with Latin and Greek, have a great deal in common with Sanskrit.
In the face of these facts it is gravely asserted to be “indispensably necessary”[1] to cultivate congenial classical languages, in order to enrich and embellish the popular Indian dialects. Then, with a strange inconsistency, it is proposed to cultivate, for this purpose, as being a congenial language, the Arabic, which is the most radically different from the Indian dialects of any language that could be named; and, lastly, the English language, which has a distant affinity to those dialects, through the Saxon, and a very near connection with them through the Latin and Greek, is rejected as uncongenial.
When we once go beyond the limits of the popular vocabulary, Sanskrit, Arabic, and English are equally new to the people. They have a word to learn which they did not know before; and it is
- ↑ If the supposed necessity really existed, our language must have been first improved by the cultivation of Anglo-Saxon philology, instead of Norman-French; the fathers of English literature must have coined words from the Teutonic dialects, to express the thoughts of the Greek, Roman, and Italian authors; our vocabularies of war, cookery, and dress-making, instead of being unaltered French, must first have been filtered through a German medium; and in India, every idea which has been adopted from the religion, the learning, and the jurisprudence of the Arabians, must have been translated into good Sanskrit before it could have been naturalised.
