ON ETHNOLOGY. 
323 
to a person, while in Bengali it is nothing more than the modern English 
phrase, “ very much obliged.” ® 
I do not pretend at present to enter more info this subject, which can 
only be sufficiently elucidated fay laying down general principles and rules 
lor the origin, development, iransitious, and cumhinationK of the ideas re¬ 
present^ by words, the affinity of which has been proved by historical 
comparison; but I do not consider the object of comparative philologv 
tully attained, unless, like the changes of vowels and consonants, general 
analogies and natural laws have been deduced for the formation of the 
meaning in roots and words which belong to one common stem. For. as 
-Locke has wid in his Essay concerning Human Undemanding, “ the con¬ 
sideration of ideas and mrds, as the great instriiments of knowled^re, makes 
no despicable part of their contemplation, who would take a view of human 
knowledge m the whole extent of it; and perhaps if they were distinctly 
weighed and duly considered, they would .iHbrtl us another sort of logic 
and critic, than what we have hitherto bt-cn acquainted with.” ® 
The question about the origin of tho dialects now spoken in India has 
occupied the attention ot many of tho most distinguished Orientalists. 
Colebrooke, III hw article on the Sanscrit and Prakrit languages, does not 
give his opinion quite cUrly about the distinction which is to be drawn be- 
tween the northcru and southern ilmlectm a distinction which was afterwards 
established by the inpa.ous Lssays of Ellis. Aftenvards, wJienever a ques- 
tion nrow about the languages now current in India, the constant answer has 
coutradicticm, that the languages sjmken in the north are of 
stock. The best prooi of the bunsent origin of these uoriherii Indian dia- 
*■ words adopted from the 
Srari i’to fo IrSr\’';i "‘“^tenths, and even in 
i”' contained in the dictionaries of these 
anguagfcs. A though such a conijiutatiou of the lexicograuliio means of 
languages would seem to have settled the question definitely, yet we must 
confess that the method of proving the common origin of Linages by a 
inere computation of similar words is not .juite in acconlaneo with the nrin! 
ciplra laid down by the modern school of linguUlic philosophy. ^ 
century Ta?bren^'''l^fiiV.‘r txccLipmied in our 
century, has been, to find the distinctive character of a language, not so 
language usell. It w the discovery oi this principle which has led the 
Si riiev tmuiiphant conclusions, by 
wiiicli tJiej have brought uhonu distant in time and space back to one 
ae untenable, not „ .„„eh beinJXWXdr't'nr 
bSealb”’' S™matically, 
::t f„ 
By finding out the living principle of langiiase. by tmeing the onerative 
r,Teh. al'l nnd aTIhf leal Tr^rrnf 
bought all the scnnice- connected with the study of Uiiguage, like mvtho- 
arelnfology. have taken quite a new turn. If mythology 
IS not any lunger to hv ou.utidcml as an invenuun of poets or as an imnof 
lion of priests, but it we find in it, at least in its most ancient and most 
original part, a representation of ancient tliought, expressed and fixed in 
ancient language; if mythology may now be looled upo^nTa petlS of 
y2 
