102 General Observations on [Feb. 



ceremonies for the adoration of fire, while at the same time they might 

 be supposed to have still retained a belief in the theism which originally 

 prevailed in Persia. 



This would perhaps throw back the date of their emigration to a pe- 

 riod preceding Zeratusht, for this reformer had gone to India to gain 

 instruction from these very brahmans in theology and ethics ; thus per- 

 haps evincing his knowledge or belief of their having carried these 

 sciences from Persia. This date might be fixed somewhere betwixt 

 B. C. 800 and the advent of Zeratusht. 



Sir W. Jones does not in the essay I have been alluding to notice 

 the Pali character or language. But if the Sanscrit, as he states, can be 

 traced, and, in a great measure, identified with the oldest languages in 

 Persia, then both the character and idiom of the Pali may perhaps be 

 followed up to the same source through a separate channel. 



Much philological acumen will be required to fix the precise relations 

 in which the Deri or refined Parsi, — the Pahlavi and Chaldaic, Assyriac, 

 Zend and its Awesta, — the Pracrit, Sanscrit, and Pali stand towards 

 each other. But until this shall be accomplished no sound reasonings 

 or deductions can be made regarding their precise ages, nor that of the 

 races who employed them. 



I am not aware that the foregoing writer's position, that the Parsi 

 and the various other Indian dialects were derived from the language 

 of the brahmans, has as yet had the confirmation of the learned in Eu- 

 rope ; although it be still one which has the support of some orien- 

 talists.* 



If etymology could be tolerated in a subject like the present, the words 

 Pali and Bali might be supposed to have sprung from D. Herbelot's 

 Pahlavi and Pahalevi — or from the words Pahali and Bahali, which he 

 says the Persians used indifferently. 



If the character which has been so felicitously and ably traced back 

 by Prinsep and Dr. Mill to a remote period through all of its proteous 

 forms, be the Pali, let us then be told how and when it branched off 

 from the Sanscrit, and why it was kept distinct. 



As the transitions of the Pali went on, each successive one may have 

 left that one which preceded it to be employed for recondite purposes. 

 But if latterly the Maghadi was not the priestly or exoteric language, 

 * As. Res. Vol. II. from p. 49 to 64, 



