that they all divided the year into lunar months, and counted regularly
up to more than 100,11 according to the decimal system ; and
•that they professed a worship similar to that depicted for us in the
liig-veda.
But, as a counter-proof,—the words that we simply encounter both
in Greek and Latin, but which do not exist in the- Sanscrit in their
proper sense, and of which only a remote etymological radical can
be discovered, become witnesses, in their own turn, for the progressions
that had been accomplished in Europe. They unfold to us
what had been the acquirements in common, which the Pelasgi possessed
prior to their complete separation into Hellenic and into
Italic populations.12 We thence learn how it is that from this Pe-
lasgic epoch dates the establishment of regular agriculture, — the
cultivation of the cereals, of the vine and the olive. Finally, those
words possessed by the Latin alone, but which the Greek has not
yet acquired, display the progress accomplished by the Italic populations
after they had penetrated into the Peninsula. For instance,
the word expressing the idea of “ boat” (navis, Sanscrit nâus), and
which was subsequently applied to a “ ship” (French navire, and by
us preserved in navy, &c.), belongs to the three languages as well as
that which renders the idea of “ oar.” The Pelasgi had, therefore,
imported with them from Asia, acquaintance with transportations
by water; but the words for sail, mast, and yard, are exclusively
Latin. It was, consequently, the Italic people who invented (for
themselves) navigation by sails; and this circumstance completes
the demonstration, that it was through the north of the Italian
peninsula that the Pelasgi must have penetrated into it.13
We are, unfortunately, still perplexed as to what was the precise
idiom of these Pelasgi. It is, perhaps, in the living tongue of the
Albanians, or SJcippetars, that the least adulterated descendant of
11 The names of numbers are the same up to a hundred, and the numeral system is identical.
12 [My colleague, M. Maury, writes me that Ms Histoire des Religions de la Grèce A ntique
(2 vols. 8vo., publishing by Ladrange, Paris), is on the point .of issue — Feb. 1857. It is
the fruit of long years of research, and cannot fail to throw great light upon ante-Hellenic
events. In another equally-interesting field, the Mélanges Historiques of our friend M
Ernest R enan (now in press) will explore many points of contact, or of disunion, betwebn
Sanscritic and Semitic languages and history. — G. R. G.]
13 [This interesting method of resuscitating facts long entombed in the ashes of ante-
history, infirma the accuracy of Dr . David F. Weinland’s views, “ Gn the names of
animals with reference to Ethnology,” in a paper read before the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, last August. But I know of it only through a very condensed
report [New York Herald, Aug. 26, 1856). — G. R. G.]
h
this idiom must be sought for.14 Notwithstanding the quantity sufficiently
noteworthy of Greek and Shlavic words that has penetrated
into the Albanian, a grammatical system, nearer to Sanscrit than the
Greek affords, is encountered in it. Such, for example, is the declension
of the determinate adjective through a pronominal appendix,
—which is observed likewise in Sclavonic tongues, so approximate,
on the other hand, to Sanscrit. The conjugation of the verb is very
distinct from that in Greek, and denotes a system of flexion less
developed.
J shall say nothing about the neo-Latin tongues, bom from the
decomposition of Latin, and which lost little by little the synthetical
character and the flexions of their mother. I will but remark, that
it is very curious to establish how the languages issued from this
stock that have been spoken by populations whose national life is
very slightly developed, are those which present an analytical constitution
the least pronounced, and wherein the flexions have not
became so greatly impoverished. The Valaq or Roumanie, the
Rheto-Romain or dialect of the country of the Grisons, are certainly
more synthetic, and grammatically less impoverished than French or
Spanish. But, at the same time that these tongues have preserved
their more complex character, they have become still more altered
in respect to their vocabulary; and one feels in them very strongly
the influence which intermixture of races exerts upon languages ;
otherwise called, the mingling of different tongues. The verb in the
Rheto-Romain, for instance, is conjugated now-a-days in the future
tense and in the passive form like a German verh.
The Sclavonic, or Letto-Shlave, tongues decompose themselves into
several groups that correspond to diffèrent degrees of linguistic
development. The Lettish group, or Lithuanian (which comprehends
the Lithuanian, properly so called, the Rorussian or ancient Prussian,
and the Lettio or Livonian), answers to a period less advanced
than the Shlavic branch ; for example, the Lithuanian substantive
has hut two genders, whilst the Shlave recognizes three. The Lithuanian
conjugation does not distinguish the third persons of the
singular, of the dual and the plural. The Shlavic conjugation, on the
contrary, clearly distinguishes seven persons in the plural and in the
singular. But, by way of amends, the Lithuanian keeps in its
declension the seven cases and the dual, so characteristic in Sanscrit.
14 See on this subject the Études Albanaises of M. J. von Hahn published at Vienna in
1854. M. A. F. P ott has made the observation, that the Valaq idiom preserves probably
some vestiges of this antique language of Illyria; the use of the definite article^notably,
seems in Wallaohian to proceed from sources foreign to Latin.