CONCLUSION. 151 



tinent of Europe and America. According to Rask, therefore, the Scythian would 

 form a layer of language extending in Asia from the White Sea to the valleys of 

 Caucasus, in America from Gronland southward, and in Europe (as Rask accepts 

 Arndt's views) from Finland as far as Britain, Gaul, and Spain. This original 

 substratum was broken up first by Celtic inroads ; secondly by Gothic; and thirdly 

 by Sclavonic immigrations ; so that traces appear like the peaks of mountains and 

 promontories out of a general inundation." (Vol. I. p. 272-3. )* 



As the affinities claimed in the above extracts are not those of verbal significa- 

 tion but grammatical construction, the classification of American languages with 

 those comprehended in the term Turanian amounts simply to this; that the struc- 

 ture of the former exhibits that stage of advancement from an inorganic, or mono- 

 syllabic dialect, which is indicated by the system of agglutination ; in other words, 

 it belongs to the oldest organic stage. 2 



The admitted order of development in forms of speech appears to be 1st, the 

 monosyllabic, or inorganic, of which the Chinese and the "so called Original 

 People," in the Malayan Peninsula, furnish examples; 3 2d, the agglutinated; 3d, 

 the inflected, or highest form. But while this division corresponds with the relative 

 antiquity of the three forms, ethnologists do not agree in supposing the last to have 

 necessarily, in all cases, passed through the two previous stages. 4 



According to Prof. Midler's translation of grammatical conclusions into historical 

 language, the first migration from the common centre of mankind proceeded 

 eastward, where the Asiatic language was arrested at the first stage of its growth, 

 and where the Chinese, as a broken link, presents a reflection of the earliest con- 

 solidation of human speech. The second dispersion was that of the Turanian 

 tribes, who went in two divisions, Northern and Southern. In the first division 

 are comprehended the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tartaric, and Finnic branches. In the 

 second the Taic, Malaic, Bhotiya, and Tamulic branches. He supposes that these 

 divisions had not attained to any social or political consolidation before they were 

 broken up into different colonies ; that they broke up, carrying away each a portion 

 of their common language — and hence their similarity ; but they possessed as yet 

 nothing traditional, nothing like a common inheritance in language or thought, 

 and hence their differences. In secluded districts these differences would ulti- 

 mately "change the whole surface of grammar and dictionary." The American 



I Prof. Miiller, in his " Last Results of Turanian Researches." Bnnsen, I. p. 484, says : — 



" The Greenland language has been pointed out as showing a transition into American dialects ; and 

 the researches of physical science have already indicated the islands east of Siberia as the only bridge 

 on which the seeds of Asia could have been carried to the New World." 



Yet neither Rask nor Mullcr intend to imply that Greenland is to be considered a route of migra- 

 tion from Europe, as the islands referred to were from Asia. The mixed character of the Greenland 

 language is otherwise explained. 



II The Turanian dialects share one thing in common— they all represent a state of language before its 

 individualization by the Arian and Semitic types. — Max Mullcr in Bunsen's Phil, of Un. Hist., II. 

 476. 



3 Pickering's Races of Men, Bohn's edition, p. 305. 

 * Bnnsen, Phil. ofUn. Hist., I. p. 283. 



