A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.25

v1.c4.25

It may be as well here to point out certain simple and almost obvious limitations to the application of the theory that the Aryans borrowed from their alien predecessors. Verbal resemblance is, unless supported by other arguments, the most unsafe of all grounds on which to base an induction in philology. Too many writers, in other respects meritorious, seem to proceed on Fluellen's process, "There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river in Monmouth, and there is salmons in both." A certain Tamil word contains a P, so does a certain Sanskrit word, and *ergo*, the latter is derived from the former! Now, I would urge that, in the first place, the Aryans were superior morally as well as physically to the aborigines, and probably therefore imparted to them more than they received from them. Moreover, the Aryans were in possession of a copious language before they came into India; they would therefore not be likely to borrow words of an ordinary usual description, such as names for their clothing, weapons, and utensils, or for their cattle and tools, or for the parts of their bodies, or for the various relations in which they stood to each other. The words they would be likely to borrow would be names for the new plants, animals, and natural objects which they had not seen in their former abodes, and even this necessity would be reduced by the tendency inherent in all races to invent descriptive names for new objects. Thus they called the elephant *hastin*, or the "beast with a hand," and *gaja*, or the "roarer"; the monkey *kapi*, or the "restless beast," and *vānara*, or the "forest-man"; the peacock *mayūra*, in imitation of its cry. A third limitation is afforded by geographical considerations. Which were the tribes whom the Aryans mixed with, either as friends or foes? Could the bulk of them have come into frequent and close contact with the Dravidians, and if so, when and how? These are questions which it is almost impossible to answer in the present state of our knowledge, but they are too important to be altogether set aside, and it may be therefore pointed out merely as a contribution to the subject, that the tribes driven out of the valley of the Ganges by the Aryans were almost certainly Kols to the south, and semi-Tibetans to the north. It is fair to look with suspicion on an etymology which takes us from Sanskrit to Tamil without exhibiting a connecting series of links through the intervening Kol tribes.