123 
1872.] Hoemle — Essays on the Gaurian Languages. 
change not so much in arrangement and vital spirit as in the materiel of the 
language. Seeing that the northern vernaculars possess with the words of 
the. Sanskrit a grammatical structure which in the main appears to he Scy- 
thian, it seems more correct to represent these languages as having a Scy- 
thian basis with a large and overwhelming Sanskrit addition, than as having 
a Sanskrit basis with a small admixture of a Scythian element.” If this 
theory should be true, the Gauriari languages could no more be accounted 
Sanskritic or Indo-European, any more than the El'S vidian languages. For 
languages must be classified according to their grammatical structure.* 
Otherwise, English (Johnsonian English at all events) would have to be 
counted among the Romance, and Urdu among the Semitic languages. But 
the whole question is hardly yet ripe for adjudication. The Gaurian langua- 
ges have as yet had very little attention paid to them as regards their nature 
and origin. Moreover in such an investigation a serious difficulty is met 
with at the outset in the extreme want and inaccessibility of the Gaurian 
literature dating from the time when the Gaurian languages took then- origin 
(about 800 to 1200, A. D.). As up to this time the Aryan population of 
North India, who had imigrated many centuries before, had used exclusively 
Sanskritic languages (Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit), it would be a most remarkable 
phenomenon, if they, a Culturvolk, had now exchanged their native grammar 
for that of the uncultured and despised aboriginal population ; supposing 
that the language of the latter was really a non-Aryan one, and that it had 
really survived the long Aryan occupation ; both suppositions by no means 
established as yet. It has happened more than once that a conquering nation 
(especially, if inferior in culture), while retaining more or less its native 
vocabulary, adopted the grammar of the conquered people (as the Normans 
in England, the Arabs and Turks in North India, the Pranks in Gaul), 
under the condition that this process commenced from the very first beginning 
of the conquest. But that the conquerors, after having resided for Centuries 
hi the country and retained their native language (both in grammar and 
vocabulary, trifling instances in the latter excepted) entirely unmixed with 
the aboriginal languages, should abandon their own grammar in favour of 
that of the conquered, requires strong proofs to be credited, especially as it 
is by no means certain whether the aboriginal languages at all survived at so 
late a date ; for, according to the evidence aflorded by the Prakrit of the 
playg, Prakrit was spoken by the low class population, which was composed, 
uo doubt, principally of the subjugated aboriginal people, who, therefore, 
either spoke a Sanskritic language from the first or adopted the vulgar 
dialect of the language of their conquerors. 
* Compare Max Muller’s remarks in Lectures on tke Science of Language, lect. 
> pp. 86-90 (Gth Ed.). 
16 * 
II., 
