144 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



words, which make the language a caution to the world. He gives 

 ns specimens of these terrible words which I dare not attempt even 

 to approach, and which make one shudder to look at them, and he 

 compares them with their simple English equivalents. In fact the 

 German language is the greatest possible obstacle to access to German 

 thought. Radically our language is the same as German, and to- 

 tally different from French. Yet how much more easy it is for us 

 to learn to read French than German, and how many more of us do 

 so ! Why is this ? Solely because, commencing by borrowing our 

 terminology from a common source with the French, it has gradually 

 come about that these two languages, originally so different, have 

 now all the higher and more difficult parts of their vocabularies prac- 

 tically common to both — while English and German, originally so 

 similar, have now wholly diverged in respect to all the higher portions 

 of the languages. It is wonderful how few are the radical words of 

 a language. It is said that an English ploughman uses only from 

 500 to 1000 words altogether, that is the original English verna- 

 cular. The language has now expanded, as we know, to very many 

 thousand words, chiefly by dint of borrowing. It may even be that 

 the question raised by Sir D. Macleod is, whether the vernacular lan- 

 guages of India are to follow the German or the English course ; whe- 

 ther by compounding from the Sanscrit they are to render themselves 

 as impracticable as the German, or whether, by borrowing, they are 

 to become as convenient and cosmopolitan as the English. 



" Nay more, I believe that a greater question lies behind, the whole 

 subject of inter-communication between the two races. I am one of 

 those who believe that India will never be governed by an English 

 Government to the satisfaction either of the Governors or the go- 

 verned, till the two races draw together much more than they now 

 do or than they now tend towards. A chief difficulty is divergence 

 of language. We have discussed the great question of the use of 

 English or of the vernacular in education. May there not some day 

 be a compromise, — not in our day, but in those of our descendants — in 

 the use of a vocabulary in a great degree common to both lan- 

 guages ? The Vernacular radicals will probably never be abandoned, 

 but may they not be overlaid by a common language, which may 

 approximate them to English and to one another, as English and 



