"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.

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

inflectional forms could have been obtained by affixing previously independent words 1):

"In Greek there is at least a semblance of possibility that the inflectional syllables might have had their source in particles and auxiliary words which have melted into the word itself, although it would not be possible to carry out this hypothesis without having recourse to almost all the etymological artifices and juggleries which should all, without exception, be banished at the outset, if we are to view language and its origin scientifically, i. e. in a thoroughly historic light; and even then this hypothesis could scarcely be carried out. But in Sanskrit the last semblance of such a possibility vanishes, and we are compelled to admit that the structure of the language is a thoroughly organic one, ramified by inflections or inner changes and variations of the root in all its significations, and not a simple mechanical compositum formed by the affixion of words and particles, while the root itself remains barren and unchanged." (Page 41.)

In this organic nature he finds the main advantage of the inflectional languages:

"To this is due on one side the wealth, on the other the stability and durability of these languages, which can be said to have arisen organically, and to form an organic tissue; so that centuries after, in languages which are separated by broad tracts of land, it is often possible with little pains to find the thread which extends through the wide-spread wealth of a whole word-family, and leads us back to the simple origin of the first root. On the other hand, in languages which instead of inflection have only affixes, the same cannot be said of the roots; they are no fruitful seed, only a heap of atoms, as it were, which every chance wind can easily scatter or sweep together; the connection is really no other than a purely mechanical one, by means of outward affixion. In their first origin these languages lack a germ of living development" etc. (Page 51.)

1) Probably in this opposition he has in mind the school of LENNEP and SCHEID (v. below), hardly HORNE TOOKE (concerning whom cf. MAX MÜLLER, Lectures on the Science of Language, page 255).

If we ask how this explanation of inflection as an inner change of the root, which seems to us so wanting in precision and clearness, can have arisen in the mind of this gifted scholar, so much is plain at once, that it was not derived from immediate observation (for where could we observe such an organic growth?); it seems more probable that it is really nothing but the necessary logical opposite of the theory which SCHLEGEL felt obliged to reject. In face of the absurdities of LENNEP, SCHEID & Co., by whom language was most stupidly cut to pieces and forcibly derived from purely imaginative roots, SCHLEGEL had evidently arrived at the conviction that it was impossible to approach the mystery of the development of linguistic forms by means of analysis. He therefore, in opposition to the theory which explained the origin of language by composition, preferred to postulate its development by means of organic growth, without very distinctly picturing to himself the nature and causes of this growth. He was perhaps strengthened in this view by another consideration. The relation existing between the Latin and Romanic languages (which his brother afterwards sought to characterize by the expressions "synthetic" and "analytic") seemed to him the more remarkable from the fact that in Sanskrit he found, so to speak, a more Latin condition of things than in Latin itself. (Page 40.) If, he may have concluded, a language shows the less composition the more ancient it is, how can we suppose that the linguistic forms in oldest times originated entirely by means of composition?

Now it was quite in the spirit of the philosophers of the Romantic School, with whose train of thought and method of expression SCHLEGEL was familiar, that he characterized such a growth from within outwards as "organic", and at the same time regarded this organic growth, in comparison with composition, as the higher and nobler process.

BOPP, in his first publication (Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache, 1816) adopted fully this briefly - outlined theory of SCHLEGEL (although without mentioning the author's name), which he afterwards stoutly opposed. But he extended it at once in one direction, by adding to the criterion of the

inner variation of the root the capacity to incorporate the substantive verb 1):

"Among all the languages known to us", he says on page 7, "the sacred language of the Hindus shows itself one of the most capable of expressing the most varied conditions and relations in a truly organic way, by inner inflection and change of the stem-syllable. But in spite of this admirable flexibility, this language is sometimes fond of incorporating into the root the abstract verb, whereupon the stem-syllable and the abstract verb share the grammatical functions of the verb."

This division of labor can be observed, for example, in the aorist, in the following manner. In the Sanskrit áçrauşam, "I heard", a characterizes past time; the especial modification of the past which is peculiar to the aorist is intimated by the strengthening of the u in the root çru to au; and the substantive verb is incorporated into the thus formed preterit, "so that, after the time-relations have been expressed in a purely organic way by inner variation of the root, person and number are defined by inflection of the affixed auxiliary verb." (Page 18.) The incorporation of the substantive verb is supposed by BOPP to have taken place in the future and aorist in Sanskrit and Greek, in the Sanskrit precative, in the wellknown perfect and imperfect formations of Latin, and (although he afterwards gave this up) in the passive endings of the same language. Bopp recognizes no other composition than that with as in his Conjugationssystem. To be sure he speaks of affixing the "characteristics of person" [Personskennzeichen] M, S, T, but he does not recognize in these characteristics any remains of formerly independent words. On the other hand, he remarks expressly in another connection: "It is contrary to the spirit of the Sanskrit language to express any relation by affixing several letters which can be regarded as an individual word." (Page 30.) In the Conjugationssystem he leaves the origin of these "characteristics of person" just as much in the

1) BOPP can have had this method of explanation alone in mind, when he says (Conjugationssystem, page 12) that in his labors he never leans upon the authority of another.