tj? £ — ' uJpQ 



JOURNAL 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. IY. 1860. 



Is tlie Pushto a Semitic Language ? — By the Rev. Isidob 

 Loewenthal, Peshawur. 



Error is immortal. The old fable concerning Hercules and the 

 Hydra has doubtlessly a typical reference to the quixotic bouts men 

 sometimes undertake against error ; only seven heads is too small a 

 number to typify the vitality of a good blunder, the longevity of a 

 plain definite mistake. The fable, too, makes Hercules victorious ; 

 but who has ever seen the successful gardener that has really extir- 

 pated a weed which once has taken root in his grounds ? This 

 ineradicability may be predicated of any error, but necessarily most 

 so of such as appear to rest on the authority of a great name, and 

 are brought forward now and then by those who have in some way 

 or another acquired the reputation of being authorities. This is 

 very provoking. Is it really so that men love darkness rather 

 than light ? 



More than seventy years ago the first President of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal happened to state that the Pushto language had 

 a manifest resemblance to the Chaldaic. There is evidence in the 

 earlier volumes of the " Asiatic Researches" that some attention was 

 paid in Calcutta to the Pushto language in those days, but, it appears, 

 more for literary than philological purposes. At all events the state- 

 ment of Sir William Jones remained uncontradicted and unchallenged 

 for many years. In Germany even the opinion gained currency 

 through Kleuker (the earliest German translator of the Zend Avesta) 



No. CV.— New Series, Vol. XXIX. 2 u 



