A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c2.8

c2.8

of a common descent. The evidence is cumulative. It seems impossible to suppose that all the various remarkable resemblances that will be pointed out, section after section, in this work can have arisen merely from similarity in mental development—of which there is no proof—or similarity in external circumstances and history—of which also there is no proof—much less without any common cause whatever, but merely from the chapter of accidents. The relationship seems to me to be not merely morphological, but—in some shape or another, and however it may be accounted for—genealogical. The genealogical method of investigation has produced remarkable results in the case of the Indo-European family of languages, and there seems no reason why it should be discarded in relation to any other family or group; but this method is applicable, as it appears to me, not merely to roots and forms, but also to principles, contrivances, and adaptations. I have called attention to the various resemblances I have noticed, whether apparently important or apparently insignificant—not under the supposition that any one of them, or all together, will suffice to settle the difficult question at issue, but as an aid to inquiry, for the purpose of helping to point out the line in which further research seems likely—or not likely—to be rewarded with success. An ulterior and still more difficult question will be found to be occasionally discussed. It is this: Does there not seem to be reason for regarding the Dravidian family languages, not only as a link of connection between the Indo-European and Scythian groups, but—in some particulars, especially in relation to the pronouns—as the best surviving representative of a period in the history of human speech older than the Indo-European stage, older than the Scythian, and older than the separation of the one from the other.