but he especially insists that "nothing has perhaps contributed to this improvement more than the discovery of Sanscrit (for as it has been justly observed, it may properly be called a discovery), which was found to bear such a striking resemblance both in its more important words and in its grammatical forms to the Latin and Greek, the Teutonic and Sclavonic languages, as to lead to the conclusion that all must have been derived from a common source."

An able writer in the Saturday Review truly describes the science of comparative philology as "the great discovery of modern scholarship, the discovery which more than any other unites distant ages and countries in one tie of brotherhood." Hence its great value to antiquarian students of every class.

Further investigation has fully demonstrated the truth of the views thus expressed. Not only is the affinity of the languages now admitted without dispute, but the consanguinity of the peoples and the identity of many of their popular traditions and superstitions have been demonstrated with scientific precision by such writers as the brothers Grimm, Dr. Kuhn, Dr. Roth, Max Müller, Farrer, Dasent, the Rev. G. W. Cox, and others, who have devoted special attention to the subject.

This common ancestry is sometimes styled Indo-European; but the phrase being open to objection, as including more than the precise facts justify, the term Aryan, or Arian, is now generally preferred. Some writers regard the Aryans as descendants of Japhet, and the Semitic tribes as the progeny of Shem. In the latter they include the Hebrews, the Phœnicians, the Arabs, and Ethiopians; and their languages are radically distinct from those of the Aryan family. The country about the upper Oxus river, now mainly included in the dominions of the Khan of Bockhara, is generally agreed upon as the locality from whence the various members of the Aryan family originally migrated, some northward and westward over Europe, and others southward and eastward into India. The Kelts, the Teutons, the Greeks, Latins, Letts, and Sclaves are all European branches of this original stock. The Persians and the high caste Hindoos are the principal descendants of the southern and south-eastern migration. The chief elements of the British population at the present time are Keltic, represented by the Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic tribes, and the Teutonic, which includes Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and Danish and Norse Scandinavians.

The non-Aryan races inhabiting Europe are not relatively very extensive or important. The chief are the Magyars and the Turks. There are besides some Tatars and Ugrians in Russia, a few Basques in the south-west of France and on the neighbouring Spanish frontier, and the Laps and Fins in Northern Europe.

The oldest writings extant in the Sanscrit branch of the Aryan tongue are termed the "Vedas." These works include a collection of hymns chanted or sung by the earlier south-eastern emigrants. It is believed this collection was formed about fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. According to ancient Hindoo authority, these hymns are coeval with creation. It is asserted that Brahma breathed them from his own mouth, or, in other words, that he milked them out from fire, air, and the sun. Some traditions state that they wore scattered abroad or lost; and that a great sage, "Vyasa, the arranger," collected them together about 5,000 years ago. Vyasa, who was assisted in his labours by many other sages, taught the Vedic literature or religion to four distinct pupils. Payla learnt the Rig Veda, Vais'ampayana the Yajur Veda, Jaimini the Sama Veda, and Sumantu the Atharvan'a. The three first-mentioned are named collectively the sacred Trayi, or the Triad. These versions were afterwards much extended and commented upon by after sages.

The term Veda is derived from the Sanscrit root vid, which signifies to know. It implies the sum of all knowledge. By another etymology it is held to imply revealed knowledge, or that species of wisdom which contains within itself the evidence of its own truth. Rig is from the root rich, to laud, and implies that the Vedic knowledge is delivered in the form of hymns of praise.

Max Müller regards the Vedas as containing the key note of all religion, natural as well as revealed. They exhibit a belief in God, a perception of the difference between good and evil, and a conviction that the Deity loveth the one and hateth the other. The degenerate religion of the modern Hindoos, and especially the worship of Krishnah, is described by a recent writer, as (in comparison with that of the Vedas) "a moral plague, the ravages of which are as appalling as they are astounding."

Walter Kelly says:—"The Sanscrit tongue, in which the Vedas are written, is the sacred language of India; that is to say, the oldest language, the one which was spoken, as the Hindoos believe, by the gods themselves, when gods and men were in frequent fellowship with each other, from the time when Yama descended from heaven to become the first of mortals. This ancient tongue may not be the very one which was spoken by the common ancestors of Hindoos and Europeans, but at least it is its nearest and purest derivative; nor is there any reason to believe that it is removed from it by more than a few degrees. Hence the supreme importance of the Sanscrit vocabulary and literature as a key to the languages and supernatural lore of ancient and modern Europe."

This discovery of the Sanscrit writings, and especially of the Vedas, has already exercised considerable influence upon etymological science. Before its introduction the main element in such inquiries consisted in the tracing backwards words corrupted or obscure in modern English to their original roots in Keltic, Teutonic, Greek, or Latin. The Sanscrit, however, being a written form of one of the earliest of the varieties of these cognate tongues, gives the etymological student the advantage of a flank or rear position, by means of which he may sometimes decipher the meaning of a doubtful term, by the inverse or ascending process, and thus gain some knowledge of its original meaning, perhaps long since lost by the descendants of those who first introduced it into the ancient language of Great Britain.[1]

It is by no means improbable that the idle historical legends related by Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth, respecting the arrival of Brutus and his Trojan followers in Britain, after the destruction of Priam's imperial city by the allied Greeks, may have just so much foundation in fact as might be furnished by a time-honoured tradition respecting the eastern home from which our remote ancestors originally migrated. The natives of Britain, on first coming in contact with the early merchants and traders from the Mediterranean shores, would doubtless hear something of the Iliad and the Æneid, with the heroes of which they might innocently confound their own remote and vaguely conceived demi-deities or warlike human ancestry. Notwithstanding the just contempt in which these legends are held by modern historians, there still exists a kind of instinctive faith that a very remote tradition, however much it may have been overlaid and disfigured by relatively modern inventions, lies at the base of the main story. Emigrants from Iberia (situated between the Caspian and the Euxine Seas) are said to have settled in Greece (the Pelasgi), and in Tuscany and Spain (the Iberians). In Laurent's "Ancient Geography" is the following passage:—"In the Caucasus were found the Bruchi, the modern Burtani or Britani, a free tribe, rich in silver and gold." It is not improbable that the advent of emigrants of this tribe in England may underlie