258 MAJOR 0. RB. CONDER, R.E., D.C.L., LL.D., M.B.A.S., 
who have spoken on my paper and who are all known to have 
more experience in philological subjects than I possess, and 
especially I feel honoured by the presence of Professor Legge, who 
is so well known to us as one of the most distinguished Chinese 
scholars in England, and whose Chinese translations I have had 
occasion to read. There are two points in his remarks that I should 
like to mention: one is in regard to the decayed, broken down condi- 
tion of Chinese. I intended to refer to the vocabulary, not the 
idiom, or construction of the language, which is most distinctive. 
But I think,comparing the oldest known Chinese dialect (Cantonese) 
with the Mandarin dialect, any scholar would allow that a con- 
siderable abrasion has gone on in the vocabulary of the Chinese. 
The other point is the question of the single origin of language. 
That is exactly the question I wished to raise; but I do not 
consider myself capable of settling it—I only wished to raise a 
discussion on the subject. It appears to me that as the Asiatic 
peoples are supposed by all scholars to have lived, originally, within 
a comparatively short distance of each other—not more than 500 or 
1,000 miles apart, there is nothing primd facie improbable in the 
theory of their having been, originally, a single stock and their 
languages having an extremely remote common origin. 
With regard to Mr. Pinches, he always treats me with kindness, 
and I have confidence in him as an Akkadian scholar, for I regard 
him as the safest we have in England. There are one or two 
remarks that he made as to Chinese in regard to the works of 
Mr. Ball, to which he referred, and which I have read with great 
interest. His conclusions would go in favour of my conclusions. 
As to the word kurrd for horse, in the Mongolian language, it 
simply means a galloping animal. As to the word dingir I am 
of Mr. Pinches’ opinion, that it means spirit and comes from a 
root which means to live or breathe or be alive. 
Mr. Macdonald’s remarks were of great interest to me because 
I know nothing of Gaelic, though I am aware that the Celtic 
Latin group is, perhaps, the oldest of all Aryan groups of 
language, and the discovery of vowel harmony in that group goes 
still further towards the observation of the general law which to a 
great extent has died out in many languages and survived in 
others. 
Dr. Koelle’s remarks on the harmony of consonants are of great 
value. Ihave noticed in the Turkish that what he has said to- 
