The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.s1.23

v1.c15.s1.23

These observations contain the germs of the science of Comparative Philology. The conception of a family of languages, in which all the individual languages and dialects are related as descendants from a common ancestor, suggested the application to language of the historical and comparative method of investigation. The results have been as remarkable as they were unexpected. In the first place, the historical method has shown that living languages grow and change in accordance with certain definite laws, while the comparative study of the lines of development which may be traced historically in the different Indo-European languages has confirmed Sir William Jones's hypothesis that they are all derived 'from some common source,' which, though it no longer exists, may be restored hypothetically. In the second place, since words preserve the record both of material objects and of ideas, a study of vocabularies enables us to gain some knowledge of the state of civilisation, the social institutions, and the religious beliefs of the speakers of the different languages before the period of literary records. Some indication of the light which Comparative Philology thus throws on the history of the Āryan invaders of India is given in the following Chapter.