Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of
Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the
Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor
even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad
conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the
blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic
Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough
and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the
palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?" The Latium Antiquum of Pliny
and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest
kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor--the Pelasgian. What,
then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language
"spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe--before their
separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the
Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as
flippantly as they now are.
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