The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-01-06
The Ancient Language o'Lndia.

Every child now learns at school that
English is an Aryan or Indo- European
language; that it belongs to the Teutonic
branch, and that this branch, together
with the Italic, Greek, Celtic, Slavonic,
Iranic and Indie branches, all spring
from the same stock, and form together
the great Aryan or 1ndo-E European fam
lily of speech. But this, though it is
taught now in our elementary schools,
was really, but fifty years ago, like the
opening of new horizon of the world
of the intellect, and the extension of
feeling of closest fraternity that made
us feel at home where before we had
been strangers, and changed millions of
so-called barbarians into our own kith
and kin. To speak the same language
drunk the same milk; and Sanskrit, the
ancient language of India, is substan-
TALLY the same language as Greek, Latin
and Anglo Saxon. This is a lesson
which we should never have learned but
from study of Indian language and
literature; and if India had taught us
nothing else, it would have taught us
more than almost any other language
ever did.
1t is quite amusing, though instructive
also, to read what was written by schol-
airs and philosophers when this new light
first dawned on the world. They would
not have it; they would not believe that
there could be any community of origin
between the people of Athens and Rome
and the so-called Niggers, of India The
classical scholars secuted the idea, and |
myself still remember the time, when [
was a student at Leipzig and began to
study Sanskrit, with what contempt any
remarks on Sanskrit or comparative
grammar were treated by my teachers,
men such as Gottfried Hermann, Haupt,
Westermann, Stallbaum, and others, No
one for time ever was SO completely
laughed down as Prof. Bopp, when he
first published his Comparative Gram
mar of SansKrit, Zend, Greek, Latin and
Gothic" All hands were against him;
and if in comparing Greek and Latin
with Sanskrit, Gothic, Celtic, Slavonic,
or Persian, he happened to have placed
one single accent wrong, the shouts of
those who knew nothing but Greek and
Latin, and probably looked in their
Greek dictionaries to be quite sure of
their accents, would never end. Dugald
Stewart, rather than admit relation
ship between Hindus and Scots, would
rather believe that the whole Sanskrit
language and the whole of Sanskrit lit
erature mind, a literature extending
over three thousand years, and larger
than the ancient literature of either
Greece or Rome-was forgery of those
swily priests, the Brahmans. | remem-
Der, too, how, when | was at school at
Leipzig (and very good school it was,
with such masters as Noble, Forbiger,
Funkhaenel and Palm-an old school,
too, which could boast of Leibnitz
among its former pupils) II remember,
l say, one of our masters (Dr. Klee)
telling us some afternoon, when it was
too hot to do any serious work, that
there was a language spoken in India
which was much the same as Greek and
Latin, nay, as German and Russian. At
first we thought it was a joke, but when
one saw the parallel columns of numer-
fals, pronouns and verbs in Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin written on the black
board, one felt in the presence of facts,
before which one had to bow. All one S
ideas of Adam and Eve, and the Para
disc, and the tower of Babel, and Shem,
Ham and Japhet, with Homer and
Eneas and Virgil, too, seemed to be
whirling round and round, till at last
one picked up the fragments and tried to
build up new world, and to live with u
new historical consciousness. Conten-
porary ReUiew.