146 REPORT — 1851. 



nised a definite article, prepositional determinatives of the oblique cases, 

 personal pronouns prefixed rather than affixed to the verb-form, and even 

 the peculiar modifications which are generall)'^ known as conjugational 

 varieties of the Semitic verb. On the other hand, it has long been an 

 opinion maintained by ancient orientalists that the Chaldceans, Kasdim, or 

 Kurds, were an Indo-German tribe who descended from their mountains and 

 conquered the plains of Mesopotamia about the time of the Prophet Isaiah. 

 Michaelis and Reinhold Forster have gone so far as to claim for them a 

 Sclavonian affinity, and Gesenius, who rejects this hypothesis, still connects 

 them with the Medo-Persians. But if they were of the Median stock, they 

 were also Sarmatian or Sclavonians. And thus, starting from two opposite 

 points of view, we come to the same conclusion, and find the Indo-Germans 

 and Semites in close contact, if not intermingled with one another, on the 

 banks of the Tigris. Every step which we take in the way of induction 

 confirms our d-priori reasoning, and the internal evidences of language en- 

 able us to arrive at a demonstrative result. 



The distinctive characteristics of the Semitic languages may be said to 

 consist in the generally triliteral form of their uninflected words, and in the 

 invariably syntactical contrivances by which the whole mechanism of speech 

 is carried on. I seek the cause of this in the early adoption of alphabetical 

 writing, in the establishment of a literature, and in the unusually frequent 

 intermixture of cognate races. The distinctive characteristics of the Scla- 

 vonian languages, as they appear in Europe, may be said to consist in the 

 perfection of the etymological forms and in the total absence of merely syn- 

 tactical contrivances, and the cause of these peculiarities may be sought in 

 the known fact that they have been more free than any other branch of the 

 Indo-Germanic family from intermixture or fusion, and that their literature 

 is of moi'e recent origin than that of any great section of the human race. 

 Thus we may say, that the Sclavonian and Semitic tongues stand in direct 

 antithesis or contrast, as far as their state or condition is concerned. And 

 if, in spite of this, they still retain marks of their original contact, we must 

 admit that the argument from internal evidence is the strongest possible, 

 because it is obtained under the most unfavourable circumstances. 



Now the facts, on which I rely as conclusive, are these : — (1.) that there 

 are verbal coincidences between the Sclavonic and Semitic languages which 

 cannot be accidental, which are not traceable to any subsequent intercourse 

 between the two races, and which are not common to the Sclavonic and other 

 Indo-Germanic idioms ; (2.) that the Sclavonian language alone furnishes 

 parallels to the Semitic conjugations, and presents words in such a state of 

 agglutination as would be liable to the triliteral pollarding from which the 

 existing system of Semitic articulation seems to have sprung. 



(1.) There is no word more peculiar to the Semitic languages than the 

 expression for goodness and convenience, which in Hebrew is ^\\0y dhob^ 

 in Arabic j,«t> debr. I have remarked elsewhere that the articulation of the 

 Hebrew £2 must be a medial rather than a tenuis aspirated, and the Arabic 

 synonym shows that it is so in this particular case. Now this root, which does 

 not occur in any other Indo-Germanic language, is as common in Sclavonic as 

 in Hebrew, and, what is remarkable, it constantly occurs with the affix r, which 

 it exhibits in Arabic. Thus we have in Polish dob, " a suitable time," dob-ro, 

 in both Russian and Polish, with the signification " good," " useful," &c., 

 with an infinite number of derivatives. Although we might find other Indo- 

 Germanic analogies for the root of the Russian doroga, " a road," it is only 



in the Hebrew *^y\ dei-eh and the Arabic ^0 derej that we have the exact 



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