that people had eaten an old woman, named Wururi, who used to go about at night quenching fires with a damp stick; for Wururi is no other than the damp nightwind, and the languages learnt from devouring her are the guttural reproduction of natural sounds.*

2. Turning from savage to semi-civilised races, we are not aware that among any of them, even among the intelligent Chinese, any speculations respecting the nature of language have arisen. The only thing which was likely to have turned Chinese curiosity in this direction was the influence which Buddhism acquired over vast portions of their race, which led to the translation into Chinese of various Buddhist books, all abounding in Sanskrit names, which also occurred with great frequency in the narratives of the Chinese pilgrims. The deciphering of these names as they appear transliterated in Chinese books is one of the most brilliant achievements of philological science, and the manner in which it has been effected by M. Stanislas Julien† is one of the many proofs how intense is the devotion which that science inspires in its pioneers. Before M. Julien devoted his attention

*I adopt Steinthal's explanation of this legend.

† See Méthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois. 1861.

Take for instance such a life as that of Anquetil du Perron. At the age of twenty he accidentally found some Zend MSS., and was fired with the determination to visit India, and bring back the works of Zoroaster. In order to do so he gave up good prospects of ecclesiastical preferment, and, being too poor to carry out his designs

to the subject, the problems had remained unsolved because the sinologues had known no Sanskrit, and the Indianists had known no Chinese. M. Julien had become a sinologue by accident. One day he had strolled into the room of a young friend, M. Fresnel, who was preparing a passage of the philosopher Meng-tsen for a lesson with M. Abel de Rémusat. M. Fresnel explained the signs, and went through the lesson word for word. M. Julien asked, more as a joke than anything else, if he might take M. Fresnel's place at the lecture. He did so, and construed the passage through with perfect correctness. From that time he became a pupil of M. de Rémusat, and before the year was over had studied with such ardour as to be capable of publishing a French translation of the Chinese philosopher. But even this did not exhaust his patience. He bent his whole genius to solve the problem of deciphering these names which had hitherto, in Chinese translations, been expressed by phonetic signs of which no one possessed the key; they were called Fan words, and it was not even known that Fan was but an abbrevia

in any other way, enlisted as a common soldier, and left Paris on November 7, 1754, with a knapsack on his back, behind a bad drum, an old sergeant, and half-a-dozen recruits. Neither tigers, forests, wild elephants, treacherous guides, deceitful teachers, moral temptations, or jungle fevers diverted him from a design in which he sought neither glory nor riches, but only knowledge and truth. Such men are the glory of a nascent science. Il faut lire,' says M. Michelet, au premier volume de son livre, l'étrange Iliade de tout ce qu'il

endura, affronta et surmonta.'

tion of Fan-lan-mo, which is the necessary shape assumed in Chinese by the word Brahma.* The first who proved them to be Sanskrit words at all, was M. de Chézy. † For the sole purpose then of deciphering these words, M. Julien first made himself a master of Sanskrit, and then by the aid of two lists of Hindoo words written in phonetic characters, and translated into Chinese, after dissecting some 4,000 Sanskrit words which represented 12,000 syllables, and very many thousands of ideographic signs, he succeeded after fifteen years of minute, laborious, and almost unremitting toil-toil which would seem unspeakably repulsive to anyone who did not realise the self-rewarding ardour and heroic enthusiasm of scientific research-he succeeded in 1861 in demonstrating the law of transcription, and for the first time reading these names in their proper form.

3. The importance of this discovery, and the manner in which it illustrates what is now being done, excuse this momentary digression, although in fact no Chinese, so far as we are aware, ever devoted fifteen idle minutes to the philological inquiries which

* Since in that language the letter r does not exist, and they are unable to pronounce two consecutive consonants by one emission of the voice. (Similarly does not exist in Zend and New Zealand, and r is substituted for it.)

+ He detected the word Bharyâ, 'woman,' under the form Po-li-ya, and Deva under the form ti-po, &c. The Sanskrit bhavapa, 'you two are,' becomes in Chinese po'-po-po.

occupied the French scholar for fifteen toilful years. But in this complete absence of all curiosity respecting language, the Chinese did not stand alone. The Hebrews, to whom we next turn, added as little to Philology as the Chinese. Influenced by the belief-a belief which in reality contravened the distinct theory of their own sacred books—that God had revealed a full-grown language to mankind ;understanding with their usual literalness that the creation was the result of a fiat articulately spoken by the demiurgic voice-they attached to language a divine and mysterious character, and presupposed a natural and necessary connection between words and things. This conception runs through the whole of the Old Testament. By virtue of it we find in Genesis no less than fifty derivations of names, in many of which the name is evidently supposed to have had a mystic and prophetic influence-as when Noah is said to mean comfort, and in his days the earth was comforted; Peleg division,' and in his days the earth was divided; Abel 'fleeting,' and he died in youth. It is to a similar cause that we owe those constant plays on words, very many of which might be selected from the sacred books, and of

*

* It is well known that many of these etymologies are philologically untenable, and are merely meant to have a mystic significance.. Isshah, 'woman,' for instance, cannot be derived from Eesh (Gen. ii. 23), nor Noah from Nacham, comfort' (Gen. v. 29), nor Moses from Mâshah, 'be saved' (Ex. ii. 10, cf. Gen. xli. 45), nor even Adam from Adamah,' earth' (Gen. ii. 7).—See Chapters on Language, p. 268.

which one occurs as early as the second verse of the book of Genesis.* A single instance will perhaps be sufficient to illustrate the Hebrew conception of the sacredness of words. You will remember in St. Matthew (ii. 23), the passage, And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, And he shall be called a Nazarene.'t Now no such passage occurs anywhere in the prophets, and it is an ancient interpretation, which is now most commonly received, that the passage is an allusion to a single word in Isaiah, where the promised Messiah is called Nētzer or the Branch. To accept the mere word—the mere physiological character of the sound entirely independent of its meaning-as in itself sufficient to involve a mysterious prophecy, if it served to recall other sounds expressive of totally different conceptions, is entirely accordant with what we know of the Hebrew view of words, and especially of the words of the sacred book, the very letters of which

* ' And the earth was without form and void.'n, thohoo vabhohoo.

Is. xi. 1. In the other Messianic passages referring to Christ under the title of the Branch' (Zech. iii. 8; vi. 12; Jer. xxiii. 5; xxxiii. 15), the Hebrew word is not

6

but

tzemach.

Even Bishop Ellicott seems to adhere to some such view, for he says that we are justified in assigning to the word Nagwpaîos all the meanings legitimately belonging to it by derivation or otherwise.

...

We may therefore trace this prophetic declaration (a) principally and primarily in all the passages which refer to the Messiah under the title of the Branch, &c.'-Life of our Lord, p. 81 n.