Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/67

 the signal success which has attended our introduction and extended use of the classical languages both of the West and of the East. Of these classical languages the best for style, and the simple, chaste, and appropriate expression of thought, are the Latin and Greek; the best for philological science and research is the Sanskrit; the best (as an ancient tongue) for elevation and sublimity, the Hebrew, with its cognates; and the best for richness, power and delicacy, and universality of application, the English, drawn from many sources. We deliberately include the English among the classical languages. Jacob Grimm has justly pronounced it one of the most noble ever used for human utterance. It contains wonderful and undying creations and compositions, such as those of our Shakespeare and Milton, which will be read and studied to the ends of the earth. I much regret that we have not yet included the Persian in the list of our prescribed classical languages. The proposal to put it in this position was lost in the Senate only by a single vote; and it may be yet renewed with the prospect of success, as some who voted against it are prepared to withdraw from it their opposition. Let all dubitants in this case listen to what Max Muller says of the Persian:—"As to Persian; this was long the language of the most civilized and most advanced nation in Asia. In the first centuries of the Islam, Persians were the teachers of Arabs, and among the early Arabic authors many names are found of Persian origin. Persian literature again was the only source whence, in the East, a taste for the more refined branches of poetry could be satisfied, whether through originals or by the medium of translations. In fact, Persian was for a long time the French of Asia, and it is still used there as the language of diplomatic correspondence. Hence many terms connected with literary subjects, or referring to other occupations of a society more advanced in civilization are of Persian, i,e., of Arian, origin." To this it has to be added, that the principal Muhammadan histories of India are in Persian; and that many Persian words are found in the Urdu, Kurdish, Turkish, and other Caucasian languages. It affords abundant scope for study, from the grand epic of Firdausi of the commencement of the eleventh century down to the latest authors of Ispahan and Teheran. It is through it that we have to arrive at the definite meaning of many Zend and Pehlvi words still but imperfectly understood.

Of our professional studies, legal, medical, and engineering, modifications founded on experience will doubtless require from time to time to be made. A