638 Lassen on the History traced [No. 103. 



of consonants_, the alteration of hard into soft roots, and the 

 1 for t. The word Dharma has a decided relation to India,, 

 being all a doctrinal term, which cannot be declared as such 

 with reference to Iran ; again, rdjan for kinff, and gaja for 

 victory ; tdddro too is also Indian, — ^though we will not deny its 

 also belonging to Zend. These indications lead us to a country, 

 immediately bordering upon India, and the language of which, 

 though not entirely Indian, and rather forming a transitional' 

 dialect in some respects between the Indian and Iranian lan- 

 guages, still did not very materially differ from an Indian 

 dialect ; in saying which, I allude to the language in daily use 

 with the common people, and not to Sanscrit, which was then 

 already, in all probability, the language of the learned castes, 

 and of the great. The existence of the dialects of Pra- 

 crit, as in common use with the people, is ascertained by their 

 occurrence on the Buddhist monuments of this time ; the Pra- 

 crit, or what eventually is the same, the Pali, could not have 

 been raised by the Buddhists to the dignity of a religious 

 language, unless it had existed aforetime among the people. 

 Now as about the period of the first of the Greco-Indian kings, 

 Pracrit was used on monuments in India itself, at least by the 

 Buddhists, there is no occasion for wonder, if we meet with 

 a popular dialect in Cabulistan, especially on coins : the San-- 

 scrit would have only been in use there under a Brahminical 

 influence. 



The country of the language on the coins may therefore with 

 certainty, I think, be looked for westerly from the Indus, and 

 to the south of the Indian Caucasus; but it is very difficult to 

 define its limit more exactly; for though we have already 

 proved, that the influence of Indian dialects extends to the 

 westward of the Indus, even to the Cabul river beyond Jelala- 

 bad, still it does hence not follow, that to the country west of 

 that, the same language existed. It is true, we found also, that 

 the Paropamisades were represented as being Indians, and a 

 later notice extends the term Indian even to Arachosia ;* but re- 

 ports of only a little later date, have limited the hifluence of the 



* Isidor, Charac. with Huds. p. S. 



