110 Professor Buhler on the Sanskrit Linguals. 



On the Origin of the Sanskrit Linguals. By Dr. George 

 Buhler, Professor of Sanskrit in the Elphinstone Col- 

 lege, Bombay. 



IT is a widely spread opinion amongst philologists that 

 nearly all those Sanskrit letters, which are usually de- 

 signated ' Cerebrals,' owe their origin to foreign influence. 

 We sometimes find it simply stated, that the Sanskrit- 

 speaking Aryans borrowed them from the languages of 

 the aborigines of India. Other writers have better for- 

 mulated this idea, and supposed that these letters found 

 their way into Sanskrit out of one of the Dravidian lan- 

 guages. The latter opinion is also advocated by Dr. Cald- 

 well in his admirable comparative grammar of the Dravi- 

 dian languages, where we find a short and able summary of 

 the arguments, which have been or can be brought forward 

 for it. In order to prove this hypothesis and at the same 

 time to disprove the possibility of the Dravidians having 

 borrowed the cerebrals from Sanskrit, he adduces the fol- 

 lowing reasons.* 



1. The cerebral consonants are essential component ele- 

 ments of a large number of Dravidian roots, whilst in Sans- 

 krit they are mostly deduced from dentals by euphonic 

 changes. 



2. None of the cerebrals consonants have ever been dis- 

 covered in any of the primitive languages which are related 

 to the Sanskrit, viz., the classical languages, the Gothic, the 

 Lithuanian, Sclavonian and Zend. But Sanskrit, which came 

 into contact with the Dravidian and other Scythian lan- 

 guages, abounds with them. 



3. Tamil softens harsh consonants, as sh, which are bor- 

 rowed from Sanskrit. If therefore the cerebrals were bor- 



* Comp. Gram., p. Ill, ff. 



