Yet this analytical discovery of monosyllable bases, if it does not assist us as much as was ex pected in the solution of the many difficult pro blems offered by the Shemitic idioms when com pared among themselves ; was made to support a much more sweeping theory—viz. that of an original affinity, nay identity, between Shemitic and Aryan, at some most remote period. A period, in fact, when Aryans and Shemites dwelt in the same home steads ; a period anterior to the final development of the roots of their—common—rudimentary language, and, of course, long anterior to grammars : and therefore also called the antesranzmatical stage. And this theory has been advocated and warmly ciefended from Schlegel down to our day by some of the most eminently Aryan and Shemitic scholars. Nay, even the absurd extreme to which it has been carried by Delitzsch and Ftirst did not bring its original form into discredit. These two scholars, to wit, do not stop at the affinity, but assume a downright relationship of parentage between the two groups. Their proofs ancl their specimens of words, however, do not sufficiently support their hypothesis. For the most part arbitrary to an immense degree, and erroneous in their applica tion, they resolve themselves either into accidental sinailarities or into such affinities as are easiiy explained by late importations (the existence of which has never been doubted) from one group into the other—caused by the constant contact between the two families in prehistorical- as well as historical times. Quite apart from that other most unfortunate accident of their trying to prove their case by certain talmudical and Syriac words which bore an undeniable family-likeness to certain Greek and Latin words of similar meanings ; but which were really words taken from Greek and Latin in late Roman times, and spelt in a slightly disguised Shemitic fashion.
We cannot in this place further enlarge upon a point which trenches so nearly upon those obscure problems about the origin of language in general, that prominently occupy the minds of scientific inquirers in these days. Whatever be the final issue, if ever there be one, we cannot but simply state the fact that, grammatically, there cannot be a more radical difference than that which exists between the two groups, while lexically or etymo logically a certain affinity between them is perfectly incontestable even to the most critical and unpre judiced eye. However different the conclusions they draw, on these points even the most extreme schools agree. But whether, as some hold, there was once a stage where there was no grammar at all, or whether there was a kind of grammar which contained the two subsequently so widely varying forms of it in niece ; or again whether the two races ever did inhabit the same soil at all, and the pheno menon of the lexical property common to both may be explained on the one hand by certain linguistical laws that unchanging rule body and soul of humanity and produce everywhere the same onomatopoetical sounds, the origin of which we may or may not be able to trace in our present stage, and on the other hand by a certain interchange of ideas and objects at different periods of their existence :—we shall leave undiscussed in this place, content to have shown the different standpoints. The most remarkable, and
perhaps the least easily-accounted for phenomenon, is the striking similarity of the pronouns and nu merals, not only in Indo-Germanic and Shemitic, but even in Coptic, which for this and other rea sons has indeed been held by some to be both lexically and grammatically the Chamite link be ween the two. With what small show of reason, however, we cannot stop to explain.
Among these last -mentioned curious mutual interchanges that took place in what we may call —comparatively speaking—historical times, we find first of all certain Egyptian words that have early crept into Hebrew, partly possibly before the so journ at Goshen. Thus we find InN, "TiN, perhaps also ron, min, and others, some of them still to be found in Coptic, and not explained by Shemitic etymology. On the other hand, cer tain words, chiefly designations of animals, are found in Coptic which are taken from Shemitic— W, 1V), etc. Next stand those verbal importations from India, brought home by the trading expeditions to Ophir'—e.g. rop, -1-11 ori, and the like—which are easily traceable to Sanscrit and its dialects. [And here we would draw attention to the word 1.14 (Yavan), the She mitic designation for the Greeks, which seems to be the Sanscrit R4-4.4 Yuvajana = Lat. juvenis— i. e. a younger branch (of emigrants probably).] Strangely enough, while the Greek was enriched to an extraordinary extent by the Shemitic tmders, in proportion to the immense variety of articles then imported into Greek ports ; the Greek idiom is generally supposed to have added next to nothing to the Shemitic before the time of Alexander. Vegetable substances, precious stones, materials for garments, the garments themselves, animals, musical instruments, weights, and last not least, the letters of the alphabet—all these, together with their na tive names, were imported by Shemites (Plmeni cians) into the Greek territory and language, when they first emerged from their narrow \Vest-Asiatic homes and opened up a trade with the whole world. The use of many of these words in the fragments of the most ancient Greek literature that has sur vived shows them to have been at the earliest period already part and parcel of that idiom to such an extent that even their origin had been completely for gotten, cf. 1Mit, baatoros ; ntn, ficacalhov ; 113, poo-o-os ; Xifiapos ; TDO, acirOetpos ; nnro, 2urthp; 1137, tavOpa, etc. Whether, however, many of the hitherto unexplained Shemitic words may or may not be Greek, and date from exactly the same period, and their importation be owing to the same causes, we cannot here discuss.