A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v2.c12.s2.19

v2.c12.s2.19

To trace the steps by which the various languages have arrived at each of the slight modifications of the general type by which they are distinguished, is a task impossible in the present stage of the inquiry. Much might, doubtless, be accounted for by the phonetic tendencies of each language, but this would not be sufficient to explain the whole. In the absence of a continuous chain of literary monuments which could be trusted to reflect faithfully the actually current speech of their respective periods, it is beyond the power of any scholar, however laborious, to work out all the steps of the problem. Experience has taught us that in India literature is never a faithful reflector of popular speech; and all that can now be done is to point out that one uniform type underlies the whole range of forms in the whole seven languages, and that this type can be traced back to the earliest stage of Aryan speech; while, at the same time, nothing more than the general type, the two leading ideas of i for the near, a and u for the far, demonstrative, can be with certainty identified.