Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/32

10 the number of such words is much greater still in the modern languages, and there exists therefore a temptation to attribute to non-Aryan sources any words whose origin it is difficult to trace from Aryan beginnings.

It may be as well here to point out certain simple and almost obvious limitations to the application of the theory that the Aryans borrowed from their alien predecessors. Verbal resemblance is, unless supported by other arguments, the most unsafe of all grounds on which to base an induction in philology. Too many writers, in other respects meritorious, seem to proceed on Fluellen's process, "There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river in Monmouth, and there is salmons in both." A certain Tamil word contains a P, so does a certain Sanskrit word, and ergo, the latter is derived from the former! Now, I would urge that, in the first place, the Aryans were superior morally as well as physically to the aborigines, and probably therefore imparted to them more than they received from them. Moreover, the Aryans were in possession of a copious language before they came into India; they would therefore not be likely to borrow words of an ordinary usual description, such as names for their clothing, weapons, and utensils, or for their cattle and tools, or for the parts of their bodies, or for the various relations in which they stood to each other. The words they would be likely to borrow would be names for the new plants, animals, and natural objects which they had not seen in their former abodes, and even this necessity would be reduced by the tendency inherent in all races to invent descriptive names for new objects. Thus they called the elephant hastin, or the "beast with a hand," and gaja, or the "roarer"; the monkey kapi, or the "restless beast," and vânara, or the "forest-man"; the peacock mayûra, in imitation of its cry. A third limitation is afforded by geographical considerations. Which were the tribes whom the Aryans mixed with, either as friends or foes? Could the bulk of them have