﻿t> THE FOURTH DISCOURSE: 



composition of the fifty Indian letters ; but the Arah'tc 

 roots are as universally triliteral, so that the compo- 

 sition of the twenty-eight Arabian letters would give 

 near tzvo-and-tiventy thousand elements of the language: 

 and this will demonstrate the surprising extent o c it ; 

 for, although great numbers of its roots are confessed- 

 ly lost, and some, perhaps, were never in use ; yet, 

 if we suppose ten thousand of them (without reck- 

 oning quadriliterals) to exist, and each of them to 

 admit on\y Jive variations, one with another, in form- 

 ing derivative nouns, even then a perfect Arabic dic- 

 tionary ought to contain fifty thousand words, each 

 of which may receive a multitude of changes by the 

 rules of grammar. The derivatives in Sanscrit are 

 considerably more numerous : but a farther compa- 

 rison between the two languages is here unnecessary, 

 since, in whatever light we view them, they seem 

 totally distinct, and must have been invented by two 

 different races of men ; nor do I recollect a single 

 word in common between them, except Sum], the 

 plural of Siraj, meaning both a lamp and the sun ; the 

 Sanscrit name of which is, in Bengal, pronounced 

 Surja ; and even this resemblance may be purely ac- 

 cidental. We may easily believe with the Hindus, 

 that not even Indra himself, and his heavenly hands, 

 much less any mortal, ever comprehended in his mind 

 such an ocean of Words as their sacred language con- 

 tains ; and with the Arabs, that no man uninspired 

 was ever a complete master of Arabic :; in fact, no 

 person, 1 believe, now living in Europe or Asia, can 

 read without study an hundred couplets together, in 

 any collection oi ancient Arabian poems ; and we 

 are told, that the great author of the Kamus learned 

 by accident from the mouth of a child, in a village 

 of Arabia, the meaning of three words, which he had 

 long sought in vain from grammarians, and from 

 books, of the highest reputation. It is by approxi- 

 mation alone that a knowledge of these two venerable 

 languages can be acquired ; and, with moderate auen- 



