332 Is the Pushto a Semitic Language ? [No. 4. 



tively Palchtunlcha. Very few native names suffer so little on the 

 part of Englishmen, as these names have suffered at the hands of 

 the Greeks. Capt. Raverty says that the country referred to under 

 the name of Paktuika is Pukli ; this also is a mistake, for the Greeks 

 called the latter, which moreover is not near any navigahle portion of 

 the Indus, plainly and correctly TLevKtXa ; the name occurs a numher 

 of times in Arrian. 



As for Capt. Raverty's arguments in favour of the view that 

 Pushto is of the Semitic family, Argument No. 5 says that in many 

 respects the Pushto syntax agrees with that of the Hehrew. This 

 argument would be valid, if the grammarian had pointed out some 

 peculiarities in the syntax of the one language which agree with 

 peculiarities in that of the other. For the good of his argument, it 

 must be regretted that he has not done so, and the proposition as it 

 stands may be predicated of any two languages whatsoever. No. 2, 

 also proves too much ; for French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, 

 Gaelic, Danish, Livonian, etc., or, what is more to the point, and 

 might have led a candid inquirer into the right track, the Indian 

 languages, such as Hindi and Panjabi, have also but two genders. 



What the force of Argument No. 1 is, that "the vowels and 

 consonants used in Pushto have the same powers as those of the 

 Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic dialects," is difficult to tell. If 

 the author has reference to the spoken vowels and consonants, that 

 is to their sounds, it is sufficient to observe that of articulate sounds 

 there is only an extremely limited number, in consequence of which 

 the great bulk of the vowels and consonants of all languages are the 

 same. He cannot mean that all the Pushto sounds are found in the 

 Semitic languages, for he has just laboured for some pages to prove 

 that both there are many of the Arabic sounds which are not found 

 in Pushto, and that there are a number of Pushto sounds not to be 

 found in the Semitic languages, though his statements are by no 

 means complete, or correct as far as they go. If he refers to the 

 written character, Semitic scholars will be surprised to hear that there 

 are letters in the Syro-Arabian languages to express vowels at all. 

 And as regards the consonants, every one knows that when Bayazid, 

 or whoever may have better claims to the distinction, wrote Pushto 

 first, he made use of the Arabic character, and that not the pure 



