140 Proceed lings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



Sanscrit, it must have been adapted for its use in a remarkable way. 

 He did not feel competent to take upon himself to deny that the 

 character may have been borrowed from others. But as respects the 

 original inventors suggested by Mr. Thomas's theory, he felt inclined 

 to protest against the loose way of using the terms ' Dra vidian,' 

 ' Turanian,' and ' Scythic,' as if synonymous. He was aware that 

 Max Miiller had classed two-thirds of the world under the broad 

 designation of ' Turanian,' but he found that other great authorities 

 objected to the classification as too sweeping, and as including in 

 a common term several widely different families. "Whoever may have 

 first invented letters, he felt great difficulty in believing that the 

 discovery was due to the Dravidian ancestors of the barbarous G-onds 

 and Khonds, Dhangars and others, who, speaking ancient Dravidian 

 tongues, were themselves to this day without a written language. On 

 the whole subject, we were still very much in the dark. If he had 

 himself a half-formed theory, it inclined to this : that if in fact the 

 Hindus came in contact with another civilisation already possessed of 

 a Pali language and letters, the latter should rather be attributed to 

 some old Western immigration by sea, in the days of the most ancient 

 Egyptians and Phoenicians and their contemporaries. Max Miiller 

 had made clear to us the character of the Arian religion. The gods 

 of the x\rians are above, and they descend to the earth in occasional 

 incarnations. But there is still very prevalent in all the west of 

 India, and in several forms, another religion, that worship of the 

 procreative power of the Phallus or Lingam, which seems to be the 

 earliest development of the modern idea of the natural progression of 

 type, and which the Buddhists and Jains have carried forward by their 

 system of gradual perfectibility, raising man from below nearly to the 

 rank of a god. That belief in natural progress, from below upwards, seem- 

 ed to him (Mr. Campbell) to be in opposition to the Arian beliefs in gods 

 descending from above : they were two widely separate types of belief, 

 and his suggestion would be, that any civilisation and any letters which 

 preceded the Hindus in India, may have been brought in from the 

 wot, in company with the worship of the Phallus and the doctrines 

 which have sprung from it. But in truth we seemed to be as yet 

 bid on the threshold of knowledge of the earlier inhabitants of the 

 world. The Society must be greatly indebted to Mr. Thomas for his 



