148 E. B. Shaw— On the GhalcTiafi Languages. [No. 2 



Central Asia [the Western slopes of the Belortagh (Pamir), near the 

 sources of Oxus and Jaxartes.] After this clan broke up, the ancestors of 

 the Indians and Zoroastrians must have remained for some time together 

 in their migrations or new settlements." [Max Muller's Lectures on the 

 Science of Language, Vol. I, pp. 238. Ed. 1866.] 



Perhaps to this we may hereafter be able to add something like the 

 following : 



After a long settlement in and about fertile Badakhshan (during which 

 slight differences of speech sprung up between south and north), the fur- 

 ther disruption took place. The southern section of the Indo-Iranian clan 

 poured over the Hindii-Kush water-shed by successive waves into the long 

 valleys of the Kuner, Panjkorah and Gilgit rivers (perhaps also of others 

 further west) which lead down towards the Indus. Arrived in the broad 

 plains of the Panjab, where the conditions were favourable to expansion, 

 they increased in numbers and civilization, developing out of the dialect 

 which they had brought with them the rich structure of Sanskrit. The 

 northern section of the clan, left behind in Badakhshan and increasing in 

 their turn, expanded westward and northward, and also closed up behind 

 their departing brethren into the valleys on their own side of the Hindii- 

 Kush, pushing the hindmost of the Indo- Aryans across into the heads of 

 the valleys on the south. In the plains of Bactria and of Iran the dialectic 

 differences which had perhaps begun to exist before the departure of their 

 southern kinsmen, developed into Zend and early Persian; while those 

 fragments of either branch which were left high and dry in the valleys on 

 both sides of the Hindu-Kush, isolated from the main bodies of the Persians 

 and Indians respectively, were less affected by the linguistic tendencies of 

 their more civilized and numerous brethren ; their speech changed in a less 

 rapid ratio, and moreover they had been the latest to divide asunder ; and 

 thus their dialects retain to the present day a much closer mutual resem- 

 blance than do the languages of the two great nations whose ancestors 

 once dwelt with theirs. As the forefathers of the Indian and Persian races 

 remained longest together of all the Indo-European tribes, and their lan- 

 guages show consequently the closest mutual affinities of all the great 

 divisions of the Aryan family • so also among the minor tribes of those two 

 sister races, the Ghalchahs and Dards appear to have remained together 

 longer than the rest of their kindred, and their dialects consequently show 

 greater coincidences than any other two which can be picked from both 

 sides of the border between Indian and Persian speech. 



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