39S 



Notices of Books. 



magnify his favourite language by the assertion, which amounts only 

 to the testimony of Kachchayano — and who was Kachchayano, and 

 what grounds have we to receive his testimony as implicitly as do 

 the Bauddhist teachers? But, apart from such questions, nothing 

 more is requisite than this very verse to shew that the Mdgadhi 

 language could only be a modification of the Sanscrit language, 

 leaving the claim to superior antiquity for the present in abey- 

 ance. There are in it, however, words common to Telugu and Tamil, 

 but not Sanscrit ; lending some force to an opinion that a common dia- 

 lect, not Sanscrit, once ran through the whole of the continent of India. 

 The writer has more than once thought that the earliest Brahman 

 settlers (strangers originally to India) brought with them the ancient 

 Pahlavi, and engrafted it in written works on the common dialect of 

 the land, as Norman-French once, and Latin subsequently, were en- 

 grafted on Saxon-English, so to make the language of our books ; 

 which differs as widely from the dialects of many English counties, as 

 the Hindi or Magadhi possibly could from the Sanscrit. Great autho- 

 rities, and Mr. Colebrooke among them, have thought otherwise ; let 

 time and enquiry decide. It is perceived that the Pali always rejects 

 I and r, in Sanscrit words ; thus Kalpa and Chakraverli, became 

 Kappa and Chakkawatti ; another peculiarity is the changing short a 

 into o ; and the general tendency of the Pali is to soften, or perhaps 

 emasculate, the Sanscrit in words evidently the same. 



It could have been wished that Mr. Turnour had avoided the great 

 blemish which attends almost all Asiatic researches hitherto ; which 

 is the use of theological, or scriptural terms, derived from the Chris- 

 tian religion, and applying them to other religions ; as though all 

 were very much the same ; and, by an infallible consequence, de- 

 rivable from an assent to that leading proposition, that all religions 

 are puerile, fictitious, or contemptible, with some not very important 

 shades of difference. It has been, and it shall always be, the object of 

 the writer to protest against any such confounding of things that essen- 

 tially differ. Many writers cannot be absolved from malicious inten- 

 tions in such wilful and often studied parody ; but Mr. Turnour clearly 

 is acquitted of any such design. Either he followed false models, sup- 

 posing them to be true ones ; or else it was his opinion, to the best of 

 his judgment, that this was the most suitable kind of translation. This 

 remark, which cannot be omitted, is the only one of the kind neces- 

 sary ; and it diminishes not the importance of the work, at least in its 

 main features. 



The question whether the history of India will ever be satisfactorily- 

 developed, on which Mr. Turnour dwells, without being either sanguine 

 or despondent, is one which may be considered as of hopeful answer. 



