A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.24

v1.c4.24

§ 3. Next comes the class of words described as neither Sanskritic nor Aryan, but *x*. It is known that on entering India the Aryans found that country occupied by races of a different family from their own. With these races they waged a long and chequered warfare, gradually pushing on after each fresh victory, till at the end of many centuries they obtained possession of the greater part of the territories they now enjoy. Through these long ages, periods of peace alternated with those of war, and the contact between the two races may have been as often friendly as hostile. The Aryans exercised a powerful influence upon their opponents, and we cannot doubt but that they themselves were also, but in a less degree, subject to some influence from them. There are consequently to be found even in Sanskrit some words which have a very un-Aryan look, and the number of such words is much greater still in the modern languages, and there exists therefore a temptation to attribute to non-Aryan sources any words whose origin it is difficult to trace from Aryan beginnings.