1851.] Some Remarks' on tlie Origin of tlie Afghan people. 553 



we have merely to look to the present dialects of the peninsula of 

 India, or, for a still more conclusive proof, to the modern European 

 languages, amidst the polish and refinement of Latin and Greek. 



It appears, therefore, that the principal languages of the Asiatic 

 continent, that is to say, what was considered Asia by the ancients, 

 were the Semitic, and the Iranian or Persian,* which latter was 

 spoken as far as the western bank of the Indus, beyond which the 

 Sanskrit and Prakrit commenced. f 



In ancient times as in the present day, the greatest diversity of 

 language appears to have prevailed in mountain tracts, generally 

 inhabited by a number of independent tribes, who may either have 

 been aborigines of those mountains, or strangers compelled to seek 

 in them refuge from more powerful neighbours, or greater security 

 from invasion and subjection to a sovereign's yoke. In the absence 

 of facilities for communication with foreigners, their languages have 

 been less liable to be mixed up with other tongues, and from the 

 more numerous tribes again separating into smaller tribes, a variety 

 of dialects was naturally formed, which in many points differed from 

 each other. 



The ancient languages of Persia, suggest other important facts not 

 to be passed over without notice, and which also bring us to the 

 point to which these straggling and imperfect remarks are intended 

 to lead — that not merely in the modern Persian territory do we find 

 languages which still exist, mixed up with others, and only preserved 

 from oblivion by a few written remains ; but that in the present day 

 there is also a language spoken immediately west of the Indus, 

 which is totally different in phraseology and construction from any 



* Heeren. 



f " With regard to the affinity of the language from Bactria to the Persian Gulf, 

 it would of course follow, that the country being that of the ancient Persians, the 

 Persian language would be spoken in it, varied as to dialect, but radically the same. 

 If the language of Persia was Zend, this would have been in use throughout Ariana ; 

 and its strong affinity to Sanskrit would justify the extension of Strabo's remarks 

 even to the Indians of the Paropamisus and the west bank of the Indus. With all 

 the other divisions of Ariana there is no difficulty, even if the Persian of ancient did 

 not materially differ from that of modern times ; for Persian is still the language of 

 the inhabitants of the towns of Afghanistan and Turkistan — Kabul and Bokhara." 

 Ariana Antiqua, pp. 122, 123. 



4 D 



