Sanscrit Writing and Language. 1 23 



not unfrequently disappearing,* does so, exactly according to rules which, for 

 every case, determine the substitutions that are to be made ; and that in so pre- 

 cise and definite a manner, that the student can always recover the root ; — a 

 circumstance which, as 1 conceive, strongly marks out a considerable part of the 

 Sanscrit structure as artificial, and draws a broad line of distinction between it 

 and all natural languages. 



In the fourth place, " to be" is expressed in Sanscrit by two different verbs, 

 which in the first person singular are, ^fffST ASM?, from the dhdtu 3JCT AS, 

 and i^^ffjf BH«Va Mi, from the dhdtu i^ BHm ; but of these the latter is 

 conjugated through all the moods and tenses of the active, passive, and middle 

 voice ; — a peculiarity of which, I believe, no instance is to be found in any natural 

 language. In fact the verb substantive, though in many languages used as an 

 auxiliary in the expression of passive forms of thought, does not, when employed 

 as a principal, in strictness admit of the distinction of voices, and in consequence 

 is generally confined to the inflexions of a single voice. There are, however, 

 several exceptions to this restriction ; in Hebrew, for example, the verb riTt, 

 HaYaH, is found in a few of the passive inflexions of the preterite and the par- 

 ticiple benoni ; in Greek, elfii is used in the imperfect and first future middle ; 

 and in Welsh, bod occurs in the third person singular of the tenses of the passive 

 voice.t Many other such instances might be adduced ; and it is only accordant 



* Mr. Carey enumerates the following ways of forming derivatives from dhatus : " 1 . by pre- 

 fixing an inseparable preposition ; 2. by inserting a syllable or syllables between the root and the 

 other additions ; 3. by a substitution of other letters for some or all the original letters of the dhatu ; 

 4. by affixes ; 3. by the terminations which make the inflexions of nouns and verbs. — Carey's Gram. 

 pp. 11-12. 



t See Dr. Pritchard's Supplement, &c. p. 174. I take this opportunity of noticing an observa- 

 tion of Dr. Pritchard's respecting the Welsh language, which in a philological point of view is very 

 valuable. By a comparison of the personal inflexions of the verbs with the pronominal suffixes to 

 other words, he has proved those inflexions to consist of fragments of pronouns, in hke manner as in 

 Hebrew ; or, to give his conclusion on the subject in his own way of expressing it, he has clearly 

 shown, " that the Welsh verbal terminations are in general merely abbreviated or modified pronouns, 

 affixed to the verbal roots ; and this conclusion does not rest merely upon a probable conjecture, on 

 which the grammarians of other Indo-European languages have been obliged to found it, but on the 

 more substantial fact, that the very terminations in question are actually to be identified with the 



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