216 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



(German, braue ;) nasa, the nose ; karu, the hand, (Gr. cheir?) 

 genu, the knee, (Lat. genu ,) ped, the foot, (Lat. pen, pedis ;) 

 hrti, the heart ; jecur, the liver, (Lat. jecur ;) stara, a star ; 

 gela, cold, (Lat. g&UL, ice ;) aghni, fire, (Lat. ig-ww ;) dhara, 

 the earth, (Lat. term, Gaelic, tir ;) arrivi, a river; wow, a ship, 

 (Gr. waws, Lat. navis ,-) g-Aaw, a cow ; sarpam, a serpent. 



The inferences from these verbal coincidences were con- 

 firmed in a striking manner when Bopp and others investi- 

 gated the grammatical structure of this family of languages. 

 Dr. Wiseman pronounces that the great philologist just 

 named, " by a minute and sagacious analysis of the Sanskrit 

 verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other 

 members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and 

 positive affinity." It was now discovered that the peculiar 

 terminations or inflections by which persons are expressed 

 throughout the verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, 

 have their foundations in pronouns ; the pronoun was simply 

 placed at the end, and thus became an inflection. " By an 

 analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those 

 existing in all the other languages were cleared of their 

 anomalies ; the verb substantive, which in Latin is composed 

 of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here found both 

 existing in regular form ; the Greek conjugations, with all 

 their complicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and 

 reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a variety of 

 ways, which a few years ago would have appeared chimerical. 

 Even our own language may sometimes receive light from 

 the study of distant members of our family. Where, for 

 instance, are we to seek for the root of our comparative better? 

 Certainly not in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic 

 dialects in which the same anomaly exists. But in the 

 Persian we have precisely the same comparative, behter, with 

 exactly the same signification, regularly formed from its 

 positive beh, good." ( 87 ) 



The second great family of languages is the Syro-Plmni- 

 cian, comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and 

 Gheez or Abyssinian, being localized principally in the 



