ORIENTAL LANGUAGES. 53 



Word : and the Pehlvi (or Pehlevi) was the common language of 

 ancient Persia: both being closely allied, it is said, to the Sanscrit. 

 The Guebres or Fire Worshippers spoke the Parsee ; which also 

 belongs to the Sanscrit family ; and from these ancient languages, 

 the modern Persian is chiefly derived. It contains, however, many 

 Arabic words, introduced by the Mohamedan conquest ; and it is 

 written in Arabic characters, though slightly altered : but for this 

 reason, unlike the remaining languages of the Sanscrit family, it is 

 written from right to left. It is said to bear much resemblance to the 

 German, both in its structure, and individual words. 



The Sanscrit language proper, was doubtless once spoken in 

 Hindoostan ; but has long been a dead language, used only by the 

 Brahmins, in their sacred books and ceremonies. Its name signifies 

 perfect ; and the Brahmins also call it Deva-Nagaree, (or Devu- 

 nagari,) signifying the divine ; as they declare it to be the language 

 of the gods. Its alphabet, containing fifty characters, is given in 

 Plate I. No. 10 ; reading as in the European languages, from left 

 to right. The first sixteen characters are called vowels, though 

 some of them embrace consonant sounds : and they are arranged in 

 pairs, a short and a long vowel together ; with a slight distinction 

 in the characters. Thus, the first vowel, u, has the obscure sound 

 of u in but, or a in America : and the names of all the consonants 

 are formed by appending this sound to their own, when in combina- 

 tion ; as ku, khu, gu, ghu, gnu, and so of the rest. 



This alphabet has been said to comprise all the fundamental sounds 

 of all the European languages ; and the language itself has been said 

 to resemble the Greek, so much that Gibbon suspected it to have 

 borrowed therefrom : though we think it more probable that the 

 Greeks borrowed from the Sanscrit. The reading of this language, 

 is extremely difficult; owing to the numerous complex characters, 

 formed by uniting two or more letters, in one character, when they 

 occur in the same syllable. The number of these compound letters 

 is not less than five or six hundred ; though they resemble the letters 

 from which they are derived. In the specimen of a Sanscrit phrase, 

 given in Plate I. No. 11, jiigutung, (of the worlds); kurukuh, 

 (the maker"); Krishnuh, (Krishnoo), the dot over the third letter, 

 stands for the vowel ung ; the two dots following, for the vowel uh ; 

 and the first two characters in the third word are the compound let- 

 ters, kri and shnu ; the straight mark at the end being the mark for 

 a period. 



The Pracrit, or common language of Hindoostan, comprehends 

 the Hindostanee, in the north ; the Bengalee, in the east ; and the 

 Tamul, including the Mahratta, Carnara and Telinga, in the south : 

 all of these dialects being derived from the Sanscrit. The mixed 

 languages of Ceylon, and the region around the Indus, are called the 

 Magadhi or Misra. The Bali, which resembles the Sanscrit, is the 

 sacred language of the Boodhists in Ceylon, Birmah, and Thibet ; 

 and is written in peculiar, quadrangular characters. The Malay 

 language, which is derived partly from the Sanscrit, though written 

 in Arabic characters, has been called, from its soft, liquid sounds, the 



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