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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

FRANZ BOPP.

When FRANZ BOPP (born in 1791), the founder of comparative philology, began to devote his attention to Sanskrit, the statement that the language of the Brahmans was nearly related to the languages of Europe, especially to Latin and Greek, had been repeatedly made, and strengthened by a number of authentic proofs. Above all, Sir WILLIAM JONES, the first president of a society organized in Calcutta for the exploration of Asia, had, as early as 1786, expressed himself on this point as follows:

"The Sanskrit language, whatever may be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so strong that no philologer could examine all the three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit." (Cf. BENFEY, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, page 348.)

In the main coïncident with the above, but less correct in one point, are the opening sentences of FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL'S celebrated book on the language and wisdom of the Hindus (Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Heidelberg, 1808):

DELBRÜCK, Introduction to the Study of Language.

1

"The old Indian Sanskrito, i. e. the refined or perfect, also called Gronthon, i. e. the written or book-language, bears the closest relationship to the Roman and Greek as well as to the Germanic and Persian languages. The resemblance is found not only in a large number of roots, which it has in common with them, but extends to the innermost structure and grammar. The agreement is therefore not an accidental one, such as could be explained through intermixture, but an essential one, which points to a common origin. On comparison it is further discovered that the Indian language is the elder, the others younger and derived from it."

We cannot, therefore, say that BOPP was the discoverer of the Indo-European 1) community of language, but to him is due the credit of having instituted a systematic comparison, which, starting from the forms of the verb, gradually extended over the whole language, and of thus demonstrating for all time what JONES, SCHLEGEL and others had only suspected or affirmed.

This demonstration will, without doubt, be regarded in the future as the epoch-making achievement of BOPP's genius, but it is quite as certain that Bopp himself from the very beginning had in view not the comparison, but the explanation of forms, and that comparison was to him only a means to the attainment of this chief end. To illustrate by an example: he was not satisfied with the discovery, so all-important for the phonetics of each individual language, that ásmi, eiμí, sum, im, jesmi are all at bottom one and the same form; but it was of greater interest to him to learn from what elements this form had arisen. Not a comparison of actual forms of speech, but an insight into the origin of inflection was the essential aim of his work.

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1) I have followed Prof. WHITNEY and others in preferring the term "Indo-European" to "Indo-Germanic", which latter name cannot in English claim the excuse of preponderating usage alleged by Prof. DELBRÜCK in support of its German equivalent. He says: "I use the name 'indogermanisch' (originated by KLAPROTH?) because, as far as I can see, it is the most common in Germany." The term "Aryan", so frequently employed by English philologists, I have rejected as being more properly applicable to the Indo-Iranian division of the family. [Translator.]

That this is really the case has been abundantly emphasized by the older as well as the more recent critics of BOPP. It will suffice here to recall the well-known statement of BOPP's teacher WINDISCHMANN, namely, that Bopp's aim from the beginning was "to penetrate by way of linguistic investigation into the mystery of the human soul, and to gain some cognizance of its nature and laws"; and to quote a remark of THEODOR BENFEY: "I would therefore consider that the real task of this grand work [the Comparative Grammar] was to gain a knowledge of the origin of the grammatical forms of the Indo-European languages; that their comparison was only a means to the attainment of this end, merely a method of discovering their fundamental forms; and that, finally, the investigation of phonetic laws was the chief means of comparison, the only sure foundation for the proof of relationship, especially of the fundamental forms."

Under these circumstances it seems to me expedient to speak first of BOPP's view of the origin of inflection, and afterwards to discuss his method of comparison.

I. Bopp's views of the origin of inflection.

Bopp's theories concerning the genesis of linguistic forms are not, as might be imagined, the pure result of his grammatical analysis, but can be traced back in great part to older views and prejudices. Among these the theory of FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL, which is brought forward in his above-mentioned work Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, plays an important part. It seems to me necessary, therefore, to familiarize the reader with this theory at the outset.

According to FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL there are two chief classes of languages; first, those which characterize the minor shades of meaning by an inner change of the root, and secondly, those which for this purpose affix actual words having in themselves the significance of plurality, past time, future obligation, or other comparative notions of the sort. The first class embraces the inflectional languages. SCHLEGEL therefore understands by "inflection" the inner change of the root. He most emphatically opposes the view that the

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