determined a fifth part of speech, the πανδέκτης or “adverb;” they confined the πτῶσις or “case” to the flections of the noun, and distinguished the four principal cases by names, the Latin translations or mistranslations of which are now so familiar to us; they divided the verb into its tenses, moods, and classes, and in the person of Chrysippus, the adherent of the Stoic school (B.C. 280-206), separated nouns into appellativa and propria. But, like Aristotle, they assumed the same laws for both thought and language, and were thus led into difficulties and fallacies which the slightest acquaintance with another language might have prevented. Thus the logical copula was confounded with the substantive verb by which it was expressed in Greece, and false arguments were framed and supported on this assumption. Their opponents, the Epicureans, contented themselves with inquiries into the origin of speech, which had to be explained, like everything else, in accordance with the theory of atoms. The large part, however, played by the action of society in their system gave their theorizing upon the subject an accidental aspect of truth which at first sight is somewhat surprising; and even the well-known lines of Horace (Sat. I. 3. 99, sq.) contain a more correct representation of the primitive condition of man and the evolution of language than the speculations current upon the matter up to the last few years. Language, it was held, existed φύσει, not θέσει; but the nature which originated speech was not external nature, but the nature of man. The different sounds and utterances whereby the same object is denoted in different languages are due to the varying circumstances in which the speakers find themselves, and are as much determined by their climate and social condition, their constitution and physique, as the lowing of the ox or the bleating of the lamb. Men, indeed, create speech, not however deliberately and with intention (ἐπιστημόνως), but instinctively through the impulse of their nature (φυσικῶς κινούμενοι).[5] We may perhaps trace in these expressions the germs of the theory of the onomatopœic origin of language.

While the Epicureans were speculating on the origin of speech, the grammarians of Alexandria were busying themselves with the elaboration of what the French would call a grammaire raisonnée. “Alexandria,” says Dr. Jolly, “was the birthplace of classical philology, a study which has directly raised itself upon the ruins of the old Hellenic culture and spiritual originality.” The intense mental activity and productiveness of Athens had made way for the frigid pedantry and artificial mannerisms of commentators and court-poets; the free national life and small rival states of Greece had been replaced by a semi-oriental despotism and a cosmopolitan centralization; and unable themselves to emulate the great creations of the classic age, the literary coterie of the Alexandrine Museum could do no more than admire and edit them. The very dialect in which the Attic tragedians and historians had composed and written had become strange and foreign, while the language of the Homeric Poems, which it must be remembered were to the Greeks what the Bible is to us, seemed as obscure and obsolete to the Alexandrine, as the tongue of Layamon or Piers Plowman does to the ordinary Englishman. If we add to this the existence of numerous and discordant copies of Homer, we have abundant reason for the growth of that large army of commentators, grammarians, and lexicographers which characterized the schools of Alexandria and laid the foundations of literary criticism. A minute investigation of the grammatical facts of the Greek language was rendered necessary, and a comparison of the older and later forms of the language as well as of its dialects grounded this investigation upon a comparatively secure basis. The metaphysical turn, however, given to the first linguistic inquiries still overshadowed the whole study, and the absurd and misleading “science of etymology” remained to the last the evil genius of Greek philology. The old dispute as to the origin of words now assumed a new form, mainly through the influence of the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy, and the schools of Alexandria were divided into the two contending factions of Analogists and Anomalists. The first, among whom was counted the famous Homeric critic Aristarchus, found in language a strict law of analogy between concept and word, which was wholly denied by the others. It was round this question that Greek philology ranged itself from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D., and out of the controversy it occasioned was formed that Greek grammar which created the scholars of the last four hundred years, and is still so widely taught in our own country. Thus Aristarchus, for instance, in his anxiety to smooth away every irregularity and remove all exceptions to the rules he had formulated, determined that the genitive and dative of Ζεύς should no longer be Διός or Ζῆνος, but Ζεός, and Ζεΐ, and the endeavours of his opponents to upset this piece of pedantry led to the discovery of other similar exceptions to the general rule, and to the complete settlement of this portion of the grammar. Krates of Mallos, the head of the Pergamenian school, stands forward as the chief rival of Aristarchus on the opposite side. In his hands “anomaly” was made the leading principle of language, and general rules of any sort flatly denied, except in so far as they were consecrated by custom. The purism of his opponents, who wished to correct everything which contravened the grammatical laws they had laid down, was thus met by an unqualified defence of the rights of usage—“quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.” Our own schoolmasters who have introduced an l into could (coud), the past tense of can, because should from shall has one, or have prefixed a w to whole, the twin-brother of hale (Greek καλός), because of the analogy of wheel and which, are the fitting successors of the Alexandrine Analogists, and it was unfortunate for both that they had no Aristophanes to transfer them to cloudland, and ridicule them in the light of common sense.

Krates, however, has better claims upon our attention than as leader of the Anomalists. To him we owe the first formal Greek grammar and collection of the grammatical facts obtained by the labours of the Alexandrine critics. That a formal grammar, which implies an enunciation of general rules as well as of the exceptions to them, should have been the work of an Anomalist rather than of an Analogist, may at first sight seem surprising; but we must recollect that the Anomalist did not deny the existence of general rules altogether, but only their universal and unqualified applicability; while the Analogist who sought to produce an artificial uniformity in language instead of accepting the facts of speech as they are, was totally unfitted for composing a practical grammar.[6]

The immediate cause, however, of the grammar in question was really the tardy comparison of Greek with a foreign tongue, the Latin, and the need of a Greek grammar felt by the citizens of Rome. Appius Claudius Cæcus (censor in B.C. 312) had already written upon grammar,[7] and Spurius Carvilius, a writing-master (B.C. 234), had regulated the Latin alphabet, substituting the indispensable g for the useless z, and when Krates came to Rome in 159 B.C., as the Ambassador of Attalus, the King of Pergamos, he found a ready audience for his ἀκροάσεις, or “lectures” upon the study of Greek. Almost all that the Romans knew of literary culture and civilization came from the Greeks; their native literature was coarse and insignificant, and their language uncultivated and inflexible. Education at Rome, therefore, meant education upon Greek models and in the Greek language. Boys learned Greek before they learned Latin, and the Greek words with which the plays of Plautus are strewn, as well as their Alexandrine origin, show pretty plainly that a familiarity with the language of Greece was not confined to the literary salon of a Scipio, or the houses of a wealthy aristocracy. Livius Andronicus, the father of Latin literature, was a Greek professor (272 B.C.), and his translation of the “Odyssey” into Latin was doubtless for the use of his pupils;[8] the first history of Rome, that of Fabius Pictor (in 200 B.C.), was written in Greek; and even a popular tribune like Tiberius Gracchus published the Greek speech he had made at Rhodes. In fact, a knowledge of Greek was necessary not only for acquiring the barest amount of culture and education, but even for a proper acquaintance with the Latin language itself. Partly through its stiff and cumbrous immobility, partly through the want of originality in its speakers, Latin literature and Latin oratory were alike impossible without the genial and fructifying influence of the Greek. With Greek teachers and Greek models, a native literature came into existence, and the language was artificially trained to become a suitable instrument for communication between the more polished nations of the ancient world and their Roman masters. It is true that classical Latin was really more or less of a hothouse exotic, interesting therefore rather to the student of literature than to the student of linguistic science; but the attempt to rear and nurture it, to keep it unpolluted by the spoken dialects of Rome or the provinces, and to confine it within the rules and metres of a foreign rhythm made it the seedplot of grammatical questions and philological investigations. The study of grammar was of practical importance to the practical Roman; he applied himself to it with all the energy of his nature, and treated the whole subject in a practical rather than a philosophical way. Julius Cæsar, the type and impersonation of the Roman spirit, found time to compose a work, “De Analogiâ,” and invent the term ablative, amid the distractions of political life, and even Cato with all his dogged conservatism, learnt Greek in his old age in order that he might be able to teach it to his son. The zeal with which the deepest problems of grammar were discussed seems strange to us of to-day, but upon the settlement of these problems depended the possibility of making Latin the vehicle of law and oratory, and preventing the Roman world from becoming Greek.

The first school grammar ever written in Europe was the Greek grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus, which he published at Rome in the time of Pompey. The grammar is still in existence,[9] and its opening sentence, in which grammar is defined as “a practical acquaintance” with the language of literary men, and divided into six parts—accentuation and phonology, explanation of figurative expressions, definition, etymology, general rules of flection, and critical canons[10]—has formed the starting-point of the innumerable school-grammars which have since seen the light. It has also been the cause of much of that absurd etymologizing which the Romans received from the Greeks and handed on to the lexicographers of modern Europe. Not content with transcribing the grotesque etymologies of their Greek teachers, the Latin writers strove to emulate them by still more grotesque etymologies of their own. Lucius Ælius Stilo, of Lanuvium, about 100 B.C. first gave a course of lectures on Latin literature and rhetoric, and one of his pupils, Marcus Terentius Varro, wrote five books, “De Linguâ Latinâ,” which he dedicated to his friend Cicero. The “science” of Latin etymology was now founded, and a fruitful field opened to future explorers. Every word had to be provided with a derivation, and on the received principles of etymology this was no difficult task. By the law of antiphrasis, bellum is made the neuter of bellus, “because there is nothing beautiful in war;” and parcus is so named because the niggard “spares (parcere) nobody.” It has been left to the vagaries of a later day to excel the Romans in this part of their labours. The lawyers tell us that parliament is derived from parler, “to speak,” mentem, “one’s mind;” Junius[11] that the soul is “the well of life” from the Greek ζάω, “to live,” and the Teutonic wala, “well,” while merry comes from μυρίζειν, because the ancients anointed themselves at feasts; and a book entitled “Ereuna,” published as late as the year of grace 1875, would raise the envy of a Latin etymologist. When we find Jupiter (Diespiter) gravely derived in it from the “Celtic” oyo-meir, “infinite,” and peitir, “a thunderbolt;” Nemesis discovered to be the “Celtic” neam-aire, “pitiless,” and manna man-neam, “food of heaven”—we may trace the last results of that unhappy disease of “popular etymologizing” which it is the work of comparative philology to cure.[12]

The introduction of Greek grammar into Rome, however, was attended by another evil than the propagation of a false system of etymology. The technical terms of Greek grammar were in many cases misunderstood, and, accordingly, mistranslated. Thus, in the province of phonology, the mutes were divided into the ψιλά (k, t, p), and their corresponding “rough” or aspirated sounds (δασέα), the soft g, d, and b being placed between the ψιλά and δασέα, and consequently named μέσα, or “middle.” The Romans rendered μέσα by mediæ, and δασέα by aspiratæ, but ψιλά they mistranslated tenues, and the mistranslation still causes confusion in modern treatises on pronunciation. Similarly, genitivus, the “genitive” or case of “origin,” is a blundering misrepresentation of the Greek γενική, or case of “the genus,” a wholly different conception; and accusativus, “the accusative,” or case “of accusing,” perpetuates the mistake which saw in the Greek αἰτιατική a derivative from αἰτιάομαι, to “blame,” instead of αἰτία, “an object;” while the Greek ἀπαρέμφατος signifies “without a secondary meaning” of tense or person, and not “the indefinite” or “indetermining” as the Latin infinitivus would imply. We still suffer from the errors made in transferring to Rome the grammatical terminology of Alexandria.

The Romans continued to take an interest in questions of grammar and of etymology down to the last. It is true that they confined their inquiries to their own and the Greek language; the descent they claimed from Æneas and the Trojans inspired them with no desire to investigate the dialects of Asia, and even the Etruscan language and literature which lingered on almost to the Christian era at their own doors, were left unregarded by the leading philologists of Rome. In language, as in everything else, the provincial had to adapt himself to the prejudices of his conqueror. Never before or since has the principle of centralization been carried out with greater logical precision. Even Cæsar who found time to discuss grammatical questions in the midst of his campaigns in Gaul, never troubled himself to examine the language of his Gallic adversaries, or to compare the grammatical forms they used with those of Latin.

Passing by the Emperor Claudius, who endeavoured to reform the Roman alphabet, and actually introduced three new letters, we come to Apollonius Dyskolus and his son Herodian, two eminent Alexandrine grammarians of the second century. We possess part of the “Syntax” of the former, who specially devoted himself to this branch of the subject, and expressed himself so briefly and technically (like the grammarians of ancient India) as to gain the name of Dyskolos, “the Difficult.” His son Herodian continued the labours of his father, and in the works of these Græco-Roman grammarians we see the long controversy between the Analogists and the Anomalists finally settled. Analogy is recognized as the principle that underlies language; but in actual speech exceptions occur to every rule, and break through the hard-and-fast lines of artificial pedantry. The Greek and Latin school-grammars of our boyhood are the heritage that has come down to us from this old dispute and its final settlement. Dr. Jolly remarks with justice[13] that the radical fault of these grammatical labours was the confusion between thinking and speaking, between logic and grammar—a confusion which intruded the empirical terminology of formal logic into grammar, and was only dissipated when an investigation of the languages of the East introduced the comparative method into the treatment of speech, and showed that to interpret aright the phænomena of Greek and Latin we must study them in the light of other tongues.

The tradition handed down by Herodian was taken up by Ælius Donatus in the fourth century, and Priscian in the sixth; the former the author of the Latin grammar which dominated the schools of the Middle Ages; the latter of eighteen books on grammar, the most extensive work of the kind we have received from classical antiquity. Priscian flourished at Constantinople during the short revival of the Roman Empire and glory that marked the reign of Justinian; and one of the most noticeable things in his writings is his comparison of Latin with Greek, especially the Æolic dialect. In this he followed Tyrannio or Diokles, the manumitted slave of Cicero’s wife and the author of a treatise “On the Derivation of the Latin Language from the Greek.” Donatus and Priscian were the philological lights of Europe for more than a thousand years, and such lights were little better than darkness. Once, and once only, was an attempt made to break down their monopoly and to introduce oriental learning into Western education. Pope Clement V., at the Council of Vienne in 1311, exhorted the four great Universities of Europe—Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, and Oxford—to establish two Chairs of Hebrew, two of Arabic, and two of Chaldee, in order that their students might be able to dispute successfully with Jews and Mohammedans. About the same time Dante, in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentiâ,” compared the dialects of Italy, and selected one which he calls “Illustrious, Cardinal and Courtly,” spoken wherever education and refinement were to be found, and sprung from the brilliant Sicilian court of Frederick II.[14]—a dialect destined to become the language of the “Divina Commedia” and the nursing-mother of the languages and literatures of modern Europe. But elsewhere the “Doctrinale puerorum” of the priest Alexander de Villa Dei, or Villedieu, of Paris, written in leonine verses, was the sole grammar taught and learnt; and the Latin dictionary of Giovanni de Balbis, of Genoa, was the only guide to Latin literature. No wonder that Roger Bacon, in his “Opus Majus,”[15] has to lay down that Greek, Hebrew, and Latin are three separate and independent languages, which must be learned and treated separately and independently, and that “those words only which are derived from Greek and Hebrew ought to be interpreted by those tongues, since those which are purely Latin cannot be explained except by Latin words.” “For,” he goes on to say, “Latin pure and simple is quite different from every other language, and therefore cannot be interpreted from any other.” The most approved scholars and etymologists of his day amused themselves by deriving amen from the Latin a, “without,” and the Greek mene (? μείων), “defect,” parascene (parasceve) from the Latin parare and cæna, and cælum from the hybrid case-helios, or “house of the sun” (!), much in the same way that Jacobus de Voragine, the genial author of the “Legenda Aurea,”[16] derives Clemens from “cleos, quod est gloria, et mens, quasi gloriosa mens;” and says of the name Cæcilia, “quasi cæli lilia, vel cæcis via, vel a cælo et lya: vel Cæcilia quasi cæcitate carens; vel dicitur a cælo et leos quod est populus.”

But even the older Humanists were not much better. They knelt before the spirit of classical antiquity with a worship at once child-like and unreasoning. Their object was to write and speak Latin correctly—that is to say, in accordance with the usage of certain literary men of Rome, not to discover the grounds on which this usage rested. Switheim declares that it matters as little to know why this or that verb governs a case, as it does to know why bin, the Latin sum, “governs the nominative, ich, ego.” “We can say that the verb governs the nominative, because it was once so agreed among the grammarians of antiquity that the verb should govern the nominative ante se. If it had been agreed among the ancients that the object of the verb should be in the accusative, the verb would govern the accusative.” The grammatical term “to govern” was, by the way, a legacy bequeathed by the schoolmen; and a very mischievous legacy it was. Priscian does not yet know it, though it is found in Consentius. Unreasoning and unreasonable, however, as the Humanists were in their treatment of grammar, they were outdone by the orthodox who found in the “errors” of the Vulgate—such as Da mihi bibere—direct proofs of Divine inspiration, and the power of the Holy Spirit to override the usual rules of grammar. Johannes de Gallandia, for instance, states boldly:—“Pagina divina non vult se subdere legi Grammatices, nec vult illius arte regi.” So, again, Smaragdus writes in reference to the rule laid down by Donatus, that scalæ, scopæ, quadrigæ must be used in the plural: “We shall not follow him because we know that the Holy Spirit has always (namely, in the Vulgate) employed these words in the singular.”[17]

We have seen that a knowledge of more than one language is an indispensable preliminary to the formation of a grammar of either; we have seen also that it was among the Semites of Babylonia and Assyria that the earliest grammatical essays were first made. The impulse given to grammatical studies by these attempts did not survive the fall of Babylon; and though the Jewish schools in Babylonia and elsewhere were forced to accompany the extinct Hebrew of their sacred books with glosses and commentaries in Aramaic, they produced nothing that can be called with any truth a grammatical work. It was not until the foundation of the School of Edessa, in the sixth century, that the traditions of the scribes of Assur-bani-pal were taken up by their successors in Mesopotamia. The study of Greek for ecclesiastical purposes among the Syrian Christians led to the compilation of a Syrian grammar; and Jacob of Edessa (A.D. 650-700) succeeded in elaborating one which served as a model for all succeeding works. His whole grammar, however, was based on that of the Greeks, and his terminology was either borrowed directly from the Greek, or formed after the analogy of his Greek originals. Jacob, to whom the systematization of the Syriac vowel-points is to be ascribed, was followed by Elias of Nisibis (eleventh century), and John Barzugbi (thirteenth century), who, says M. Renan, “may be regarded as the author of the first complete grammar of the Syriac language.”[18] The Arabs were not slow to imitate the example of their Syrian neighbours. The preservation of the text of the Korân turned their attention to philological studies at an early period; and we may assign the real foundation of Arabic grammar to the end of the seventh century, when Abul-Aswed (who died 688 A.D.) introduced the diacritical points and vowel-signs, and wrote some treatises on several questions of grammar. His labours were continued in the schools of Basra and Kufa, and Sibawaih (770), the oldest grammarian whose works have come down to us, shows us Arabic grammar almost complete. His successors, as M. Renan remarks, did little more than fill out the details of his teaching; and in the fifteenth century, Suyuthi knows of no less than 2,500 grammarians who had made a name in Arabic literature.

With Syriac and Arabic grammars thus formed, and the doctrine of triliteral roots enunciated, all that was wanting was to work out a comparative grammar of the Semitic dialects. Just as the grammarians of Greece and Rome had perceived the connection that existed between the two languages, and in their haphazard and arbitrary fashion had endeavoured to trace the origin of Latin words to Greek sources, so the relationship between the Semitic idioms could not but be detected as soon as serious labours were commenced upon them; and the closeness of this relationship prevented the errors and absurdities into which the classical grammarians were betrayed by their ignorance of other tongues. To the Jews belongs the merit of first formulating what we may term a comparative grammar. The Saboreans and Masoretes in the sixth century did for the Old Testament what the Alexandrine Greeks had done for Homer, the Arabs for the Korân, and the Hindus for the Veda; and in the tenth century a Hebrew grammar was founded under Arabic influence, and with it a comparative grammar of the Semitic languages. The Jews, who had warmly received Mohammedan culture, and even become intermediaries between their Arabic masters and the “infidel” philosophy of Greece, were necessarily bilingual; and the first fruits of this necessity were the grammatical works of the Gaon, Saadia-el-Fayyumi (who died 942). After Saadia came Menahem-ben-Seruk of Tortosa (960), and Dunash-ben-Librât of Fez (970), who composed the first works on Hebrew lexicography, and of whom the latter declares that he “compares the relation of Arabic and Hebrew, counts all the genuine words of Arabic which are found in Hebrew, and points out that Hebrew is pure Arabic.” About the same time Judah Khayyug of Fez gave an exhaustive account of defective roots and the permutation of servile letters, while Jonah ben Gannach of Cordova (in Arabic Abul Walid Mervan-ibn-Janah), in the eleventh century, completed the grammatical labours of his predecessors.

With the decline of Arabic supremacy and the introduction of Neo-Hebrew arose a new school of Hebrew philology, of which the Kimchi of Narbonne (A.D. 1200) are the leading representatives. This school was less comparative than the foregoing, and the rabbinical spirit that prevailed in it, though conducing to minute accuracy, was not favourable to philological progress. It was, however, the instructor of the Christian scholars of the Renaissance, whose zeal for knowledge and learning brought the study of Hebrew and its cognate languages within the circle of European thought. The Reformation, breaking as it did with the mediæval Church, and making its appeal to the Scriptures themselves, made a knowledge of the original language of the Old Testament indispensable. Christian scholars like Reuchlin, the two Buxtorfs, Richard Simon, Ludolf, Schultens, or our own Castell and Pococke, devoted themselves to a study of Semitic philology with the same energy and success as men like the Stephenses, the Scaligers, and the Vosses to a study of classical philology. Lexicons and grammars were compiled, texts were critically examined and edited, and a comparative dictionary of the Semitic languages was brought out. It was inevitable that men who were at once masters of Hebrew and Greek should discover resemblances and coincidences between the two languages. Hebrew grammar was cast into a classical mould, and Latin and Greek words were derived from Hebrew roots. Hebrew, it was argued, was the sacred language which had been spoken by Adam and the patriarchs, since the names of our first parents and their offspring are of Hebrew origin; and it was therefore clear that Hebrew must have been the primæval speech used before the confusion of tongues at Babel, the primitive source from which the manifold dialects of the world have been derived. A new etymological system accordingly sprang up, quite as grotesque in its rules and its results as the old etymological system of Greece and Rome; and dictionaries of Latin and English appeared in which every word was provided with its Hebrew original.[19] Since Hebrew is written from right to left, it was assumed that a Hebrew root could be read the reverse way if a satisfactory etymology was not otherwise forthcoming; and as the profane languages might be expected to retain some reminiscences of their sacred mother, a similar procedure was adopted to connect words in English and the classical tongues with one another, and so stum was proved to come from the Latin mustum, and the Latin forma from the Greek μορφή. It was not the only instance in which theological prepossessions have injured the cause of philology.

With Herder and Lessing, however, a new era of thought and philosophy began. The mechanical explanation of the world was superseded by a psychological one; the idea of development took the place of the idea of contract and convention. Herder devoted a special treatise to the “Ideal of Speech,”[20] and a prize offered by the Berlin Academy for the best essay on “the Ideal of a Perfect Language,” was won by Jenisch in 1796. The work of Jenisch bore the ambitious title, “A philosophico-critical Comparison and Estimate of Fourteen of the Ancient and Modern Languages of Europe, viz., Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian.” But Jenisch was still under the dominion of the assumption which made the Roman jurist discover his jus gentium in those points in which the laws of different nations agreed; he finds the ideal of a perfect language in the fourteen languages of his title, all deviations from their grammar being characterized as “less perfect formations.” Richness in the vocabulary, expressiveness, clearness, and euphony are the four marks of superiority. The value of Jenisch’s lucubrations, however, may be judged from his statement that the Greek case-endings were probably modelled after those of Hebrew. It needed the genius of Herder to recognize that the language of a people is but the expression of its spiritual life, and to lay down in his “Ideen” (1785) that “in each language the understanding and character of its speakers reflects itself.” A step forward was made by Mahn in his “Representation of Lexicography from every Point of View,” published in 1817. In this (p. 264) he divides the history of speech into three periods corresponding with the periods in the life of the individual—childhood, youth, and age—severally distinguished by memory, imagination, and intellect. The first period is that in which language was formed, the second that in which it was perfected, the third that in which it was made logical.

If language is logical it is evident that the categories of grammar ought to correspond with the categories of logic, and attempts were accordingly made to sketch the outlines of a universal grammar. In 1801 Vater brought out his “Versuch einer allgemeinen Sprachlehre,” with an introduction on the nature and origin of speech, and an appendix on the adaptation of the rules of universal grammar to those of the grammars of individual tongues. But Vater chose “the high priori road;” he assumed that the first men spoke in accordance with the forms of logic, and instead of tracing the history of grammar in the records of living speech, made that alone normal and correct which seemed to himself to be so. This work of Vater’s was followed, three years later, by a translation of De Sacy’s “Axioms of Universal Philology,” and in 1805 by a “Lehrbuch allgemeiner Grammatik.” Comparative grammar is defined as a setting side by side of the forms of different languages for the sake of reaching that which is “common” to them; but this definition is only scientific in appearance; what is “common” turns out to be not the original forms of a parent-speech, but the forms which a philosopher of the eighteenth century believed to lie at the bottom of “universal grammar.”

This idea of a universal grammar was due partly to the influence of an age which believed the ultimate analyses of logic to represent the thoughts of primitive man, partly to the unmethodical comparison of a variety of languages, some ancient, some modern, and some as unrelated to one another as Greek and Hebrew. But it was also in some measure the result of a revived study of the old Greek theories about language. Our countryman James Harris led the way with his “Hermes, or a Philosophical Enquiry concerning Universal Grammar” (1765). The work was an important one, for it not only stimulated an interest in linguistic studies, but also recalled attention to the labours of those who had built up the framework of our school grammars. Harris was succeeded by Horne Tooke, whose “Diversions of Purley,” however imperfect and erroneous from the point of view of modern scientific philology, threw a charm over what had hitherto seemed repulsive inquiries into the words and forms of speech, and laid down the axiom that we must first investigate the older forms of a language before we can determine the origin and nature of their later equivalents. But Horne Tooke’s work was composed in the interests of a philosophical theory, and its keynote is struck in the assertion that truth is that which a man troweth. Things are but the reflection of words, and words are what men deliberately make them. Grammar is no organic growth, but the mechanical invention of mankind. And just as the first men framed it in ignorance and imperfection, so the philosophers of the eighteenth century could reframe it according to the requirements of formal logic. It was the old mistake of the Greek Analogists over again, only with the difference that they thought of the grammar of a single language alone, whereas the more ambitious philologists of the “Aufklärung” aimed at producing a grammar which would be applicable to all tongues.

The French Encyclopædia was the manifesto of the “Aufklärung,” and the Encyclopædia devoted six of its volumes to grammar and literature. Grammar is divided into general and particular, and while general grammar is defined as “la science raisonnée des principes immuables et généraux de la parole prononcée ou écrite dans toutes les langues,” particular grammar is defined as “the art of applying to the immutable and general principles of the word whether pronounced or written the arbitrary and customary usages (institutions) of a special language.” In accordance with the lines thus traced out, Gottfried Hermann, in 1801, published his work, “De emendendâ ratione Græcæ Grammaticæ,” and G. M. Roth brought out his “Antihermes, or Philosophical Researches into the pure apprehension of Human Speech and Universal Philology” in 1795, and his “Outlines of pure Universal Philology for the use of Academies and advanced classes in the Gymnasia” in 1815. As yet neither families of speech nor the morphology of language were even dreamt of; and the “principles” derived from the school grammars of Greece and Rome, supplemented by the categories of modern philosophical systems, were supposed to apply to all languages alike. It was reserved for A. F. Bernhardi, the pupil of F. A. Wolf and Fichte, the friend of Tieck and Schlegel, to approach towards a truer conception of the nature and relationship of speech in his “Sprachlehre,” which he dedicated to his master Wolf. The first part of this work appeared at Berlin in 1801, under the title of “Reine Sprachlehre,” the second part, “Angewandte Sprachlehre,” being published in 1803, and the third part, “Anfangsgründe der Sprachwissenschaft,” in 1805. Bernhardi first caught sight of the fact that whereas, from a purely scientific point of view, the grammar of every language follows its own independent and peculiar line, for practical purposes we must dwell mainly upon those particulars in which it agrees with the grammars of other tongues.[21] According to Haym his book was “the first entrance of the spirit of the romantic movement into the sphere of real science.” Language is defined “as an allegory of the understanding, which expresses and represents itself, according to its inherent nature, through this externalization.” Hence a connection is sought between the sound and the thing signified; the initial liquid of light, for instance, indicates the sense of the word, whether used as a substantive or as an adjective. In the second part of his work Bernhardi discusses the relation of language to poetry on the one side, and to science on the other, and, as might have been expected from his definition of it as an allegory, regards it as being in its very essence the lyrical utterance of the primitive poet.[22]

Meanwhile the etymologists went on with their work of random guessing, with little heed to the labours of continental scholars upon a philosophy of grammar. In this country Dr. Murray’s “History of the European Languages” was posthumously published in 1823, in which he holds that all the manifold languages of the world are derived from a single primeval one which consisted of a few monosyllables, AG or WAG being the first articulate sound. To this primeval language the Teutonic, and not the Hebrew, “comes nearest;” and it is only fair to say that the relationship of Sanskrit and Persian to the Aryan dialects of Europe is recognized, and a full account given of the ancient Indian speech. In an appendix Dr. Murray also pointed out what we should now term the Aryan affinities of the Scythian words preserved by the classical authors. But his principles of etymology were the same as those of the Greeks; similarity of sound was sufficient to prove identity of origin. And every word, from whatever quarter it may be gathered, is forced to become a proof or an example of the descent of language from his nine monosyllabic interjections. A volume, published in 1800 by W. Whiter, under the ambitious title of “Etymologicum Magnum, or Universal Etymological Dictionary,” is not content even with the limits prescribed to himself by Dr. Murray. English, Greek, Latin, French, Irish, Welsh, Slavonic, Hebrew, Arabic, Gipsey, Coptic, and many more, are all mixed up together with the most impartial prodigality. The character of the work may be judged of by the assertion of the writer, “that from a hord of vagrant Gipsies once issued that band of sturdy robbers—the companions of Romulus and Remus;” this being based on the fact that the Gipsies “are in their own language called Romans, or Romani.” After this we need not be surprised at being told that the English give and shaft, the Hebrew gabbe (sic), the Chaldee gavav, the French javeau, the German garbe, and the Latin sparum, have all one and the same origin; or that sepulcrum is derived from the Hebrew kabar, “to bury,” and the Celtic pen from the Hebrew phânâh, “to incline.”

What has been termed the discovery of Sanskrit by Western scholars put an end to all this fanciful playing with words and created the science of language. The native grammarians of India had at an early period analyzed both the phonetic sounds and the vocabulary of Sanskrit with astonishing precision, and drawn up a far more scientific system of grammar than the philologists of Alexandria or Rome had been able to attain. The Devanâgari alphabet is a splendid monument of phonological accuracy, and long before the time of Saadia and Khayyug, the Hindu “Vaiyâkaranas,” or grammarians, had not only discovered that roots are the ultimate elements of language, but had traced all the words of Sanskrit to a limited number of roots. Their grammatical system and nomenclature rest upon a firm foundation of inductive reasoning, and though based on the phænomena of a single language, show a scientific insight into the nature of speech which has never been surpassed.

It is possible that the democratic movement of Buddhism which broke down caste and raised the inferior dialects and languages of India to the same level as the sacred Sanskrit of the Veda, had much to do with the extraordinary success of the Hindu grammarians. The immediate object of their investigation was the language of the Rig-Veda, which had become obscure and partly obsolete through the changes wrought by time upon the spoken tongue. The Rig-Veda, pre-eminently called “the Veda,” is a collection of hymns and poems of various dates, some of which go back to the earliest days of the Aryan invasion of north-western India; the whole collection, however, may be roughly ascribed to at least the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C. In course of time it came to assume a sacred character, and the theory of inspiration invented to support this goes much beyond the most extreme theory of verbal inspiration ever held in the Jewish or the Christian Church. The Rig-Veda was divided into ten mandalas or books, each mandala being assigned to some old family; and out of these were formed three new Vedas—the Yajur, the Sâma, and the Âtharva. The Yajur and the Sâma may be described as prayer-books compiled from the Rig for the use of the choristers and the ministers of the priests, and contain little besides what is found in the earliest and most sacred Veda. Along with the latter they sometimes go under the name of the Trayî or “Triad,” a name which implies that the Âtharva-Veda was not yet in existence when it was given. In fact, the Âtharvana may be described as a collection of poems mixed up with popular sayings, medical advice, magical formulæ, and the like. It was assigned to the Brahman or fourth class of priests, who superintended the ritual, just as the Sâma-Veda was assigned to the choristers, the Yajur-Veda to the acolytes, to whom the manual work involved in a sacrifice was delegated, and the Rig-Veda to the Hotri, or priest proper, who had to recite portions of it, whence its name of Rig, or “Praise.” The period that must have elapsed before the hymns of the Rig could have been collected together, invested with a sacred character, and elaborated into a ritual, must have been considerable; but not until this was done, and the three supplementary Vedas composed, was the whole Veda or depository of sacred “knowledge” complete. At a later date came the Brâhmanas, or commentaries on the Veda, the object of which was to explain obscure passages in the old hymns, and the erroneous and absurd explanations sometimes offered show pretty plainly how much both the language and the ideas of the people had changed. The sacredness of the Veda was reflected upon the Brâhmanas themselves, and a time came when they too began to be regarded as divine, and to be superseded by the Sûtras, the “strings” or manuals of the grammarians. The diffuse style of the Brâhmanas made way for the scientific brevity of the Sûtras, and Hindu literature entered upon its Alexandrine stage. Even the grammar of the Brâhmanas became archaic; and accordingly, though the Veda was the primary object of the grammarians’ labours, the Brâhmanas also had a share in their regard. The Sûtras endeavour to explain the Veda and all connected with it—a principal part of their work being naturally an explanation of the Vedic language and grammar. But, before this could be effected, an accurate register of the facts was required, and the Masoretes of India accordingly divided and counted, not only the verses and words, but even the syllables of the Rig-Veda. According to Śaunaka, the teacher of Kâtyâyana, the 1,028 hymns of the Rig-Veda contain 10,616 (or 10,622) verses, 153,826 words (padas), and 432,000 syllables, eleven of the hymns being of later date than the rest; and since the number of syllables and words given by Śaunaka is the number found in our present texts, it is clear that the Rig-Veda has been handed down, from the sixth century B.C. to our own day, with the most perfect precision. This is the more astonishing at first sight, from its being handed down orally alone; but the labours of Śaunaka and his brother scholars had much to do with the result. The numbering of the syllables of the Veda led to the formation of the so-called Pada-text, in which the single words are divided one from another, instead of being run together in accordance with the laws of Sandhi. These laws require that the final letter of a word should be modified by the initial letter of the word that follows, the consequence being that two separate syllables (as in tad śrutwâ, “having heard that”) are made to coalesce into one (tachchhrutwâ). To resolve these amalgamated syllables was to discover the phonetic rules and principles which regulated the pronunciation of Sanskrit, and to lay the foundation of a scientific phonology.

But a more important work remained behind. Kautsa, a grammarian of the fifth or sixth century B.C., tells us that the language of the Rig-Veda had by that time become so obsolete as to be understood with difficulty, and yet the exact recital of the hymns had come to be regarded as indispensable for the performance of religious service. The Prâtiśâkhyas, the oldest production of the grammatical school, show a surprising acquaintance with the physiological facts of phonetic utterance, and far surpass the most advanced labours of the Greeks in the same direction. The Nighantavas, a little later, contain a list of rare Vedic words, and perhaps started the controversy which broke out shortly afterwards among the grammarians as to the origin of the nouns. Śâkatâyana and his followers, the Nairuktas, or Etymologists, maintained that they were all derived from verbs; while his opponents, Gârgya and others, called the Vaiyâkaranas or Analyzers, sought to show that some at least had a different origin. In the end, however, the party of Śâkatâyana proved victorious, and the result was not only the formation of the Sanskrit dictionary, but, what was far more important, the clear enunciation of the doctrine of roots. In the hands of Yâska and Pânini the doctrine became fruitful in consequences; the classical language of India was thoroughly analyzed, and the essential part of each word marked off from its formative suffixes. In short, a scientific grammar was created. The Nirukta, or “Etymology,” of Yâska is a model of method and conciseness, though it is thrown into the shade by the grammar of Pânini. This was the crowning work of the Hindu grammarians, and, composed as it was in the fourth century B.C., may well excite our astonishment and admiration. In eight books, and about 4,000 short rules, it sums up the principles of Sanskrit phonology, the declension of the noun and the conjugation of the verb (which agree in the main with those worked out by the Greek grammarians), the nature of the adverbs and other particles, the rules of syntax, which are interspersed among the various divisions of the accidence, the etymology of words, with an exhaustive list of “primary” and “secondary” formative suffixes, and a minute analysis of composition which has been the basis of modern attempts to deal with this intricate subject. As an appendix to his Grammar, Pânini also compiled a list of roots (dhâtus, or “elements”), amounting in all to about 1,700.

The brevity and compactness of the work was much aided by the algebraic system of symbols by which the various terms of grammar were expressed. Thus, in Pânini, a verbal termination is denoted by l, the endings of the primary tenses by lt, those of the secondary tenses by ln, the special tenses and moods being pointed out by an inserted vowel, as lât for the present, lot for the imperative, and so on. The mathematical character of this device shows the precision with which the several rules of grammar had been ascertained and laid down, as well as the instinctive recognition that there was a science of grammar as well as a science of mathematics. It only remained for a later generation of Western scholars to demonstrate that such was really the case.

It may seem strange that this later generation was so long in coming. Already, at the end of the sixteenth century, an Italian, Philippo Sassetti, during a five years’ residence in India, had made himself acquainted with Sanskrit, and drew attention to the likeness between the Sanskrit numerals and other words and corresponding words in his native language.[23] Another Italian, Roberto de Nobili, who went to India in 1606 as a missionary, actually transformed himself into a Brahman, in order to win over the Hindus; and after acquiring a knowledge not only of Tamil and Telugu, but also of Sanskrit, “showed himself in public, dressed in the proper garb of the Brahmans, wearing their cord and their frontal mark, observing their diet, and submitting even to the complicated rules of caste.”[24] One of his converts—so at least Professor Max Müller thinks—composed the curious Ezur, or fourth Veda, which professes to be a lost Veda that he came to preach, and “contains a wild mixture of Hindu and Christian doctrine.” Fifty years after De Nobili a German missionary, named Heinrich Roth, was able to dispute in Sanskrit with the Brahmans, and in 1740 a Frenchman, Père Pons, sent home a comprehensive and fairly accurate report upon Sanskrit literature. It was not till 1790, however, that the first Sanskrit grammar was published in Europe, at Rome, by two German friars, Hanxleden and Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomeo, whose real name was Philipp Wesdin. Some years before (in 1767) the Frenchmen Cœurdoux and Barthélemy had written from Pondicherry to the Academy to express their opinion that a relationship existed between the vocabularies of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and to prove that this relationship could not be accounted for by the hypothesis of borrowing. Their letter, however, though read in 1768, was not printed until 1808, after the death of Anquetil-Duperron, and at the end of one of his Mémoires. Meanwhile English and German scholars had entered the field, and the opinion expressed by the French missionaries had become a belief of the learned world.

In 1784 the Asiatic Society was founded at Calcutta, and its first members did their utmost to extend a knowledge of the Sanskrit language and literature. Halhed, in the preface to his “Grammar of Bengali,” published in 1778, had noticed the “similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek;” and Sir William Jones,[25] addressing the Asiatic Society at Calcutta in 1786, states that “no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason,” he goes on to say, “though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.”

Here, then, was the great discovery made. It required a man like Sir William Jones, who united the tastes of the poet and littérateur with those of the linguistic scholar to overcome the prejudices of a classical education, and to admit that the languages of Greece and Rome had the same origin as the languages of the despised Hindu. It required still greater insight and sobriety to trace them all from a common source, rather than to magnify the newly acquired Oriental speech by making it the parent of the languages of the West; and though we may now smile at his attempt to explain classical mythology by comparing its personages with Indian deities with similarly sounding names, Sir William Jones deserves to be remembered as the pioneer of comparative philology. He stands out in honourable contrast to Dugald Stewart, the Scotch philosopher of common sense, who, in absolute ignorance of even a single Sanskrit character, undertook the task of proving that Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature were alike the inventions of the Brahmans, and that they were forged after the model of Greek and Latin in order to deceive European scholars. It was not the first time that philosophy and common sense have found themselves opposed to unwelcome knowledge.