Persian did actually overrun that country, and make themselves Language. masters of a considerable part of it at different times, is vouched by the records and traditions of the Persians themselves. Upon those occasions a number of Tartarian words might be introduced into the country, and acquire a currency among the inhabitants. As the annals of ancient Persia have been long since destroyed and consigned to eternal oblivion, it is impossible to ascertain either the extent or duration of these irruptions. Indeed the nature of our design does not call for that investigation. $4 Proofs from Scripture of the origin of the Pahlavi. In order to corroborate the cognation between the Chaldean and Pahlavi languages, we shall subjoin a few arguments derived from the Mosaic history, and the other writings of the Old Testament. These we believe will be admitted as irrefragable proofs of the position above advanced by such as admit the authenticity of those records. Elam is always allowed to have been the progenitor of the Persians. This patriarch was the eldest son of Shem the son of Noah; and according to the Mosaic account, his posterity settled in the neighbourhood of the descendants of Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram, the other sons of Shem. The country where they setStrabo, tled was denominated Elymais †, as late as the beginning of the Christian era. This name was retained till the Saracens conquered and took possession of that country. If this was the case, as it certainly was, the Elamites or Persians spoke a dialect of the primary lar. guage, which, in the first Section, we have proved to have been the Hebrew. lib. 11. When the four eastern monarchs invaded the five Gen. cities of the plain in Canaan ‡, Chedorlaomer king of chap. xiv. Elam was at the head of the confederacy. Amraphel king of Shinar, that is Babylon or Chaldea, was one of the allies; Arioch king of Élasar was another; and Tidal, king of some scattered nations in the same neighbourhood, was the fourth. That Chedorlaomer was principal in this expedition, is obvious from the historian's detail of the second, where that prince is placed first, and the rest are named the kings that were with him. This passage likewise demonstrates, that Elam, Shinar, and Elasar, lay contiguous, and were engaged in the same cause. Wherever the country in question is mentioned in Scripture prior to the era of Daniel and Ezra, it is always under the name of Elam. To go about to prove this would be superfluous. Byrop. lib. I. According to Xenophon §, the Persians knew nothing of horsemanship before the age of Cyrus: but that historian informs us, that after that monarch had introduced the practice of fighting on horseback, they became so fond of it, that no man of rank would deign to fight on foot. Here it ought to be considered, that the historian above mentioned was now writing a moral, military, and political romance; and therefore introduces this anecdote, in order to exalt the character of his hero: so that we are not to suppose that the people under consideration were unacquainted with the art of horsemanship till that period. The very name Phars or Pharas is certainly of Hebrew origin, and alludes to the skill that people professed in horsemanship. The original seems to be Pharsah, ungula, a hoof;” and in the Arabic Pharas intimates a horse, and Pharis a horseman. Consequently the people were denominated Parsai, and the country Pars, be 66 cause they were trained from their infancy to ride the Persian great horse, which indeed they deemed their greatest ho- Language. nour. This name was perhaps first imposed upon them by the neighbouring nations, and in process of time became their gentile appellation. Mithras is generally known to have been the chief divinity of the Persians; a name which is plainly derived from Mither," great." We find in Strabo the Persian god Amanus, which is plainly a cognate of Hamah, the " sun or fire." Hence we believe comes Hamarim, the "hearths or chapels," where the fire sacred to the sun was kept burning; which, we believe, the Greeks called Пugada, or "fire-tem-. ples." Herodotus mentions a custom among the Per- † Lib. ix. sians, according to which, when they came to engage cap. 85. an enemy, they cast a rope with a kind of gin at the end of it on their enemy, and by those means endcavoured to entangle and draw him into their power. The people of Persia who employed this net or gin were called Sargates, from sarags, sherag, or serig, a word which in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic, significs to "hamper or entangle:" hence perhaps the Greek word Σαργάνη, 2 "basket or net." Sar or zar in Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac, &c. signifies "a lord, a prince;" and hence we have the initial syllable of the far-famed zar-tusht, Zoroastres. In a word, most of the Persian names that occur in the Grecian histories, notwithstand ing the scandalous manner in which they have been disguised and metamorphosed by the Greeks, may still with a little skill and industry be traced back to a Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, or Phoenician origin. In the books of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, we find a number of Persian names which are all of a Hebrew or Chaldaic complexion: to investigate these at much greater length would be foreign to the design of the present article. If our curious reader should incline to be more fully satisfied as to this point, he may consult Bochart's Chanaan, D'Herbelot's Bib. Orient. Walton's Proleg. &c. It now appears, we hope, to the entire satisfaction of our readers, that the Pablavi is a remnant of the old Persian, and that the latter is a cognate branch of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, &c. We have likewise adduced some presumptive proofs that the Zend was copied from the sacred language of the Egyptians: we shall now endeavour to explain by what changes and revolutions the language first mentioned arrived at its present summit of beauty and perfection. 85 We have observed above, that the Scythians, whom Progress of the old Persians called Eazai, Saca, and whom the mo- the Persian dern call Turan, often invaded and overran Persia at a language. very early period. The consequence was, an infusion of Scythian or Tartarian terms, with which that language was early impregnated. This in all probability occasioned the first deviation from the original standard. The conquests of Alexander, and the dominion of his successors, must, one would imagine, introduce an inundation of Greek words. That event, however, seems to have affected the language in no considerable degree, at least very few Grecian terms occur in the modern Persian. The empire of the Arsacide or Parthians, we apprehend, produced a very important alteration upon the ancient Persian. They were a demi-Scythian tribe; and as they conquered the Persians, retained the dominion of those parts for several centuries, and actually incorpoRr 2 rated Persian rated with the natives, their language must necessarily Language. have given a deep tincture to the original dialect of the Persians. Sir William Jones has observed, that the letters of the inscriptions at Istakhr or Persepolis bear some resemblance to the old Runic letters of the Scandinavians. Those inscriptions we take to have been Parthian; and we hope, as the Parthians were a Tartarian clan, this conjecture may be admitted till another more plausible is discovered. The Persians, it is true, did once more recover the empire; and under them began the reign of the Deri and Parsi tongues: the former consisting of the old Persian and Parthian highly polished; the latter of the same languages in their uncultivated vernacular dress. In this situation the Persian lan. guage remained till the invasion of the Saracens in 636; when these barbarians overran and settled in that fine country; demolished every monument of antiquity, records, temples, palaces, every remain of ancient superstition; massacred or expelled the ministers of the Magian idolatry; and introduced a language, though not entirely new, yet widely differing from the old exemplar. 86 But before we proceed to give some brief account of the modern Persian, we must take the liberty to hazard one conjecture, which perhaps our adepts in modern Persian may not find themselves disposed to admit. In modern Persian we find the ancient Persian names wonderfully distorted and deflected from that form under which they appear in the Scripture, in Ctesias, Megasthenes, and the other Greek authors. From this it has been inferred, that not only the Greeks, but even the sacred historians of the Jews, have changed and metamorphosed them most unmercifully, in order to accommodate them to the standard of their own language. As to the Greeks, we know it was their constant practice, but we cannot believe so much of the Hebrews. We make no doubt of their writing and pronouncing the names of the Persian monarchs and governors of that nation nearly in the same manner with the native Persians. It is manifest, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that they neither altered the Tyrian and Phoenician names of persons and places when they had occasion to mention them, nor those of the Egyptians when they occurred in their writings. The Babylonian and Chaldaic names which are mentioned in the Old Testament vary nothing from the Chaldean original. No reason can be assigned why they should have transformed the Persian names more than the others. On the contrary, in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, we find the Persian names faithfully preserved through out. The fact, we imagine, is this: Our modern admirers Nothing of the Persic have borrowed their names of the ancient now exist older than conquest. ing in Per- kings and heroes of that country from romances and fasic, except bulous legends of more modern date and composition. the Zend, The archives of Persia were destroyed by the Saracens : the Saracen nothing of importance was written in that country till two centuries after the era of Mohammed. What succeeded was all fiction and romance. The authors of those entertaining compositions either forged names of heroes to answer their purpose, or laid hold on such as were celebrated in the ballads of their country, or preserved by vulgar tradition. The names were no doubt very different from those of the ancient kings and heroes of Persia; and probably many of them had under gone considerable changes during the continuance of the Persian Parthian empire. Upon this foundation has the learned Language. Mr Richardson erected a very irregular fabric, new, and to use his own expression, we think built upon pillars of ice. He has taken much pains to invalidate the credit of the Grecian histories of the Persian empire, by drawing up in battle array against their records legions of romantic writers, who were not born till near 1000 years after the events had taken place; and to complete the probability, who lived 200 years after all the chronicles of the Medes and Persians had been finally destroyed by the fury of the Saracens. After the decisive victory obtained over the Persians at Kadessa, their ancient government was overturned, their religion proscribed, their laws trampled under foot, and their civil transactions disturbed by the forcible introduction of the lunar for the solar kalendar; while, at the same time, their language became almost overwhelmed by an inundation of Arabic words: which from that period, religion, authority, and fashion, incorporated with their idiom. 87 From the seventh till the tenth century the Persian tongue, now impregnated with Arabic words, appears to have laboured under much discouragement and neglect. Bagdad, built by Almansor, became soon after the year 762 the chief residence of the caliphs, and the general resort of the learned and the ambitious from every quarter of the empire. At length the accession of the Buyah princes to the Persian throne marked in the tenth century the great epoch of the revival of Persian learning. About the year 977 the throne of Persia was filled by the great Azaduddawla; who first assumed the title of Sultan, afterwards generally adopted by eastern princes. He was born in Ispahan, and had a strong attachment to his native kingdom. His court, whether at Bagdad or in the capital of Persia, was the standard of taste and the favourite residence of genius. The native dialect of the prince was particularly distinguished, and became soon the general language of composition in almost every branch of polite learning. From the end. The most of the tenth till the 15th century may be considered as flourishing the most flourishing period of Persian literature. The period of epic poet Firdausi, in his romantic history of the Persian Persian li kings and heroes, displays an imagination and smoothness of numbers hardly inferior to Homer. The whole fanciful range of Persian enchantment he has interwoven in his poems, which abound with the noblest efforts of genius. This bard has stamped a dignity on the monsters and fictions of the east, equal to that which the prince of epic poetry has given to the mythology of ancient Greece. His language may at the same time be considered as the most refined dialect of the ancient Persian, the Arabic being introduced with, a very sparing hand: whilst Sadi, Jami, Hafiz, and other succeeding writers, in prose as well as verse, have blended in their works the Arabic without reserve; gaining perhaps in the nervous luxuriance of the one language what may seem to have been lost in the softer delicacy of the other. Hence Ebn Fekreddin Anju, in the preface to the dictionary called Farhang Jehanguiri, says, that the Deri and the Arabic idioms were the languages of heaven; God communicating to the angels his milder mandates in the delicate accents of the first, while his stern.commands were delivered in the rapid accents of the last. For near 300 years the literary fire of the Persians scems The Persian adjectives admit of no variation but in Persian the degrees of comparison. The comparative is form- Language. ed by adding ter, and the superlative by adding terin to the positive. The Persians have active and neuter verbs like other nations; but many of their verbs have both an active and neuter sense, which can be determined only by the construction. Those verbs have properly but one conjunction, and but three changes of tense: the imperative, the aorist, and the preterite; all the other tenses being formed by the help of particles or of auxiliary verbs. The passive voice is formed by adding the tenses of the substantive verb to the participle of the active. Persian seems indeed to have been almost extinguished; since, Language. during that time, hardly any thing of that people which deserves attention has appeared in Europe enough, however, bas already been produced, to inspire us with a very high opinion of the genius of the east. In taste, the orientals are undoubtedly inferior to the best writers of modern Europe; but in invention and sublimity, they are excelled, perhaps equalled, by none. The Persians affect a rhetorical luxuriance, which to a European wears the air of unnecessary redundance. If to these leading distinctions we add a peculiar tone of imagery, of metaphor, of allusion, derived from the difference of government, of manners, of temperament, and of such natural objects as characterise Asia from Europe; we shall see, at one view, the great points of variation between the writers of the east and west. Amongst the oriental historians, philosophers, rhetoricians, and poets, many will be found who would do honour to any age or people; whilst their romances, their tales, and their fables, stand upon a ground which Europeans have not yet found powers to reach. We might here quote the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Persian Tales, Pilpay's Fables, &c. 88 In the ancient language of Persia there were very few or no irregularities; the imperative, which is often irregular in the modern Persian, was anciently formed from the infinitive, by rejecting the termination eeden : for originally all infinitives ended in den, till the Arabs introduced their harsh consonants before that syllable, which obliged the Persians, who always affected a sweetness of pronunciation, to change the old termination of some verbs into ten, and by degrees the original The genius We shall now annex a few strictures on the genius of infinitive grew quite obsolete; yet they still retain the of the mo- that noble language; though it is our opinion that the ancient imperative, and the aorists which are formed from dera Persic. province of the philologist is to investigate the origin, it. This little irregularity is the only anomalous part of progress, and final improvement of a language, without the Persian language; which nevertheless far surpasses descending to its grammatical minutiae or peculiar in simplicity all other languages ancient or modern. idiomatic, distinctions. We have already observed, With respect to the more minute and intricate parts-` that the tongue under consideration is partly Arabic of this language, as well as its derivations, compositions, and partly Persian, though the latter generally has constructions, &c. we must remit our readers to Mithe ascendant, The former is nervous, impetuous, ninskie's Institutiones Lingua Turcicæ, cum rudimenand masculine; the latter is flowing, soft, and luxu- tis parallelis linguarum Arab. et Pers.; Sir William Fiant. Wherever the Arabic letters do not readily in- Jones's Persian Grammar; Mr Richardson's Arabian corporate with the Persian, they are either changed and Persian Dictionary; D'Herbelot's Bibl. Orient. ; into others or thrown away. Their letters are the Ara- Dr Hyde de Relig. vet. Pers. &c. Our readers, who bic with little variation; these being found more com- would penetrate into the innermost recesses of the Permodious and expeditious than the old letters of the sian history, colonies, antiquities, connections, dialects, Deri and Parsi. Their alphabet consists of 32 letters, may consult the last mentioned author, especially chap. which, like the Arabic, are read from right to left; Xxxv. De Persia et Persarum nominibus, et de motheir form and order will be learned from any gram- derna atque veteri lingua Persica, ejusque dialectis. mar of that language. The letters are divided into In the preceding inquiry we have followed other auvowels and consonants as usual. The Arabic charac- thors, whose accounts appeared to us more natural, ters, like those of the Europeans, are written in a va- and much less embarrassing. riety of different bands; but the Persians write their poetical works in the Talick, which answers to the most elegant of our Italic hands. 89 Resem There is a great resemblance between the Persian blance be- and English languages in the facility and simplicity of tween Per their form and construction: the former, as well as the sian and English. latter, has no difference of terminations to mark the The Persian substantives have but one variation of 90 To conclude this section, which might easily have Utility of been extended into a large volume, we shall only take the Ara the liberty to put our readers in mind of the vast utili. bian and ty of the Arabian and Persian languages. Numberless Persian lauevents are preserved in the writing of the orientals which guages. were never heard of in Europe, and must have for ever lain concealed from the knowledge of its inhabitants, had not these two tongues been studied and understood by the natives of this quarter of the globe. Many of those events have been transmitted to posterity in poems and legendary tales like the Runic fragments of the north, the romances of Spain, or the heroic ballads of our own country. Such materials as these, we imagine, may have suggested to Firdausi, the celebrated heroic poet of Persia, many of the adventures of his Shahnamé; which, like Homer when stript of the machinery of su pernatural beings, is supposed to contain much true history, and a most undoubted picture of the superstition aud manners of the times. The knowledge of these two languages has laid open to Europe all the treasures of oriental learning, and has enriched the minds of Britons with Persian with Indian science as much as the prudence of the reLanguage. gions has increased their wealth and enervated their constitution. Persian poetry. 92 The Sanscrit one ancient in the world. Before we conclude this section, we shall subjoin a few strictures on the nature of Persian poetry, in order to render our inquiry the more complete. The modern Persians borrowed their poetical measures from the Arabs they are exceedingly various and complicated ; they consist of 19 different kinds; but the most common of them are the Iambic or Trochaic measures, and a metre that chiefly consists of those compounded feet which the ancients called Exigits, which are composed of iambics and spondees alternately. In lyric poetry their verses generally consist of 12 or 16 syllables: they sometimes, but seldom, consist of 14. Some of their lyric verses contain 13 syllables; but the most common Persian verse is made up of 11; and in this measure are written all their great poems, whether upon heroic or moral subjects, as the works of Firdausi and Jami, the Bostar of Sadi, and the Mesnavi of Gelaleddin. This sort of verse answers to our common heroic rhyme, which was brought to so high a degree of perfection by Pope. The study of the Persian poetry is so much the more necessary, as there are few books or even letters written in that language, which are not interspersed with fragments of poetry. As to their prosody, nothing can be more easy and simple. When the student can read prose easily, he will with a little attention read poetry with equal facility. pe SECT. V. Sanscrit and Bengalese Languages. THE Sanscrit, though one of the most ancient lanof the most guages in the world, was little known even in Asia till about the middle of the present century. Since that languages riod, by the indefatigable industry of the very learned and ingenious Sir William Jones, and the other worthy members of that society of which he has the honour to be president, that noble and ancient language has at length been brought to light; and from it vast treasures of oriental knowledge will be communicated both to Europe and Asia; knowledge which, without the exertions of that happy establishment, must have lain concealed from the researches of mankind to the end of the world. In this section we propose to give to our readers such an account of that language as the limits of the present article, and the helps we have been able to procure, shall permit. 93 The Sanscrit language has for many centuries lain concealed in the hands of the bramins of Hindostan. It is by them deemed sacred, and is of consequence confined solely to the offices of religion. Its name imports the perfect language, or, according to the eastern style, the language of perfection; and we believe no language ever spoken by man is more justly intitled to that high epithet. The grand source of Indian literature, and the parent of almost every dialect from the Persian gulf to the China sea, is the Sanscrit ; a language of the most veneTraces of rable and most remote antiquity, which, though at preSanscrit in sent shut up in the libraries of the bramins, and approevery di- priated solely to the records of their religion, appears to Asia and have been current over most of the oriental world. Acelsewhere. cordingly traces of its original extent may be discovered in almost every district of Asia. Those who are ac5 strict of quainted with that language have often found the simi- Sanscrit litude of Sanscrit words to those of Persian and Ara- and Benga bic, and even of Latin and Greek; and that not in tech- lese Lan. nical and metaphorical terms, which refined arts and guages. improved manners might have occasionally introduced, but in the main ground-work of language, in monosyllables, the names of numbers, and appellations of such things as would be first discriminated on the immediate dawn of civilization. The ancient coins of many different and distant kingdoms of Asia are stamped with Sanscrit characters, and mostly contain allusions to the old Sanscrit mythology. Besides, in the names of persons and places, of titles and dignities, which are open to general notice, even to the farthest limits of Asia, may be found manifest traces of the Sanscrit. The scanty remains of Coptic antiquities afford little scope for comparison between that idiom and this primitive tongue; but there still exists sufficient ground to conjecture, that, at a very early period, a correspondence did subsist between these two nations. The Hindoos pretend, that the Egyptians frequented their country as disciples, not as instructors; that they came to seek that liberal education and those sciences in Hindostan, which none of their own countrymen had sufficient knowledge to impart. Perhaps we may examine the validity of this claim hereafter. But though numberless changes and revolutions have from time to time convulsed Hindostan, that part of it which lies between the Indus and the Ganges still pre- 94 serves that language whole and inviolate. Here they Number of still offer a thousand books to the perusal of the curious; books in many of which have been religiously handed down from the earliest periods of human existence. that lan. guage. 95 The fundamental part of the Sanscrit language is divided into three classes: Dhaat, or roots of verbs, which some call primitive elements; Shubd, or original nouns; and Evya, or particles. The latter are ever indeclinable, as in other languages; but the words comprehended in the two former classes must be prepared by certain additions and inflexions to fit them for a place in composition. And here it is that the Characterart of the grammarian has found room to expand it-istics of it. self, and to employ all the powers of refinement. Not a syllable, not a letter, can be added or altered but by regimen; not the most trifling variation of the sense, in the minutest subdivision of declension or conjugation, can be effected without the application of several rules: all the different forms for every change of gender, number, case, person, tense, mood, or degree, are methodi cally arranged for the assistance of the memory, according to an unerring scale. The number of the radical or elementary parts is about 700; and to these, as to the verbs of other languages, a very plentiful stock of verbal nouns owes its origin; but these are not thought to exceed those of the Greek either in quantity or variety. To the triple source of words mentioned above, every term of truly Indian original may be traced by a laborious and critical analysis. All such terms as are thoroughly proved to bear no relation to any one of the Sanscrit roots, are considered as the production of some remote and foreign idiom, subsequently ingrafted upon the main stock; and it is conjectured, that a judicious investigation of this principle would throw a new light Sanscrit light upon the first invention of many arts and sciences, and Benga- and open a fresh mine of philological discoveries. We lese Lan shall now proceed to give as exact an account of the guages. constituent parts of this language as the nature of our design will permit. 96 It is copious and ner 97 Sanscrit The Sanscrit language is very copious and nervous. The first of these qualities arises in a great measure from the vast number of compound words with which it is almost overstocked. "The Sanscrit (says Sir William Jones) like the Greek, Persian, and German, delights in compounds; but to a much higher degree, and indeed to such excess, that I could produce words of more than 20 syllables; not formed ludicrously like that by which the buffoon in Aristophanes describes a feast, but with perfect seriousness, on the most solemn occasions, and in the most elegant works." But the style of its best authors is wonderfully concise. In the regularity of its etymology it far exceeds the Greek and Arabic; and, like them, has a prodigious number of derivatives from each primary root. The gramma tical rules also are numerous and difficult, though there are not many anomalies. As one instance of the truth of this assertion, it may be observed, that there are seven declensions of nouns, all used in the singular, the dual, and the plural numbers, and all of them differently formed, according as they terminate with a consonant, with a long or a short vowel; and again, different also as they are of different genders: not a nominative case can be formed to any one of these nouns without the application of at least four rules, which vary likewise with each particular difference of the nouns, as above stated: add to this, that every word in the language may be used through all the seven declensions, which is a full proof of the difficulty of the idiom. The Sanscrit grammars are called Beeākĕrun, of which there are many composed by different authors; some too abstruse even for the comprehension of most bramins, and others too prolix to be ever used as references. One of the shortest, named the Sărăsootee, contains between two and three hundred pages, and was compiled by Anoobhōōtēē Seroopēnām Achārige, with a conciseness that can scarcely be paralleled in any other language. The Sanscrit alphabet contains 50 letters; and it alphabet. is one boast of the bramins, that it exceeds all other alphabets in this respect but it must be observed, that as of their 34 consonants, near half carry combined sounds, and that six of their vowels are merely the correspondent long ones to as many which are short, the advantage seems to be little more than fanciful. Besides these, they have a number of characters which Mr Halhed calls connected vowels, but which have not been explained by the learned president of the Asiatic Society. + Plate The Sanscrit character used in Upper Hindostan + CCCCXVI. is said to be the same original letter that was first delivered to the people by Brahma, and is now called Diewnagur, or the language of angels, which shows the high opinion that the bramins have entertained of that character. Their consonants and vowels are wonder fully, perhaps whimsically, modified and diversified; to Sans rit enumerate which, in this place, would contribute very and Bengalittle either to the entertainment or instruction of our lese Lanreaders. All these distinctions are marked in the Beids_guages. (L), and must be modulated accordingly; so that they produce all the effect of a laboured recitative: but by an attention to the music of the chant, the sense of the passage reeited equally escapes the reader and the audience. It is remarkable, that the Jews in their synagogues chant the Pentateuch in the same kind of melody; and it is supposed that this usage has descended to them from the remotest ages. 98 The Sanscrit poetry comprehends a very great va-Poetry. rietry of different metres, of which the most common are these: The munnee hurrench chhund, or line of 12 or 19 syllables, which is scanned by three syllables in a foot, and the most approved foot is the anapæst. The cabee chhund, or line of eleven syllables. The anushtofe chhund, or line of eight syllables. The poems are generally composed in stanzas of four lines, called ashlogues, which are regular or irregular. The most common ashlogue is that of the anushtofe chhund, or regular stanza of eight syllables in the line. In this measure the greatest part of the Mahābāret is composed. The rhyme in this kind of stanza should be alternate; but the poets do not seem to be very nice in the observance of a strict correspondence in the sounds of the terminating syllables, provided the feet of the verse are accurately kept. This short anushtofe ashlogue is generally written by two verses in one line, with a pause between; so the whole then assumes the form of a long distich. The irregular stanza is constantly called anyachhund, of whatever kind of irregularity it may happen to consist. It is most commonly compounded of the long line cabee chhund and the short anushtofe chhund alternately; in which form it bears some resemblance to the most common lyric measure of the English. 99 Perhaps our readers may feel a curiosity to be informed of the origin of this oriental tongue. If we believe the bramins themselves, it was coeval with the race of man, as was observed towards the beginning of this section. The bramins, however, are not the only people who ascribe a kind of eternity to their own particular dialect. We find that the Sanscrit in its primitive de- Origin of stination was appropriated to the offices of religion. It this tongue. is indeed pretended, that all the other dialects spoken in Hindostan were emanations from that fountain, to which they might be traced back by a skilful etymologist. This, we think, is an argument of no great consequence, since we believe that all the languages of Europe, by the same process, may be deduced from any one of those current in that quarter of the globe. By a parity of reason, all the different dialects of Hindostan may be referred to the language in question. Indeed, if we admit the authority of the Mosaic history, all languages whatsoever are derived from that of the first man. It is allowed that the language under consideration is impregnated with Persian, Chaldaic, Phoenician, Greek, and (1) The books which contain the religion of the bramins.. |