ON PROBLEMS IN INDO-GERMAN PHILOLOGY. 147 



synon^^tn. There are some Semitic roots which we should not understand 

 without the help of the Sclavonic ; thus H^D dhdba'h is generally supposed 



to signify " he sacrificed ;" but HUtO dhabbd'h means " a cook," D^H^D^};? 



Viai^arfAf Aim means "ripe melons," and the Arabic i^sjjs dhaba'h means "he 



cooked," •\j^ dhabbd'h is "a cook," and ^nIaL dhabaik means "hot 



winds," so that we are led to the well-known Sclavonic word tep-lei, " warm," 

 whence the name of the hot baths of Tceplitz ; and we may assign the same 

 origin to the title of the Scythian goddess of fire, which, as Herodotus tells 

 us, was Tabid. We might recognise the monosyllabic root of *1I1"T dd-bar 



in ver-bum, as we might in the Sclavonic ^o-z;or-iY', but it is only in the Rus- 

 sian that we have the genuine compound do-varei, as in raz-dovarei, " fami- 

 liar discourse." The Greek SoXix^s belongs to the Pelasgic or Sclavonian 

 state of the language ; in the Sanscrit dirgha, Zend daraga, Behistun daragOf 

 &c. the / is changed into r, but in all the Sclavonian forms the I is retained, 

 as in dolgie, dlauhy, dlugi, &c., and the same is the case in Arabic JUs 

 dhdl for dhol ; Hebrew vH-J gd-dol, " great," H 7T and 7 71 ddldh and 



ddlal, " to hang down." These examples, which are taken at random and 

 might be multiplied to any extent, will suffice to show the nature of the re- 

 semblance between Sclavonian and Semitic roots. Nor is the resemblance 

 confined to the roots. The mode of using them is also marked by features 

 of similarity, and we have some cases in which these classes of idioms pre- 

 sent solitary examples of a corresponding process of thought. Thus, it is a 

 peculiarity of the Semitic race to regard "four," and especially its multiple 

 "forti/," as a round number or expression of indefinite pluralitj'. Similarly, 

 in Russian, we find that, although the other numbers are formed on a prin- 

 ciple of internal development, the term for " forty " is so-rok', which is not 

 connected with chetere, " four," and is obviously a collective noun formed 

 with the preposition so. Again, in common Hebrew we never find the sim- 

 ple relative she, but always the lengthened secondary form 'hasher. Simi- 

 larly in Sclavonic the simple form koe is only used in poetry ; the lengthened 

 form hotorei, hotoraia, kotoroe, which is equivalent to Koropolos, being invari- 

 ably employed in common discourse. The form kto is a variation of the im- 

 personal chfo. 



(2.) But agreements of sound and even of usage are less conclusive, as 

 proofs of common origin and ethnical contact, than a communion in those 

 principles which regulate the structure of a language. And this remark 

 particularly applies to the comparison of the Sclavonian language which 

 exhibits a living power of etymology in its most active state, with the Semitic 

 languages in which the development of the form has been checked and the 

 whole stock of inflected words petrified into a congeries of triliteral fossils. 

 Every person, who is acquainted with the Sclavonian languages, must have 

 been stj-uck by the fact, that none of the other Indo-Germanic idioms ex- 

 hibit the monosyllabic roots in such a constant state of accretion or agglu- 

 tination with the affix, prefix, or both. And with regard to the prepositional 

 prefix in particular, there is certainly no class of languages which can vie 

 with the Russian, i. e. the purest Sclavonian, in the number, variety, and 

 constant use of these distinctive initials. Now modern philology leads us 

 to the conclusion that the Semitic languages were originally built upon the 

 same system of monosyllabic roots as the Sanscrit and Greek, and that the 

 additions by which every such element is accompanied in the existing state 

 of the language are formative appendages belonging to the time when the 



