Part 10 (1/2)

We now turn back in order to discover how e may be produced by the free combination of these constituent elements; and we shall then endeavor to find out whether each of these possible forms has its real counterpart in so in fact to carry out a _ical classification_ of speech, which is based entirely on the forether, and therefore quite independent of the genealogical classification which, according to its very nature, is based on the foreneration to generation

Before, however, we enter on this, the principal subject of our present Lecture, we have still to examine, as briefly as possible, a second family of speech, which, like the Aryan, is established on the strictest principles of genealogical classification, namely, the _Semitic_

The Semitic family is divided into three branches, the _Aramaic_, the _Hebraic_, and the _Arabic_(280)

The _Ara Syria, Mesopotadoms of Babylonia and assyria It is known to us chiefly in two dialects, the _Syriac_ and _Chaldee_ The fore which has been preserved to us in a translation of the Bible (the Peshi+to(281)) ascribed to the second century, and in the rich Christian literature dating froh in a very corrupt form, by the Nestorians of Kurdistan, near the lakes of Van and Urmia, and by some Christian tribes in Mesopotamia; and an attempt has been made by the American missionaries,(282) stationed at Urrarae

The nae adopted by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity Though the Jeays retained a knowledge of their sacred language, they soon began to adopt the dialect of their conquerors, not for conversation only, but also for literary coments in Chaldee, contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and several of the apocryphal books, though preserved to us in Greek only, were inally in Chaldee, and not in Hebrew The so-called _Targuain, or translations and paraphrases of the Old Testa and following the Christian era,(285) give us another specie of Babylonia, as transplanted to Palestine This Aramaic was the dialect spoken by Christ and his disciples The few authentic words preserved in the New Testae, such as _Talitha kumi_, _Ephphatha_, _Abba_, are not in Hebrew, but in the Chaldee, or Aramaic, as then spoken by the Jews(286)

After the destruction of Jerusalem the literature of the Jews continued to be written in the same dialect The Talmud(287) of Jerusalem of the fourth, and that of Babylon of the fifth, century exhibit the Aramean, as spoken by the educated Jews settled in these two localities, though greatly depraved and spoiled by an ade remained the literary idiom of the Jews to the tenth century The _Masora_,(288) and the traditional commentary of the Old Testament, ritten in it about that tiuage, and retained it to the thirteenth century They then returned to a kind of modernized Hebrehich they still continue to employ for learned discussions

It is curious that the Arauage of the great kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh, should have been preserved to us only in the literature of the Jews, and of the Christians of Syria There must have been a Babylonian literature, for the wisdom of the Chaldeans had acquired a reputation which could hardly have been sustained without a literature Abraharated to Canaan Laban spoke the saave to the heap of stones that was to be a witness between hiar-sahadutha) is Syriac, whereas Galeed, the name by which Jacob called it, is Hebrew(289) If we are ever to recover a knowledge of that ancient Babylonian literature, it ht home from Babylon and Nineveh They are clearly written in a Seer any doubt And though the progress in deciphering them has been slow, and slower than was at one time expected, yet there is no reason to despair In a letter, dated April, 1853, Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote:-

”On the clay tablets which we have found at Nineveh, and which now are to be counted by thousands, there are explanatory treatises on alrahts and raphy, history, y, botany, &c In fact we have now at our disposal a perfect cyclopaedia of assyrian science” Considering what has been achieved in deciphering one class of cuneiform inscriptions, the Persian, there is no reason to doubt that the whole of that cyclopaedia will some day be read with the same ease hich we read the mountain records of Darius

There is, however, another miserable remnant of as once the literature of the Chaldeans or Babylonians, namely, the ”Book of Adam,”

and similar works preserved by the _Mendates_ or _Nasoreans_, a curious sect settled near Bassora Though the composition of these works is as late as the tenth century after Christ, it has been supposed that under a modern crust of wild and senseless hallucinations, they contain soht These _Mendates_ have in fact been identified with the _Nabateans_, who are mentioned as late as the tenth century(290) of our era, as a race purely pagan, and distinct from Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans In Arabic the name Nabatean(291) is used for Babylonians,-nay, all the people of Arain, settled in the earliest tiris are referred to by that name(292) It is supposed that the Nabateans, who areof the Christian era as a race distinguished for their astronoe, were the ancestors of the mediaeval Nabateans, and the descendants of the ancient Babylonians and Chaldeans You may have lately seen in some literary journals an account of a work called ”The Nabatean Agriculture” It exists only in an Arabic translation by Ibn-Wahshi+yyah, the Chaldean,(293) who lived about 900 years after Christ, but the original, which ritten by Kutha of the thirteenth century B C The evidence is not yet fully before us, but from what is known it seems more likely that this as the compilation of a Nabatean, who lived about the fourth century after Christ;(294) and though it contains ancient traditions, which reat Babylonian monarchs, these traditions can hardly be taken as a fair representation of the ancient civilization of the Aramean race

The second branch of the Semitic fauage of Palestine, where Hebreas spoken and written from the days of Moses to the tih of course with considerableadmixture of Aramean forms, particularly since the Babylonian captivity, and the rise of a powerful civilization in the neighboring country of Syria The ancient language of Phnicia, to judge from inscriptions, was inians too must be referred to the same branch

Hebreas first encroached upon by Arah the political ascendency of Babylon, and still more of Syria; and was at last swept away by Arabic, which, since the conquest of Palestine and Syria in the year 636, has monopolized nearly the whole area formerly occupied by the two older branches of the Semitic stock, the Ara from the Arabian peninsula, where it is still spoken by a coinal inhabitants Its most ancient documents are the _Himyaritic_ inscriptions In very early times this Arabic branch was transplanted to Africa, where, south of Egypt and Nubia, on the coast opposite Yemen, an ancient Semitic dialect has maintained itself to the present day This is the _Ethiopic_ or _Abyssinian_, or, as it is called by the people theer spoken in its purity by the people of Habesh, it is still preserved in their sacred writings, translations of the Bible, and similar works, which date froe of Abyssinia is called _Ao back beyond Mohammed They are called _Moallakat_, literally, suspended poems, because they are said to have been thus publicly exhibited at Mecca They are old popular poems, descriptive of desert life With Mohaion, and established its sway over Asia, Africa, and Europe

These three branches, the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and Arabic, are so closely related to each other, that it was iin Every root in these languages, as far back as we know them, must consist of three consonants, and nue of vowels, leaving the consonantal skeleton as much as possible intact It is ie; and what is e derived frorammatical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech

This does not exclude, however, the possibility that both are diverging streams of the same source; and the comparisons that have been instituted between the Semitic roots, reduced to their sies, have made it more than probable that the inally the sa to the Semitic family are the _Berber_ dialects of Northern Africa, spoken on the coast froypt to the Atlantic Ocean before the invasion of the Arabs, and now pushed back towards the interior Soes, too, such as the _Haussa_ and _Galla_, have been classed as Selyphic inscriptions to the Coptic, which ceased to be spoken after the seventeenth century, has equally been referred to this class The Semitic character of these dialects, however, is ree of relationshi+p in which they stand to the Sees, properly so-called, has still to be deter the Aryan and Semitic are the only _families_ of speech which fully deserve that title They both presuppose the existence of a finished systeence of their dialects Their history is frorowth, and hence the unmistakable family-likeness which pervades every one even of their latest descendants The language of the Sepoy and that of the English soldier are, strictly speaking, one and the sae They are both built up of materials which were definitely shaped before the Teutonic and Indic branches separated No new root has been added to either since their first separation; and the gralish or Hindustani, are, if closely examined, new co in all the Aryan dialects In the terlish _he is_, and in the inaudible ternize the result of an act performed before the first separation of the Aryan family, the combination of the predicative root _as_ with the demonstrative root _ti_; an act perfor to be felt to the present day

It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his nan in erecting his colossal palaces

Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancientnew cities; and on exahdad on the borders of the Tigris, Sir Henry Rawlinson discovered on each the clear traces of that royal signature It is the saes

They too were built up with the es, and every word, if properly examined, displays the visible stamp impressed upon it from the first by the founders of the Aryan and the Sees, however, is not always so close Languages rammatical system has become fixed and hardened; and in that case they cannot be expected to show the same marked features of a common descent as, for instance, the Neo-Latin dialects, French, Italian, and Spanish They may have rowth in words and graard to words we see that even languages so intimately related to each other as the six Roed in some of the commonest expressions Instead of the Latin _frater_, the French _frere_, we find in Spanish _here The Latin word _frater_, changed into _fray_ and _frayle_, had been applied to express a brother or a friar It was felt inconvenient that the same word should express two ideas which it was souish, and therefore, by a kind of natural eliiven up as the name of brother in Spanish, and replaced froermanus_ In the same manner the Latin word for shepherd, _pastor_, was so constantly applied to the shepherd of the people or the clergyman, _le pasteur_, that a neas wanted for the real shepherd Thus _berbicarius_ from _berbex_ or _vervex_, a wether, was used instead of _pastor_, and changed into the French _berger_ Instead of the Spanish _enfermo_, ill, we find in French _es so intimately related as Greek and Latin have fixed on different expressions for son, daughter, brother, woman, man, sky, earth, moon, hand, e number of synonymes which were supplied by the numerous dialects of the Aryan family, the Greeks perpetuated one, the Ro of this principle of natural selection is allowed to extendfrom the same source, may in time acquire a totally different nomenclature for the commonest objects The nuerated, and if we are told that in Icelandic there are 120 names for island, or in Arabic 500 names for lion,(296) and 1,000 names for sword,(297) many of these are no doubt purely poetical But even where there are in a language only four or five naht be derived from it, each in appearance quite distinct froraes, for instance, for the auxiliary verb _habere_, to have, after the infinitive, it was quite open to any one of the the future The French ht have chosen _je vais dire_ or _je dirvais_ (I wade to say) instead of _je dirai_, and in this case the future in French would have been totally distinct froes are possible in literary languages of such long standing as French and Italian, we es which, as I said, diverged before any definite settlerammar or their dictionary If ere to expect in theical relationshi+p which unites the members of the Aryan and Semitic families of speech, we should necessarily be disappointed Such criteria could not possibly exist in these languages But there are criteria for deterrees of relationshi+p in the vast realm of speech; and they are sufficient at least to arrest the hasty conclusions of those ould deny the possibility of a coes more removed from each other than French and Italian, Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic You will see this more clearly after we have exaical classification_ of hue at present, can be reduced in the end to roots, predicative and de to the ether, we es in the gradual formation of speech

1 Rootsits full independence

2 Two roots ether to form words, and in these compounds one root may lose its independence

3 Two roots ether to form words, and in these compounds both roots may lose their independence