Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/67

Rh numerous changes which words necessarily undergo in transmission from generation to generation, the terminations of nouns and verbs have been worn down, so that they no longer afford sufficiently clear indications of time, person, or relation, some other means of marking these necessary distinctions silently grows up. In the case of European languages there were prepositions for the noun and auxiliaries for the verb. In the Indian languages postpositions took the place of the European prepositions; but in other respects the process was precisely identical in both. It is not pretended that the European languages were subjected to non-Aryan or any other external influence to make them undergo these changes; it is admitted that they grew naturally out of the course taken by the human tongue and the human mind. The flower of synthesis budded and opened, and when full blown began, like all other flowers, to fade. Its petals, that is its inflections, dropped off one by one; and in due course the fruit of analytical structure sprung up beneath it, and grew and ripened in its stead. If this was the natural course of development in Europe, may we not suppose it to have also been the course in India? The ancient Indian languages are exact structural parallels to the ancient European languages, the modern are also precisely parallel to the modern of Europe: does it not seem to follow, as a logical consequence, that the method and process of their change, from the one stage to the other, was also parallel, and, in both cases, due to internal rather than external influences?

§ 14. But there are stronger arguments still. The non-Aryan languages could only affect the Aryans by means of some quality which they possessed, not by means of those which they did not possess. If the Kol, Dravidian, or other groups of languages were analytical, it is conceivable, if we put aside for a time the historical and geographical considerations, that they have imparted to the Aryans a tendency to