and establish general conclusions as to the nature of speech, indisposes us more and more to receive such startling paradoxes, and, what is much more to the purpose, supplies us with materials for refuting them. We are requested to believe, that the Dhatos, roots, or themes, of the Sanskrit verbs, are not the work of nature, but of art; not the productions of man in the infancy of language, but the contrivance of grammarians in a far advanced state of civil society; an assertion which appears to me much about as reasonable as it would be to say that, after an architect has completed the body and superstructure of his edifice, he directs his attention to laying the foundation. If it be so, and it is well worth inquiring if this be actually the case, the grammarians of Hindustan have acted a much more important part on the theatre of the world, than the same class. of men in any other age or country, and achieved a triumph compared with which that of the institution of castes, arbitrary and unnatural as it is, is as nothing. In other countries, grammarians have never been looked on as the creators, or even legislators, of language; and were regarded as exercising their highest functions by acting the part of his torians, and tracing its origin and progress, or of interpreters, by illustrating its obscurities and unfolding its principles, principles not established by them, but resting altogether on that prescription, that mixture of antiquity, knowledge, and

custom

66 Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi."

HORAT. de Arte Poetica.

XIII. I will commence by giving a list of upwards of thirty words, which are at once verbs and nouns in Sanskrit, the result of which must be, either to dethrone the Hindu grammarians by proving that they invented nothing, or to double their dominions by proving that they invented both nouns and verbs; and if I am not much mistaken, this list will go a great way in inducing us to come to the conclusion, not only that verbs were derived from nouns, but to suspect at least that all the other parts of speech were so also.

Grynæus (Greek), a name of Grina, to shine.

..... Pada, to go, to move.
Patha, to go.

...

Raj, a king (the sun, the king of Raghat, to shine, perhaps from Rex,

"As Eastern Priests in giddy circles run,

And turn their heads to imitate the sun.' Essay on Man.

XIV. If we take the first words in the list Archa, the sun, and Archa, to worship, it appears to me that there can be little doubt as to which is the primitive and which the derivative. The records and traditions of almost every ancient people tend to prove that the sun was their carliest, and in many instances their only god. As the most conspicuous object in the creation, it would naturally be one of the first named; and as the principal, if not the sole God and object of adoration, his name as naturally became equivalent to worship. As the most brilliant object in the material world, we may observe that his numerous names produced as many verbs signifying to shine; and it is quite obvious that, when the noun denoting the sun was recollected, there could be little doubt about the verb formed from the same, or nearly the same, letters.

XV. The most comprehensive definition of a verb is, that it is a word significant either of Action or Being; but as Action necessarily supposes an agent, and Being something that exists, nouns may be said to be metaphysically older than verbs. We can conceive of an agent without the exertion of active power, as he may possess it but be indisposed to exercise it; but we cannot, by any effort of our minds, form an idea of Action without an agent, or of Being without something that is. We may remark, that in every instance the verb expressing any particular action has derived its name from the agent, member, or part of the body chiefly instrumental in producing that action; as Krama, a foot, Krama,

to go. Pada, a foot, Pada, to go. Baha, the arm, Baha, to endeavour, the arm being the chief member employed in almost all our exertions, and the great instrument in producing most of the enjoyments and blessings of civilization. Perhaps the most striking quality of the sun is his splendour, and hence the numerous verbs To shine derived from his various names; but it is far from being his only one, as his apparent motion is equally remarkable: and hence we have Vina, the sun, and Vina, to go or move generally; and as the sun appears to move round the earth, Brahma, the sun, Brahma, to move circularly. Sometimes a verb signifying motion is formed from a natural object which moves quickly, as Haya, a horse, Haya, to move; Sambha, water, Sambha, to go (like a stream); and as the noun always imparts its own colour to the verb corresponding with its name, instead of borrowing from it, we may suspect that where the Sanskrit verb Haya signifies to worship, it was formed not simply from Haya, horse, but from Haya, a form of Indra, or the sun; that where the Sanskrit verb Hruda signifies to collect, it was formed from the Sanskrit noun Hrada, a lake, by analogy with its assembled waters, but that where it signifies To go, it was formed from an extraneous root, the Persic word Rudah, a river, from a resemblance with its stream or current. The Sanskrit verb Grasa, to eat, was probably formed from the noun Grasa, a mouthful. Grasa is very like graze, English. If we suppose our own word derived from the Sanskrit, we must suppose at the same time that its use was restricted, not simply to the eating of cattle, but to the eating of cattle in a pasture field; but as To graze signifies to feed on grass, and Ghars in Arabic signifies a plant, it is much more probable that the English verb To graze was formed from the Arabic by a slight transposition, than that it was derived from the Sanskrit.

XVI. Suppose I had wished to describe the action of hunting in a hieroglyphic picture (and it must never be forgotten that hieroglyphics appear to have constituted the primitive writing of almost all the nations of mankind, and that after it had been superseded by the invention of

alphabetical characters, both the origin of words and the extension of their meaning appear to have proceeded on the same principles) in what mode could I make it most clear to the spectators, or readers? There was no other mode

than to draw the image of an animal commonly the object of pursuit, followed by a crowd of dogs, horses, and men, the latter armed with bows and arrows, and hunting spears, and this we know the Mexicans have actually done. The Egyptians and Chinese, in the second stage of picturewriting, for the sake of compendiousness would probably have described the action of hunting by the single figure of some animal which constituted the ordinary object of the chase; and on this latter principle the Sanskrit language has proceeded by employing the word Mrig to signify a deer, and precisely the same word, letter for letter, to signify to hunt. And the Sanskrit has been closely followed by the Greek in which we find Ther (Onp), a wild beast of any kind, Thera (Ońpa), hunting, and Therao (Onpáw) I hunt. Suppose, again, that. I had wished to describe, in hieroglyphic writing, not merely the object but the place of pursuit, not only what was hunted but where it was hunted, that the deer was pursued through the green recesses of the forest. Hieroglyphics experience no difficulty about their nouns if they are the names of external objects. They draw the object, and their task is accomplished; but to express qualities, to write adjectives, they have no other resource than to delineate some material figure in which the quality is most conspicuous, and to contrive, at the same time, to inform us that the object is an adjective and not a substantive, and that we are to attend to its quality and neglect its form. And here again the Sanskrit has proceeded on the principles of hieroglyphics, as in that language Parna signifies a leaf, the object in nature most remarkable for the quality of greenness; and Parna is also a verb, signifying to be or to make green. Sometimes a verb signifying motion is derived from the name of some noun which facilitates motion; as, Patha, to go, from Patha, a road, or way, the etymology of our English word Path.