ON ETHNOLOGY. 
321 
development of what we generally call the Romance languages. For, as the 
old language of Rome and Italy, after losing its vital strengtjj and expressive 
power, and after entering into a state of enti*e stagnation and putrefaction 
Jormed thereby a kind of mould, or as Chevalier Bunsen has called it yes¬ 
terday, a kind of humus, from which again a variety of other languar^es 
sprung up, full of new life, and 6t to serve die intellectual wants of a new 
2feSa°„,"rin:„g„apr “f 
WBhest claims on onr 
attention, because it has preserved a closer afhnity to the Sanscrit than any 
one ot the other derived languages. ^ 
All the languages now spoken in India, with the exception of the dia- 
lects of some savage Vmdhya tribes, may be divided into two creat 
c Wa, VIZ. those of the north ^id those of the south, of which the northern 
rmlo-Gennanic origin, while the southern seem to 
be more closely connected with the language of the aboriginal and non- 
brahminical inhabitants of India, modified to a greater or less degree par 
ticularly ui their literary employment, by die influence of tlie^omiLnt 
hanserit. But even m the north of Indja, and among a people who, immi¬ 
grating into tins country, brought with them their own Lngi.arre, reSn 
and civilization, there existed many dialectic diflerencos which are nift to 
be considered as mere corruptions from the Sanscrit, but as indenendem 
contemporaneous idioms. These are generally called the Pmerit dmlecis • 
nnd some of them have their own peculiar name, derived from the countriei 
Th/?''" A«W«i, the language of 
iSumsffnrt, the Savascala, spoken on the banks of the Sarasvath TheVa- 
gadln or Pali, the language of Magadha, and probably the dialect spoken 
in this country at the ume when the Buddhisticil religiL took its I istortal 
origin, and therefore employed by the founders of ^at Ztem X ad 
dressing themscivos to the people, were obliged to use the nativ^lan.^n/e 
instead of the then already obscure idiom of tin: sacred bonks of the BraV 
nuns. It may be observed that m the Vedic hymns also, which beWed 
'‘ettle.I in India, some dia! 
“‘’"y fr'-“»’n>atical discrepancies occur, which somt 
S Dr' WebS'wfT ^ my learned 
iricna Ui. Weber, who lias promised an edition of ihe Yumrveda int^ndc fn 
afford ample proofs from tiie hymns and Brnhmmias of S vtlV^^ 
l,7ArVeSr.L'r“''f r* »‘P-,c.n.,w..„™,co„Jidor ,he SatewJ 
five ineir origin trom the same source. Tliey stand to each other in i rela 
.‘IT. it*? 
E at first 3 in- “ 8«-eat difficulty in tmderstanding the 
with the DCODle whn the Mme place, witli frequent communications 
with the people who were speaking the other, he would find much rrreater 
itn^X " ' >^nowledge of this diai;ct than of any Xy Ireign 
of MAlX tl'*-' !■■■« in India. Pini, we sec at the time 
hLn welrI.Tn7 X‘“ 7' ^ micrcourse speaking these two langua<Te8 • 
X 1 .1 ‘7 ‘"'’St Pracrit rrrammar Si’ 
\BYl. ” f'tiditional notes to the great work on Sans- 
