COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

472 COSMOS.
most nearly the language common to all who had migrated
from the general seat of origin. The largest field for such
investigations into the ancient condition of language, and
consequently into the period when the whole family of mankind
was, in the strict sense of the word, to be regarded as
one living whole, presents itself in the long
chain of Indo-
Germanic languages, extending from the Ganges to the
Iberian extremity of Europe, and from Sicily to the North
Cape. The same comparative study of
languages leads us
also to the native country of certain products, which, from
the earliest ages, have constituted important objects of trade
and barter. The Sanscrit names of genuine Indian products,
as those of rice, cotton, spikenard, and sugar, have, as we
find, passed into the language of the Greeks, and, to a certain
extent, even into those of Semitic origin.*
From the above considerations, and the examples by which
they have been illustrated, the comparative study of languages
appears as an important rational means of assistance, by
which scientific and genuinely philological investigations may
lead to a generalisation of views regarding the affinity of
races, and their conjectural extension in various directions
from one common point of radiation. The rational aids towards
* In Sanscrit, rice is vrihi, cotton karpdsa, sugar 'sarkara, and
spikenard nanartha; see Lassen, Indisclie Alterthumslcunde, bd. i.
1843, s. 245, 250, 270, 289,-and 538. On 'sarkara &nd kanda (whence
our sugar-candy), consult my Prolegomena de distributions geographica
Plantarum, 1817, p. 211.
"
Confudisse videntur veteres saccharum
verum cum Tebaschiro Bambusae, turn quia utraque in arundinibus
inveniuntur, turn etiam quia vox sanscradana scharkara, quae hodie (ut
pers. schakar et hindost. schukur) pro saccharo nostro .adhibetur, observante
Boppio, ex auctoritate Amarasinhae, proprie nil dulce (madu)
significat, sed quicquid lapidosum et areuaceum est, ac vel calculum
vesicEe. Verisimile igitur, vocem scharkara initio dumtaxat tebaschirum
(saccar nombu) indicasse, posterius in saccharum nostrum humili-
oris arundinis (ikschu, kandekschu, kanda), ex similitudine aspectus
translatam esse. Vox Bambusae ex mambu derivatur; ex kanda nostratium
voces candis zuckerkand. In tebaschiro agnoscitur Persarum
schir, h. e. lac, sanscr. kschiram" The Sanscrit name for tabaschir ia
bd. i.
tvakkschird, bark-milk; milk from the bark. See Lassen,
s. 271--274; compare also Pott, Kurdische Studien in the Zeitschrift
fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, bd. vii. s. 163-166, and the masterly
treatise by Carl Ritter, in his Erdkunde von Asien, bd. vi. 2, s.
232-237.