422 THE THIRD DISCOURSE 



nacular languages they found on their arrival in this 

 Empire. The Mohammedans, we know, heard the peo- 

 ple of proper Hindujlan, or India on a limited fcale, 

 fpeakinga Bhaflia, or living tongue, of a very lingular 

 conftruclion, the pureft dialed of which was current in 

 the diitrifcls round Agra, and chiefly on the poetical 

 ground of Mafhurd ; and this is commonly called the 

 idiom of Vraja. Five words in fix, perhaps, of this 

 language were derived from the Sanfcrit, in which books 

 cf religion and fcience were compofed, and which ap- 

 pears to have been formed by an exquifite grammatical 

 arrangement, as the name itfelf implies, from fome un- 

 polifhed idiom; but the bafis of the Hinduflani, parti- 

 cularly the inflexions and regimen of verbs, differed as 

 widely from both thofe tongues, as Arabick differs from 

 Perfian, or German from Greek. Now the general effeft 

 of conquefl is to leave the current language of the con- 

 quered people unchanged, or very little altered, in its 

 ground-work, but to blend with it a considerable num- 

 ber of exotick names, both for things and for actions; 

 as it has happened in every country, that I can recol- 

 leO, where the conquerors have not preferred their own 

 tongue unmixed with that of the natives, like the Turks 

 in Greece, and the Saxons in Britain ; and this analogy 

 might induce us to believe, that the pure Hindi, whe- 

 ther of Tartarian or Chaldean origin, was primeval in 

 Upper India, into which the Sanfcrit was introduced 

 by conquerors from other kingdoms in fome very remote 

 age ; for we cannot doubt that the language of the 

 Veda\s was ufed in the great extent of country which 

 has before been delineated, as long as the religion of 

 Brahma has prevailed in it. 



The Sanfcrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is 

 of a wonderful flructure; more perfeft than the Greek, 

 more copious than the Latin, and more exquifitely re- 

 fined than either; yet bearing to both of them a ftrongef 



affinity, 



