Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/69

Rh It must, therefore, be always remembered that though the modern Aryan verb presents in its structure certain similarities to the Dravidian or Kol verb, and some analogies also with the Tibetan and Himalayan verb, as well as with the noun of both, yet this very similarity to two such widely sundered groups reduces us to the necessity of admitting that the connexion is not one of family, but of stage. Tibetan and Dravidian alike are in the agglutinative stage; and, as mentioned before, the analytical stage, in which the modern Aryan languages are, resembles in many particulars the agglutinative stage, though the difference is generally to be detected by a close scrutiny.

It is not my intention here to go into the details of the non-Aryan system of inflection, or agglutination. I am very imperfectly acquainted with the non-Aryan languages; and with those which impinge most closely upon the Aryan area, very few persons can pretend to be familiar. But it seems advisable once again to raise a warning voice against the rash speculations which are the bane of philology more than of any other science, and which have so frequently been the cause of the science itself being turned into ridicule. We can only move slowly, slowly, stablishing our feet firmly on one point before we pass to another. Data are scanty, and facts hard to get at. In the above remarks all that has been done is to show how great is the à priori improbability of the theory that the present structure of the modern Aryan tongues is in any great degree due to non-Aryan influence. It has been said languages borrow words but never grammar. The methods of expressing ideas seem to be inborn and ingrained into races, and seem rarely to be varied, whatever be the materials employed, so that even resemblances should be shunned as dangerous, and must, unless supported by historical or other proofs, be set down in the majority of cases as accidental. To take an instance, a great deal has been made, or tried to be made, of the resemblance between the sign of the dative in Tamil,