Though
sufficiently difficult to acquire, principally on account of its
prodigious richness in synonyms, it is no longer a sealed language,
- its laws, structure, and vocabulary being sufficiently well known
by means of numerous elementary works, adapted to facilitate its
study. It has been considered by famous philologists as the mother
not only of all the languages of Asia, but of all others in the
world. So wild and preposterous an idea, however, only serves to
prove that a devotion to philology, whose principal object should
be the expansion of the mind by the various treasures of learning
and wisdom which it can unlock, sometimes only tends to its
bewilderment, by causing it to embrace shadows for reality. The
most that can be allowed, in reason, to the Sanscrit is that it is
the mother of a certain class or family of languages, for example,
those spoken in Hindustan, with which most of the European, whether
of the Sclavonian, Gothic, or Celtic stock, have some connection.
True it is that in this case we know not how to dispose of the
ancient Zend, the mother of the modern Persian, the language in
which were written those writings generally attributed to
Zerduscht, or Zoroaster, whose affinity to the said tongues is as
easily established as that of the Sanscrit, and which, in respect
to antiquity, may well dispute the palm with its Indian rival.
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