68 Did Science originate in India ? 



pean languages, which indeed he has not been able to make 

 good. But this can be easily separated from, and happily 

 tends in no way to obscure, the flood of light which he has been 

 enabled to throw over their affinities. Respecting this last, we 

 need not go into any lengthened detail, but refer to the book 

 itself. The roots and structures of the western and southern 

 European languages, the Greek, Latin, Welch, Sclavonic, are 

 traced up to the Teutonic, of which an old and authentic mo- 

 nument remains in a translation of the Scriptures, made in the 

 fourth century, for the Maeso-Goths, a people inhabiting near 

 the shores of the Black Sea, and not remote from the Thracian 

 Bosphorus. Roots, similar to those found in the Teutonic, are 

 pointed out in the few monuments of the Median and Persian 

 languages, which have been preserved by the western historians, 

 leaving no doubt that the Teutonic and these languages were 

 very closely related to each other. The Zend-avesta, an ancient 

 Median or Persian work, contains a profusion of the same roots. 



A few facts that we can glean out of ancient history, confirm 

 the conclusions deduced from these monuments of ancient lan- 

 guages. Thus in the Anabasis, we find Xenophon's interpreter, 

 speaking to the Armenians in the language of the Persians ; and 

 in Herodotus' account of the army of Xerxes, we find him sta- 

 ting that the Armenians and Phrygians wore the same armour, 

 and that the former of these were a colony of the latter ; and 

 also that the Phrygians had formerly inhabited in the country 

 of the Macedonians. All this implies at least a common origin;, 

 and common language of the Persians, Armenians, Phrygians, 

 and some early inhabitants of Macedonia. 



We do not need, then, to call a colony out of India to plant 

 the Sanscrit roots in Europe. We find them, at an early age, 

 stretching along the eastern side of the Tigris, pointing on one 

 hand towards Europe, through Asia Minor, and by the shores 

 of the Black Sea, and on the other towards India through 

 Parthia. 



We thus discover, in very remote times, two great families of 

 languages, very unlike both in their structures and roots, namely, 

 the family having the European and Sanscrit roots, on the one 

 hand, and that which includes the Semitic tongues, the Chaldee, 

 Arabic, Hebrew, &c. on the other, marching with each other by 



