1854.] Some Remarks on the Origin of the Afghan people. 579 



the eye-lash, or (jrji stone. The o 'run of the Shidian language is 

 something like it. 



Pushto also, like the Semitic dialects, of which family I am 

 inclined to consider it, has the tfh with a strong aspiration to which 

 sound the Persians have an unconquerable antipathy ; indeed their 

 mouths seem to be so formed as to be unable to utter it. Like the 

 Jews and Egyptians, as well as the Arabs, the Afghans uniformly 

 give the hard sounds, tfh, d'h, ds, dtz, dz, etc., to those characters 

 which the Persians have ever softened to z and s. The pronuncia- 

 tion too, is somewhat difficult on account of the use of several 

 gutturals, and the combinations of such letters as <J^, *£, ^», 

 etc., which are difficult to enunciate. 



In harshness of pronunciation, and in the declensions of its nouns, 

 it bears great resemblance to the Zend and Pehlavi, and like the 

 former language, can be, and often is, written in old works, on which 

 alone we can place dependence, by distinct letters in the body of 

 each word, instead of introducing the short vowels. Of the affinity 

 of the Zend and Sanskrit at present there is no doubt, but the 

 Pehlavi appears to have a greater affiuity to the Arabic, and to differ 

 little from the present language of Persia.* 



In Arabic and Persian it is impossible to sound a consonant 

 which may be the first letter of a word, without the aid of a vowel, 

 whilst in Pushto there are numbers of words beginning with a con- 

 sonant immediately followed by another ; as, <u,i slipah, night, *.. 

 rwadz, day, &c ghld, theft, *^&J Jchhaiah, below. 



The vowels and consonants used in Pushto have the same powers 

 as those of the Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic dialects. Like 

 them it has two genders — the masculine and feminine, but the for- 

 mer have a dual form, which is wanting in the latter. In this 

 respect the Afghanian also differs from the Zend and the Sanskrit, 

 but agrees with the Pehlavi, from which the modern Persian is 

 derived. In common with the Hebrew, Arabic and Persian, it has 

 the peculiar separable and inseparable pronouns, the latter being 



* Sir William Jones has stated, that " having compared a Pehlavi translation 

 of the inscription in the Gulistan on the diadem of Cyrus, and from the Pazend 

 words in the Ferang-i-Jehangiri, he became convinced that the Pehlavi is a dialect 

 of the Chaldaic." — Asiatic Res. 



4 g 2 



