XVII. It appears to me that quite enough has been said to prove that the Sanskrit Dhatos, or verbal roots, are any thing rather than the arbitrary and artificial contrivances of grammarians, as we find many of them existing in that language as nouns substantive. But there is another argument that may be made use of, little less forcible; which is, that we find numerous Greek and Latin verbs certainly cognate with, I should confidently say derived from, these Sanskrit roots; a circumstance which goes a great way to prove, that at whatever period the progenitors of the Greek and Roman races may have emigrated from the great Indian stock, those Dhatos or roots were in use in Hindustan as ordinary words. I shall adduce a few instances only, but the list might be enlarged almost indefinitely. In the Greek and Latin words, we not only find the Sanskrit root, but something more; what is that something? It appears to me to be a pronominal termination annexed and coalescing, and that the final O is in most instances a contraction of Ego; the terminations of Elauno, and Lambano, the Syriac pronoun Ano, I; and the terminations of Brucho and Stoicheo, a contraction of the Hebrew Anochi, I. We find some verbs in Sanskrit which appear to be formed from Turkish roots, and it must be recollected that the Turks were Mongol Tartars, and the neighbours of the Hindus. XVIII. Independently of these simple roots of Greek verbs, we find, on the other hand, several words having a common meaning in Sanskrit and Greek, without possessing, however, the smallest resemblance in form or sound applied to the same poetical personages, and employed to describe the same events; a circumstance which induces us to come to the conclusion, not merely that the two languages were derived from a common stock, but that the great body of Hindustan tradition, mythology, and poetical fiction, was afloat in Greece during the heroic ages, and supplied occasional hints to the creative genius of Homer himself. For instance, in Sanskrit we find the word Vakra, with the signification of crooked, curved, dishonest, fraudulent, cruel and malignant, and not merely an epithet joined with, but a name of Saturn. If we were required to translate Vakra into Greek, we could not render it more literally than by the word Agkulos; and 'Аукνλоμýτηs, crooked-counselled, is Homer's most ordinary epithet of Saturn. Again, in Sanskrit we find the compound word Trivikrama as a name of Vishnu, signifying crossing over the three worlds in three steps, which Homer appears to have availed himself of, but with that modification and softening, which is always requisite to render Oriental imagery palatable to the greater sobriety of European taste. The passage occurs in the 13th book of the Iliad, and describes the march of Neptune from Samothrace to Ægæ. Αὐτίκα δ' ἐξ ὅρεος κατεβήσατο παιπαλόεντος, Κραιπνὰ ποσὶ προβιβάς· τρέμε δ' οὔρεα μακρὰ καὶ ὕλη Ποσσὶν ὑπ' ἀθανάτοισι Ποσειδάωνος ἰόντος. Τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰών· τὸ δὲ τέτρατον ἵκετο τέκμωρ "Prone down the rocky steep he rush'd along : POPE. XIX. When the Turks are particularly desirous of making honourable mention of the patriarch Japhet, they describe him by the periphrasis Aboul Turk, the father of Turk, whom they regard as peculiarly their progenitor; and it appears to me, that the highest eulogium that can be bestowed on the Sanskrit is, that it is the undoubted mother of the Greek and Latin languages, which not only contain some of the most perfect specimens of literary composition the world has ever seen, but are, up to this day, the repositories of no inconsiderable portion of human knowledge. Under such circumstances, a few additional pages will not be unemployed in pointing out some unobserved analogies between the Asiatic and European languages, and in drawing closer those which have been already remarked. xx. I would begin by observing, that we find in the Sanskrit, what has been called the Æolic Digamma, or, in other terms, the same radical word in two distinct states, being sometimes written with, and sometimes without the aspirate letter, which has the power of V in the Shemitic alphabets, and which indeed derived both its form and power from the Phoenician or Samaritan Vau, and gave birth to the Greek Phi, and the Roman F. For instance, we find in the Sanskrit, the verbal root Ri, go, whence the Greeks formed their Reo, I flow, of which Payne Knight, in his Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet, supposes the ancient form to have been Refo (PEFS), of which we find the prototype in the Sanskrit, in the root Riva, flow. The same distinguished scholar also supposes the oldest form of Pleo, navigo, to have been Plefo (ПAEFS), of which we find the prototype in the Sanskrit Plava, float. The Hindus appear to have had their Eolians as well as the Greeks, or in other words, some tribes were in the habit of using dialects in which aspirates abounded, and when by the progress of society the tribes were consolidated into one great people, and the dialects were melted into one language, the aspirated and unaspirated forms of the same word assumed the appearance of distinct roots. It is the same with the aspirate H, as with what has been called the Digamma, as we find in Sanskrit Aya, and Aha, go; Raya, and Raha, go. We also find Tupa, injure, in the aspirated form of Tupha, and Tripa, please (whence by transposition Terpo, delecto), in the aspirated form of Tripha, which throws considerable light on the formation of the Greek perfects, Te-Tupha, and Te-Terpha, and their derivatives the preterpluperfect tenses. XXI. We find in Sanskrit the Doric R, redundant, that is, various roots of precisely the same signification, written indifferently with or without the letter R. We have Sana and Srana, give; Maksha and Mraksha, mix; Vaja and Vraja, go; Vana and Vrana, produce sound. The Sanskrit also may teach us to doubt if the R was primarily redundant, whatever it may be now, as in the words Dhu, shake, and Dhru, be steady; the letter R has clearly a privative or negative power, and Dhru is equivalent to Do not shake; Dhruva in Sanskrit is the name of the polar star: L and R in Sanskrit are frequently exchanged, as in the words Hlasa and Hrasa, sound; Bhlasa and Bhrasa, shine. XXII. An attentive perusal of Wilkins's Radicals of the Sanskrit Language has forced me to come to the conclusion that that tongue has been exposed to as many casualties, passed through as many revolutions, and contains as many irregularities as the Greek and Latin, and that the claim of its grammarians to infallibility, though urged with more confidence, is not one jot more valid; indeed, in this and most similar instances, I have remarked that the legitimate claim will generally be found to be in the inverse ratio to the pretensions. Sanskrit grammarians deduce the verb Dadami, whence the Greek Didomai, from the root Da; but Dada appears to be the true root, and the terminations in the singular number, the persons of the verb substantive Astun, to be, dropping the S-Dadami, Dadasi, Dadati, and in Greek in the same way in the passive voice, Didomai, Didosai, Didotai. The close sympathy of the Sanskrit with the Greek and Latin in this verb is remarkable. From the Sanskrit Da we have the Latin Do; from the Sanskrit Dana, the Latin Dono; and from the Sanskrit Dada, the Greek Didomi. Of Dana, Wilkins remarks that the final N is always dropped in composition, which is really saying that it exists as a simple root, but is not found as a verb in Sanskrit. At page 71. of his Radicals, Wilkins gives us the root Dasa, speak or tell, of which the third person of the present tense is Dansayati; also the same root in the sense of bite, of which the third person present tense is also Dansayati. But the root does not appear to be a genuine root, and to have lost Anuswarah, or a point above the A, equivalent to M or N, and accordingly the next word is the root Dans, bite, cognate with the Latin Dens, a tooth. XXIII. Although grammar in Hindustan is regarded as a revelation as well as religion, as we find it actually existing in the works of the native grammarians, it assumes the appearance of an occult science, which, though divulged, is still unintelligible, except to those who possess the key; and reminds us of that apologetic letter from Aristotle to Alexander, mentioned by Plutarch, in which he assures him that his philosophical opinions, though published, were still concealed. At page 125 of his Grammar, Wilkins says the following scheme exhibits in the foregoing order all the terminations applicable to verbs in the two active forms. It is the artificial and technical mode used in some original works, wherein redundant letters have been introduced, either as signs to denote certain changes to be effected, or merely to help the pronunciation. The letter P, as in Tip, Sip, being one of these servile redundant letters, is everywhere to be dropped in conjugating; and every final S, as in Thas, Vas, |