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CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
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kernel of a nut, one may with nearly equal advan. over which our observations extend have had to tage avail himself of a rough stone, a polished be slowly wrought out and adapted to their pur. hammer, or a patent nut-cracking machine; and pose from the general material of speech, could while we may admire the superior ingenuity of be struck off out of hand by the earliest speech. the last, we do not fail to recognise in all alike the makers. Yet we have this palpable absurdity essentially human faculty of adapting means to involved in the language-theories of a variety of ende, nor to acknowledge that the remote ancestors schools: of those who hold that certain languages of those who now have machines possessed nothing arą "form-languages" and others not; or that better than stones; and we should especially speech began with sentences, which gradually laugh at any who maintained that the metal begat words by a fissiparous process ; or that proin their machines was never rude mineral that nouns are the endings of verbs, which have had to be dug out of the dirty ground. But this dropped off and set up an independent existence; is what is virtually done by those who insist that or that the founders of each race of men produced in their languages the apparatus of formal expres. the various existing languages complete " at a sion has been always and only formal. In direct single stroke"-and so on through the whole list opposition to them, it is to be maintained that in of a priori systems, which are saved from general no language does anything formal exist that was and utter condemnation only by the too prevalent not first material. Investigation, experience, and substitution of empty speculations for the scienti. sound anthropologic theory all unite to show this; fic method of induction from facts. and there is nothing against it but prejudice and Our author's concluding opinion, that we are pride. Our views of the history of language, in not to infer mental infirmity in the races possessorder to be defensible and abiding, must be made ing these peculiar and structurally impoverished to fit into our general anthropology, as a consis- tongues, is to be received with unquestioning tent part of it; for language is simply one of the assent. Every race is entitled to be judged by various acquisitions by which man has become the totality of its mental products, not by the what he is. Now what can we suppose to have capacity which it has exhibited in a single direcbeen the mental condition and capacity of mention of mental activity; and no reasonable man who have not yet possessed themselves of speech? will deny to the unaided originators of a culture Certainly not superior to that of the compara- like the Chinese a place in the front rank of tively cultivated races in the more recent stages humanity. But the skill and effect with which of their history, but rather the contrary. We can they are handled does not save the tongues themnot help believing that there has been a gradual selves from the reproach of rudimentariness; and advance in intellectual grasp and reach, partly as whatever eminence the Chinese and Tibetans may a consequence of the gradual elaboration of have attained in philosophy must be said to be in speech. It would be, then, of the utmost degree spite of their speech rather than by its aid. To of strangeness if in primitive times a loftier and ertol the logicalness of a language of roots can freer mode of language-making was within reach hardly fail to imply against one that has parts of than we now find attainable by ourselves; if those speech and inflections the charge of being in some. items of formal expression which in the period' measure illogical.
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA. NABIAD, IN THE KAIRA DISTRICT. The inscription is dated in the reign of the Mr. H. H. Dhruva, of Surat, has submitted glorious Mudaphar (1. 26) (Muzaffar Shah, the for inspection a rubbing of a Sanskrit inscrip- successor of the celebrated Mahmad Baigara of tion in verse and prose, (30 lines of about 40 the Dôhad inscription of Vikrama-Samvat 1545), letters each, in Nagari characters; covering a who appears to have been reigning at Aḥmada. space of about 1' 9" high by 1' 4" broad) from a båd. The details of the date, given in words well at Nariad. It is a prasasti, composed by an in line 178., and in figures in line 264., Udichya Brahman named Ramachandra (line 3), are-Vikrama-Sathvat 1572 and Sakal 1437 or recording the building of the well by a Gurjara 1438 ; Sômadina or Monday, the thirteenth day Baniya named Venidasa (1.9), whose family had of the bright fortnight of the month Vaishemigrated, under his ancestor Dévavsiddha (1. 6), kha-corresponding, by the Tables in General from the Vaishnava city of Stambhatirtha (1. 5). Cunningham's Indian Eras and Cowasjee Pathe modern Khambay, and had settled at Nata- tell's Chronology, to Monday, the 14th April patra (1. 11), where the well was constructed. A.D. 1515. The chief interest of this inscription
The last figure of the SAka date, in the unita place, is almost illegible and is quite uncertain.
