226 Comparative Philology [ April, 
which he divides the tongues of the whole human race appear to 
have originated in entire independence of one another, and are each 
expressive of the idiosyncrasy of a distinct family of mankind. I 
hope I shall be able in the course of my present investigation fairly 
to controyert this bold assertion, supported as it is by Renan 
(‘ Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques’) and many other 
authors of the same school. A later and much better classification 
is that adopted by Professor Max Miiller, who divides all the lan- 
guages of mankind into three great families—the Aryan, Semitic, 
and Turanian. The Aryan or Indo-European comprises the San- 
skrit and its modern derivatives, also Persian, Greek, Latin, and all 
the Keltic, Teutonic, and Slavonic languages of ancient and modern 
Europe. The Semitic family consists of Hebrew, Arabic, Eastern 
and Western Aramean, commonly called Chaldee and Syriac, and 
some other languages and dialects which were anciently spoken in 
Palestine, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. The 
Turanian comprises the Chinese and all other languages which still 
as in past ages remain extensively agglutinative. Max Miller 
thinks the Aryan and Semitic are the only families of speech deserv- 
ing to be so called, and a very few of the languages of these two 
families will, at this time, exclusively engage our attention. 
It is a very interesting circumstance that many important facts 
may be ascertained relative to the state and civilization of man even 
in pre-historic times, from the existence of certain words in any 
family of languages. One great fact is, that before the first sepa- 
ration of the Aryan family of mankind which had most probably its 
original dwelling-place “as far east as the western slopes of the 
Belurtag and Mustag, near the sources of the Oxus and Yaxartes, 
the highest elevation of Central Asia,” and long before the dawn- 
ings of history, civilization had made rapid strides. On this subject 
Professor Max Miller, who, although a foreigner, expresses himself 
with all the force, perspicuity, and felicity of style of the very best 
English authors, says, “It can be proved by the evidence of lan- 
guage that before their separation the Aryans led the life of agricul- 
tural nomads, a life such as Tacitus describes that of the ancient 
Germans. They knew the arts of ploughing, of making roads, of 
building ships, of weaving and sewing, and of erecting houses: they 
had counted at least as far as one hundred. They had domesticated 
the most important animals - the cow, the horse, the sheep, the dog ; 
they were acquainted with the most useful metals, and had recog- 
nized the bonds of blood and the bonds of marriage ; they followed 
their leaders and kings, and the distinction between right and 
wrong was fixed by laws and customs. They were impressed with 
the idea of a Divine Bemg, and they invoked it by various names. 
All this, as I said, can be proved by the evidence of language. We 
could not find, for instance, the same name for house in Sanskrit, 
