Book Title: Kalpasutra and Navtattva
Author(s): J Stevenson
Publisher: Oriental Translation Fund London

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Page 163
________________ 134 APPENDIX. has acted by far the most prominent part on the political arena of the world, sending off colonies, which became the germs of mighty monarchies in Persia, Greece, Italy, and modern Europe, as well as in India ; and in all those different localities retaining the rudiments of a dialect which has formed the basis of most of those languages which contain the treasures of literature and science, as has been fully manifested hy the learned labours of Schlegel, Kennedy, and Bopp. It is evident that on the spreading abroad of this northern family, and their mingling with the aborigines, a mixture of the language of the two people must have resulted. The same process, then, that took place in Spain, the north of Italy, France, and Britain, on the conquest of those countries by the Romans, took place, we must believe, in India, when the followers of Brahmanism, at different periods, took possession of its different kingdoms and principalities. The language of the aboriginal inhabitants of India, if we may judge from the Tamil, that of the people most to the south, and farthest removed from Brahmanical influence, and from the dialects spoken by the hill tribes, which have never embraced the Brahmanical customs and religion, and which dialects have all much in common with the Támil, belonged to a family of languages entirely distinct from that of the northern invaders, and had a nearer resemblance to the Turkish and Siberian dialects than to any of the Indo-Germanic tongues. It was not the policy of the Brahmans, any more than of the Romans, to dispense with the use of their

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